Okay I need a question answered.. What the heck is corporatism?

[Peacetrain]

[DevonRex]

1. I think that *they* think that a person is a corporatist if they don't want all

corporations abolished.

Okay, just kidding. They fling that word around just like they fling the word cheerleader around, so who knows?

[NJmaverick]

2. Here is one very good article on the issue, and here is a second one as well

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/27/819520/-The-Anti-Corporatist-Movement


and the lesser offering

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/26/819341/-Corporatism

[dcsmart]

4. excellent articles

[Born_A_Truman]

3. Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

Corporatism is a system of economic, political, and social organization where corporate groups such as business, ethnic, farmer, labour, military, patronage, scientific, or religious groups are joined together into a single governing body in which the different groups are mandated to negotiate with each other to establish policies in the interest of the multiple groups within the body.<1> Corporatism views society as being alike to an organic body in which each corporate group is viewed as a necessary organ for society to function properly.<2> Corporatism is based on the sociological concept of functionalism.<3> Countries that have corporatist systems typically utilize strong state intervention to direct corporatist policies and to prevent conflict between the groups.<4>

(snipped)

At a popular level in recent years "corporatism" has been used in a pejorative context to refer to the application of corporatism by fascist regimes<7> or to mean the promotion of the interests of private business corporations in government over the interests of the public.

(snipped)

Progressive corporatism
From the 1850s onward progressive corporatism rose in response to liberalism and Marxism.<21> These corporatists supported providing group rights to members of the middle classes and working classes in order to secure class harmony.<22> This was in opposition to the Marxist conception of class conflict.<23> By the 1870s and 1880s, corporatism experienced a revival in Europe with the creation of workers' unions that were committed to class harmony and negotiations with employers.<24> This new strand of corporatism also began to gain adherents in the United States.<25>

(snipped)

In popular usage
Contemporary popular (as opposed to social science) usage of the term is more pejorative, emphasizing the role of business corporations in government decision-making at the expense of the public. The power of business to affect government legislation through lobbying and other avenues of influence in order to promote their interests is usually seen as detrimental to those of the public. In this respect, corporatism may be characterized as an extreme form of regulatory capture, and is also termed corporatocracy, a form of plutocracy. If there is substantial military-corporate collaboration it is often called militarism or the military-industrial complex. The influence of other types of corporations, such as labor unions, is perceived to be relatively minor. In this view, government decisions are seen as being influenced strongly by which sorts of policies will lead to greater profits for favored companies.

[sandnsea]

5. I consider it global governance replaced by corporations

When Senator Kerry says that our navy protects sea lanes for oil transportation, that's corporatism gone crazy in my mind. When you see rivers in China polluted with our computers that were supposedly recycled, that's corporatism. Or 11 story garment factories collapse in Bangladesh, with a 20 second news blurb and nothing more. Decisions are being made to serve corporate interests, not the people's interest.

Corporatism:

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

[treestar]

6. These people are hung up on a form of doing business

As though it were evil in itself. They have this hatred that they need to attach to something.

There are some corporations so small they have one shareholder.

Yet they want the form obliterated. They think the CEOs of huge corporations will suffer, when it reality it would be everyone. No small business could start up. the personal liability would be too risky. so in the end they are actually in their ignorance, rooting for a system where we all work for the rich individuals directly.

And rich individuals as self proprietors would be worse than corporate boards that have to answer to the shareholders.

They are just full of rage and have no where to put it.

[sandnsea]

7. Corporations used to have to have a purpose

They also couldn't outlive their business investors or defined purpose or public good. And they weren't considered live entities like a human being, with the right to have political influence. There is absolutely no reason in the world a corporation should have to put shareholder wealth over fair labor practices, none. It's just a law, and it can be changed. Multinational corporations are the problem, no question about it.

[CTLawGuy]

21. actually

BY LAW they are not allowed to donate to federal political candidates, under McCain Feingold.

[treestar]

25. They are only legal persons for lawsuit and tax purposes

It does not make them equal to people.

I set up so many corporations with one or two shareholders. They were running a family business. Nothing wrong with working for those "shareholders."

