Corporatism and ideology in Portugal and Spain
Portuguese corporatist propaganda from the 1930s
© 1994 Stewart Lloyd-Jones. University of Glasgow
'The difficulty scholars have had with the ideology [of fascism] has led many to seek alternative non-ideological accounts of the character of the movement within the disciplines of psychology, economics and sociology ... This ... tendency is one way of ignoring the uncomfortable fact that a closer look at the ideas of fascism ... reveal[s] affinities and overlaps with more acceptable ideologies, like liberalism, conservatism, syndicalism and socialism ... This affinity should alert us to possible misinterpretation' (Andrew Vincent, Modern political ideologies, Oxford: Blackwell 1995, pp.170–1).
It is the assertion of this paper that Vincent's claim is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the many analyses of both inter- and post-war Iberian corporatism. It is a fact that there has been very little consensus — indeed, there has been a great deal of confusion — over whether the Iberian dictatorships of the 1920s and 1930s were in fact fascist at all, or at least fascist in any meaningful sense of the term. This academic disarray over the concept of fascism is compounded, at least in the Iberian context, by the apparent unwillingness of investigators to regard corporatism as an ideological construction in its own right, preferring instead to either consider it to be a mere reaction to the crises of accumulation which both nations suffered following the end of the Great War (1914–18) or as a reassertion of traditional social and political values. This is a political science failure which has persisted for more than four decades. As a result of this temporally resilient 'global preconception', the Iberian dictatorships have been subjected to rigorous investigations which have generally restricted themselves to structural and anthropological concerns. By thus limiting the extent of their analyses, most 'considered' explanations for the growth in popularity of corporatist solutions in both Spain and Portugal have tended to emphasise the structural responses (or, in Portugal's case, the lack of tangible responses) to the new economic situation brought about by mechanisation and industrialisation, e.g. the tri-partite, hierarchical, state controlled syndicates, or the supposed anthropological 'authoritarian tendencies' that are inherent within Ibero-Latin culture. My contention is that by attempting to explain Iberian corporatism in purely economic and structural, or 'pathological' and anthropological, terms previous investigators have ignored the important role of corporatism as a system of ideas, and have, therefore, only been able to provide us with partial insights into the phenomenon as it appeared in these polities.
Another cause for reviewing the nature of inter-war Iberian corporatism is the time that has passed since the Francoist and Salazarist models of state corporatism finally disintegrated under the weight of their own contradictions, and since their regimes were subjected to rigorous academic investigation. The years that have elapsed since then have been ones in which the world has experienced fundamental economic and socio-political change. Much more than the 1970s, let alone the 1920s and 1930s, it has been argued, we are living through a period shorn of the ideological certainties that typified the past. Perhaps now, in the bright light of our new pragmatically 'non-ideological' age, is the ideal time for a reappraisal and re-evaluation of the corporatist experiments as they unfolded in Spain during the 1920s and Portugal in the 1930s.
The dominant schools
The initial dichotomy between the structural and anthropological explanations for the emergence of the dictadura of General Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain, and António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo de Portugal are clearly expressed in the approaches adopted by the two principal protagonists: Phillipe C. Schmitter and Howard J. Wiarda.
