Corporatism: FDR's 'Right Path,' is Alive and Well!
And, sure enough President Barack Obama's overall Budget will generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the Government sector, people who will be grateful voters in the next election. Here is the Washington Post's piece on that: I'll bet readers thought the opening quote above was perhaps by our President Barack Obama, an admitted admirer of the New Deal.
Actually, it was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, in 1933, speaking admiringly of the New Deal as the way for National Socialism to follow. In the economic realm, Hitler's chief Economic Minister was Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, a Corporatist to the core.
Schacht's reformist parents had spent time in America, and were great admirers of Greeley, the journalist who coined the phrase"Go West, young man!"
Today, Corporatism in its many variants, is in the saddle in virtually every major nation on the planet, not only the US and Europe, but Russia, China and India as well. One can observe how easily these ideas spread, often only associated with Mussolini's Italy or Peron's Argentina, by exploring the American occupation of Japan after WWII. Corporatist New Dealers on Gen. MacArthur's Staff did not want to deal with Japanese businessmen, who were viewed as having cooperated with the Military, although this had often been done at the barrel of a gun. Some New Dealers suggested hiring the recently"unemployed" bureaucrats who had been running the puppet-state, Manchukuo, since 1931, and who were then placed in the Finance Ministry, where they have greatly influenced policy ever since.
That Corporatism was already greatly expanding during WWII, and did not need to wait for President Eisenhower's warning about the dangers of a"military-industrial complex" in 1961 at the height of the Cold War. For early accounts of this, see, among others, Robert A. Brady, Business as a System of Power (1943) and Bruce Catton, TheWarlords of Washington (1948). Mr. Catton soon learned he had better stick to writing about the American Civil War, a much safer and more financially rewarding subject!
Corporatism is now deeply embedded in the whole fabric. I rather doubt it could be rooted out, even if our political leaders wished to do so, which is hardly the case, with the legion of lobbyists still on the increase.
As our own Federal and other levels of Government hire these new legions of bureaucrats as predicted by economists in the article above as a major aspect of the President's overall Economic Plan, one can be sure their views on the"virtues of Corporatism" will be a major factor in whether they receive a job or not.