Large behemoths I can see being concerned about, but if they couldn't be sued because they weren't people, it could be much harder for say people they injure. Finding and serving the actual shareholders could get near to impossible.

[Peacetrain]

8. Thank you for all the answers.. still not sure I get what some are referring to

the term corporalist, is used willy nilly ..take it post by post I guess and try and figure out what they are talking about

[get the red out]

9. Probably because the term "Nazi" is considered jumping the shark

Where the President is concerned I see it as a way to lump him with Republicans. Of course you can't step into the Presidency and completely change the country's economic practices. I would like to see a gradual step away from the multi-national corporation choke hold on the world for sure, but it can't be done by one Presidential election. Of course it makes a good insult word when you can't get by with "Nazi" without looking like an idiot.

[divineorder]

24. And that's the problem-the haters want everything abolished

And America to become a socialist utopia overnight. Because Obama's a realist, and sets getting things done above reflexively hating on corporations, overturning the Security State immediately, and in short being a reasonable cenrist, he's a total sellout and should be primaried in 2012. Of course, anybody so radical would never even make it to the White House-Americans just aren't ready for that kind of change, especially after 30 years of Rush Limbaugh liberal-bashing.

There's the impulse to punish, to have Obama duke it out with corporations, with the financial system, with the previous Bush Presidency, and just about every other pole of power. Since when has that approach ever gotten real and lasting progress?

They also don't want to do the hard work of creating a populace that can elect people more to the left. The hard work means working on the media so that more progressive ideas don't get drowned out. That makes people more receptive The hard work means cultivating candidates at the city and county level who are more progressive so they can actually win elections as progressives.

This attitude is why the Republicans look forward eagerly to 2010-they want to do to Obama what they did to Clinton-hamstring his Presidency and make him unable to govern effectively from the left. And these people are helping them. And BTW, it led directly to Gore vs Bush. Katherine Harris wouldn't have even tried if there was a Democratic Congress in 2000 willing and able to uphold Gore's claim. Bush would have retired to Crawford and that would have been the last we would have heard of him.

[Cha]

10. From what I just saw

..it's a name thrown at Pres Obama for lack of something real.

[grantcart]

11. Corporatism is where

people who are dissatisfied with their current personal status in life and with the economic development of the country project all of the problems onto the private corporations and do this by typing furiously on keyboards made by corporations using corporate software on corporate made computers to corespond with other like minded pure individuals who communicate with each other by connecting the corporate made computers with corporate made cables that are attached to corporate cable companies that send their messages over microwave transmission stations made by corporations.

Before recent innovations by corporate entities made it possible we used to complain by mail.

[SeattleGirl]

12. LOL

Well said, grantcart!

[JeffR]

13. DUzy, if such a thing were still possible.

:thumbsup:

[grantcart]

18. good to see you around these parts

[JeffR]

19. Same to you.

There's very little left at DU that's still worthwhile, what with the red-faced, hair-on-fire, pantywaist, pseudo-progressive hamster-dancers busy laying waste to any attempt at civil discussion. Nice that there's a sinecure like this still to be found.

[Arkana]

14. Your post made me giggle.

[RoyGBiv]

15. This is the correct answer ...

I've been trying to think of an appropriate definition of "corporatism" for years. I think that just about nails it.

[Bobbie Jo]

16. LOL

Truth is always the funniest material. :rofl:

[Buzz Clik]

17. Hm. I've been told many times I'm a corporatist. At least it now has a definition.

[HughMoran]

22. That's it!!!!!

(Lucy does a backflip)

[CTLawGuy]

20. it's equivalent to "socialism" as used by the right

they don't really know what it means but they know it's bad.

[Cary]

23. The urge to generalize and oversimplify is understandable.

Isn't it? It's just much easier than sorting through and weighing the facts and trying to come up with something that makes sense and deals with the positives and the negatives. . .

This is why they are ideologues and not pragmatists. It's much easier to reduce the world to a few simple rules, the way objectivists do, instead of trying to think everything through and dealing with the mess of a coalition and concesus building. The problem is that while it may be easier it is also dysfunctional and anti-intellectual.