Schmitter takes the (inevitable?) structuralist line, employing as he does a methodology which involves making a detailed examination of the nature of group formations and the consequent development of functional conflicts (as opposed to societal conflicts) within the political elites. He is led to conclude the emergence of the Portuguese Estado Novo, and by implication Primo's corporate state in Spain, was merely the response of the Portuguese (and Spanish) state — that is, the landed elite with the connivance of the comprador bourgeoisie — to the threats posed by modernisation and industrialisation that had created a newly proletarianised and increasingly mobilised urban working class. Although Schmitter prefers not to get involved in historical speculation, his analysis sits easily with those historians, such as Ben-Ami and Preston, who argue corporatism's emergence in inter-war Iberia was due more to the structural implications of the immediate post-war economic situation than it was a reflection of a pre-existent and coherent set of beliefs. As a result of this, it does not involve too much of a leap of the imagination to recognise the affinities between Schmitter's analysis and, one must contend, the ideological explanation for fascism that was developed by the left in the 1930s that asserted fascism was simply an expression of the continued domination of the masses by the few. This over-simplistic application of the early Marxist thesis highlights the basic weakness in both the left's reckoning of the inter-war dictatorships (and the general failure of their responses to them) and Schmitter's analysis of their genesis. By refusing to countenance the stark fact these dictatorships did, at least initially, enjoy quite large levels of popular support, the left ultimately failed to offer a satisfactory alternative capable of halting their rise. (Indeed, even in Spain, where a bitter and bloody conflict between the competing factions was played out, many have expressed the opinion Franco's Nationalists never won the war so much as the Republicans lost it.) Schmitter's explanation for the rise of the Iberian dictatorships, therefore, appears content to remain at a purely economic level, ignoring the more sophisticated critique of fascism, such as that supplied by Gramsci (later taken up by Linz in his examination of the nature of authoritarianism), that capitalist (or elite) domination is not simply achieved by coercion, but subtly through the hegemony of ideas and the domination of language, morality, culture and common sense.
Schmitter admits that his attempt at understanding is chiefly concerned with uncovering the motive behind the promotion of corporatism: why it happened, who caused it to happen and for what purpose — 'who needed it and who benefited from it?' (Schmitter, P. C., The regime d'exception that became the rule, Austen: University of Texas Press 1979, p. 4). However, by framing his question in such a closed manner, it is obvious that rather than attempt to demystify the processes of the corporatisation project, Schmitter makes it explicitly clear he is only concerned with the instrumental aspect of the exercise.
Despite this, however, Schmitter is faced with the historically factual reality that Portugal's structural problems were caused as much by the weakness of its political class as by the impending insolvency crisis, and identifies parallels between the First Republic and pre-Napoleon III France as described by Marx in his 18th Brumaire. The implicit contention in this is that the politicians of the liberal Portugal of the rotativismo (rotation) period (1910–26) lacked any coherent ideology beyond the naked desire to cling on to power at whatever cost. The essentially pragmatic and opportunistic nature of the rotativismo politicians made the development of a unified opposition difficult — indeed, according to this analysis what opposition did exist tended to be eclectic, heterogeneous, and conditional, with the sole goal of ejecting the current political elite. Thus, Schmitter finds it relatively painless to contend the leaders of the military coup that ended the First Republic were primarily concerned with restoring order while pursuing episodic successes that would sustain them in their attempts to achieve a solution to Portugal's structural problems. Their ultimate failure, Schmitter believes, was due to their reliance on the structures and agents of the republic they had overthrown — itself an implied admission of the existence of an ideological lacuna. If the military government had an ideological critique of the past and a programme for the future, he argues, it was ultimately expressed in the adoption by the inherited administrative machinery of the typically Portuguese resort to situacionismo (situationism) — without knowing what would please the new masters, the servants simply did their best not to displease them. Schmitter's implication being that to accept situacionismo (the rationalisation of pragmatic self-preservation) as an ideology would be akin to defining the latter term to fit the catch-all definition offered by Aron that ideology is 'all ideas or bodies of ideas accepted by individuals or peoples without regard to their origin or nature' (Aron, R. 'The diffusion of ideologies', Confluence 2 (1) 1953). One must agree with Schmitter's assumption that to conceptualise 'ideology' with such a degree of definitional vagueness would ultimately rob it of its 'value-free' status and lead to its functional diminution as it descends into the subjective quagmire that has swallowed up such conceptual labels as fascism and totalitarianism.
