Class collaboration
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Class collaboration is a principle of social organization based upon the belief that the division of society into a hierarchy of social classes is a positive and essential aspect of civilization.
Fascist support
Class collaboration is one of the main pillars of social architecture in fascism. In the words of Benito Mussolini, fascism "affirms the irremediable, fruitful, and beneficent inequality of men".[1] Given this premise, fascists conclude that the preservation of social hierarchy is in all of the classes' interests and therefore all classes should collaborate in its defense: the lower and the higher classes should accept their roles and perform their respective duties.
In fascist thought, the principle of class collaboration is combined with ultranationalism. The stability and the prosperity of the nation was seen as the ultimate purpose of collaboration between classes.
Class collaboration implies National Syndicalism as the preferred model for the economy. The state, having a non-class character, would mediate between employers and employees. Among other things, such mediation would entail disallowing strikes by employees and lockouts by employers; setting up state-run corporations/syndicates as the sole representatives of given industries; and allowing only state-run labor unions to represent employee interests.[2]
Communist opposition
The chief criticism communists wield against class collaboration is that it posits that the state alone can reconcile class antagonism in society and that the strife that gives rise to communism can be harmonized. For communists, the state is a tool used by the bourgeois class, meaning that the state will inevitably favor the employers over employees in class disputes.[3]
Some
Other cases
Modern social democracy (Third-Way) and one-nation conservatism also support class collaboration.[5]
See also
- Bourgeois nationalism
- Bourgeois socialism
- Burgfriedenspolitik
- Corporatism
- Labor aristocracy
- Nordic model
- Patriarchy
- Professional–managerial class
- Solidarism
- Volksgemeinschaft
- Welfare chauvinism
- Proprietary Corporation
References
- Enciclopedia Italiana. Rome: Istituto Giovanni Treccani. 1932.
- ISSN 0002-8762.
- ^ https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/lrlibrary/09-LRL-class-collab.pdf [bare URL PDF] How class collaboration works, Bertram D. Wolfem (1926)
- ^ V. I. Lenin (January 23, 1923). "How We Should Reorganise the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection".
- ^ R. J. Barry Jones, ed. (2002). Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy. Routledge.