While Schmitter is unwilling to concede the Ditadura Militar (Military dictatorship) (1926–32) represented a significant break with the past, he is less cautious in his assessment of Salazar's Estado Novo (1932–68) that succeeded it. However, even here he is unwilling to concede Salazar's corporatist beliefs were formulated as an ideological response to a deteriorating structural situation. Through an investigation of the composition of Salazar's first government, he concludes the Estado Novo was little more than the reassertion of politico-economic pragmatism, albeit the controlled and guided pragmatism of a suffocatingly paternalist state. The almost explicit contention is that Salazar's involvement in the ditadura (in which he was finance minister between 1928 and 1932) precluded his ability to formulate a set of beliefs that could be transmitted to the masses prior to the onset of the experiment. If Loewenstein is correct when he claims 'it is the underlying political ideology that actually conditions the function and shapes the operation of the political institutions and techniques', then we are forced to conclude that, since Salazar's corporatist project was more concerned with the instrumentalities — the framework — of the new constitutional order of the New State, and knowing of his disdain for political idealists, his later justificatory statements were mere propaganda designed to enlist support for or acquiescence to his state. Furthermore, the simple fact that Salazar's ideas were themselves integral and creative parts of the historical forces that produced them means since they effectively put the cart before the horse they cannot themselves have constituted an ideology (Elliot, W. Y., 'Ideas and ideologies: Diffusion, seepage, or overflow? (A summary)', Confluence 2 (3) 1953).
If Salazar's corporatism was merely a post hoc and opportunistic attempt to imbue his structural plans with a degree of backwards legitimacy, rather than a coherent attempt to achieve a corporatist 'mentality', that is, a coherent and systematic world view, as structuralists like Schmitter seem to argue, what then do we make of the Spanish corporatist experiment begun by Primo de Rivera in 1925, following his victory over Abd El-Krim's rebels in the Moroccan Riff? Once again, the structural analysis — this time conducted by the historians Shlomo Ben-Ami and Paul Preston — lays stress on the opportunistic nature of Primo de Rivera's regime (1923–30). The basic contention is that Primo pronounced against the turno politicians of the constitutional monarchy for reasons that were very similar to those the Portuguese military were to use 2½ years later, viz, the need to eject the corrupt and inept politicians who were clinging on to office for no greater reason than their desire to retain power.
It is a matter of some debate whether or not Primo initially wished to affect any structural change at all as his early statements are punctuated by an apparent desire to see his intervention as a parenthesis in Spanish history, a time during which honest men could regain the initiative following his saneamiento (purging) of the political cupboard. The structuralist analysis concentrates on the ad hoc nature of Primo's government while at the same time playing down the significance of his statements proclaiming his desire to return to barracks as soon as possible. By arguing in this manner, structural analyses of Primo's dictatorship tend to place the General at the head of a conspiracy, thereby absolving the King Alfonso XIII and the constitutional monarchy's Cortes of much of the blame for the seven years 'parenthesis'. The constantly shifting alliances, such as the abandonment of the military juntas and their abandonista position in order to embrace the africanista line on Morocco, the courting and abandonment of the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie and the constant desire to include the socialist trade union federation, the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), in his plans are all highlighted as indicating a clear agenda — the structural alteration of the Spanish state in such a way as will protect the interests of the existing political elite. Hence the importance in absolving the king from much of the guilt for the pronunciamiento (pronouncement).
Just as in the Portuguese example, the structuralists argue Primo's project was instrumental in that he proposed to restructure the Spanish state, and non-ideological in the sense that the justifications for his corporatist proposals were essentially pragmatic in nature and propagandistic in intent. In both regimes, the ideas were developed to justify the implementation of pre-designed political institutions in order to ensure their acceptance by the masses. To emphasise this point, the structural analyses tend to investigate the role of the regimes' shirt movements with the purpose of highlighting their essentially demobilisational function. Both Primo's Unión Patriótica (Patriotic Union), and Salazar's União Nacional (National Union) were designed to control rather than to encourage mobilisation and to discourage people from engaging in activities that could bring them into contact with the state. These movements, the argument goes, were established as a means to ensure the dissemination of propaganda intended to procure for the regimes the necessary popular acquiescence to their structural proposals — even to the extent of disguising the ultimate beneficiaries of the state's restructuring.
In this form of analysis, therefore, it can be quite clearly seen that the regimes were, in essence, ad hoc, but even then only in an instrumental manner — the main goal being the execution of the structural transformation. Thus the structuralists strip the projects of any ideological content, save the minimal ideological commitment to the restructuring of the state. Within this limited commitment, moreover, the references to corporatism and organic democracy are dismissed as mere propaganda, basically a sop to the masses intended to disguise the reality of a strengthening of the power and position of the traditional political elites within their respective polities. The neglect of Salazar in failing to establish any corporations in his 'corporate' state until 1957, 24 years after the official establishment of the Estado Novo, and Primo's failure to extend the industrial Comités Paritários (tri-partite negotiating committees) into rural areas, the traditional elite's heartland, bear testimony to the fact there was never an ideological commitment to corporatism in either regime. Even where it could perhaps be argued that there was some sympathy towards the concept of corporatism, such as in Spain after 1928, it can be argued that, rather in the same way as Mussolini was to pursue pseudo-socialist goals in his short-lived Republic of Saló, this itself was evidence of Primo's opportunistic attempts to enlist popular support for his regime in compensation for the haemorrhaging away from him of many of previously supportive elite institutions.
A further consequence of the structuralists tendency to concentrate on the instrumentalities is the confusion over the precise nature of the regimes being investigated. By investigating the economic rather than the social role of the dictatorships, researchers like Schmitter and Ben-Ami inevitably discover the dictators were interested primarily in steering their respective national economies. Consequently, Schmitter comments on the Salazar government's assumption of direct control over all aspects of the Portuguese economy, while Ben-Ami notes Primo believed the government ought to take a leading role in directing the economic interests of the state in order to 'bolster up national production even at the expense of great collective sacrifices'. By rejecting any ideological motivations, the structuralists create an ultimately insurmountable problem for themselves insofar as they are forced to associate the empirical reality with some form of conceptual label. By denying corporatism is an ideology, Schmitter and his supporters are forced to seek comparisons with structurally similar contemporaneous regimes. Ultimately, they are forced either to further diminish the concept of fascism by distorting it in order to enable it to incorporate the Iberian dictatorships — a tendency that has led to a profusion of 'qualified' or 'conditional' fascisms, e.g. 'fascistoid', 'quasi-fascist', 'fascism from above', etc., etc. — or accept fascism has lost all functional utility as an empirical conceptualisation and seek to develop a new paradigm. While most structural analysts were content to pursue the former route, Schmitter was troubled enough by the significant differences between Salazarism and those regimes that had historically been considered 'fascist' to attempt a more intellectually-thorough investigation. However, even although he was prepared to accept Salazar's corporatist reality was fundamentally distinct from other generic fascisms, he remains wedded to the belief Portuguese corporatism was a developmental and modernising form of government that had emerged as a response to a succession of structural crises caused by the delayed-dependent nature of Portugal's economy. Essentially, Schmitter is reaffirming his belief that corporatism was a post hoc structural response to a structural crisis, a stance that still rejects the idea corporatism could be regarded as an ideology in its own right. Indeed, Schmitter's much-lauded ideal-type definition of corporatism is solely concerned with its institutional aspects:
Corporatism can be defined as a system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organised into a limited number of singular, non-competitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognised or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demand supports (Schmitter, P.C., Still the century of corporatism? London: Sage, 1979).
While Schmitter intended his definition to clarify the nature of corporatism as an intrinsically ideologically neutral series of structures, it has been challenged by friends and foes alike, to such an extent that Schmitter himself has been forced to move further and further away from it, stressing, with increasing vigour, that as an ideal-type conception it was never meant to represent anything more than an illustration. However, one must contend that by his own rapid retreat and ultimate abandonment of this 'pure' conceptualisation in favour of the new paradigm of neo-corporatism, Schmitter and his allies have done much to muddy the waters in the debate over the nature of corporatism in inter-war Iberia.
The second school of thought is that which explicitly rejects the idea corporatism is little more than a structural realignment of the state designed primarily to maintain the political and economic hegemony of the possessing classes. Adherents to this latter school, such as Howard Wiarda, prefer to adopt a more culturally-oriented approach by emphasising the role of tradition and culture in the emergence of the new structures. At first glance, such an approach would seem to be more open to the conceptualisation of corporatism as a contextually conditioned ideological response to both an ideological and a structural crisis within the state and civil society; however, detailed examination of the 'culturalist' thesis shows it too suffers from important weaknesses: weaknesses that are largely predicated upon its reliance on a reductionist interpretation and superficial analysis of Ibero-Latin cultural traditions.
Wiarda is scathing of the structuralists, rejecting their failure to recognise the importance of cultural traditions and traditional ideologies in the analysis of group-state relations and their almost categorical refusal to countenance the possibility there may be a symmetrical relationship between the structures and agents of socio-political change. He also condemns their willingness to judge Iberian society by comparing it with other superficially similar societies. 'Portuguese corporatism', he argues 'cannot be condemned ... on the basis of some outside and foreign model bearing little relation to Portuguese culture and history'. If one seeks to understand the relevance of corporatism to Iberian society, he contends, one must understand the historical development of that society. By so doing, one will readily recognise the threads that ran into the 19th century movements espousing ideas they claimed had a long and honourable provenance. Iberian corporatism, according to this thesis, is simply the 20th-century manifestation of both Portugal's and Spain's organicist Thomistic heritage, which was 'rediscovered' following the national humiliations handed down to Spain through the loss of its final colony, Cuba, to the US in 1898, and to Portugal when its plan to link up Angola and Mozambique — the famous Mapa Cor da Rosa — was beaten down owing to the conflict with British plans for the Cape town to Cairo railway.
The immediate result of these events was the growth in both countries of important regenerationist movements that openly called for a return to tradition — to the days of the Philippine Empire or the Age of Discovery. The corporatist structures that were nominally created during Primo's and Salazar's time in office could, according to Wiarda and his supporters, trace their heritage back directly to the regenerationist movements of the first decade of the 20th century, and from there back to the guilds and artisanal societies typical of early-modern Iberian society. Thus Carr (Spain, 1808–1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966) is able to contend Primo's Comités Paritários represented little more than the reintroduction of an industrial method that had a long tradition in Spanish labour relations, while Pinto can make allusion to the fact two of Salazar's most trusted aids, and the designers of the basic structures of the Estado Novo — Marcello Caetano and Teotonio Pereira — had Integralist backgrounds.
Nevertheless, one must contend that however attractive such explanations may be, they suffer from one basic weakness — they are assertions that have been made with the benefit of hindsight, or as Bendix would say, they are the product of retrospective determinism. It is perhaps significant that most 'culturalists' remain tight-lipped when it comes to explaining the initial pragmatic nature of both Primo's and Salazar's regimes. There is very little said about the promotion of ideas following the determination of the structures best suited to the respective nations. What little is said in this respect, for example Carr's attempted rationalisation of Primo's tendency to indecisiveness, or rather, his ability to hold conflicting opinions simultaneously by promulgating the official position, endorsed by the Unión Patriótica, that he had developed a new official ideology — intuicionismo con rectificación (rectifiable intuitionism), a sort of pragmatic mass appeasement — is far from satisfactory.
Although the historicist approach adopted by the culturalists may provide us with some valuable insights into the nature of the societies concerned, it must be asserted that in the final analysis they fail to deliver on their implied promise, and do not demonstrate any link between the empirical structures that were created and labelled by their creators as corporatist, and any pre-existent and historically coherent belief systems capable of generating sufficient popular support for the experiment. In the end, the culturalists, just as much as the structuralists, are left kicking the ground looking for explanations in the wrong places.
The dictators' self justification
It is undoubtedly true the labelling of Salazar's Portugal (and to a lesser extent Primo's Spain) corporatist owes a great deal to the ultimately successful propaganda both regimes employed as a means to obtain backwards legitimacy for their governments. One should not underestimate the importance of this undertaking for these dictators, particularly when one notes both men came to office by illegal means — both suspending then overturning the pre-existing constitutional settlement. The failure of, especially, the culturalists to sufficiently recognise this fact means they are more likely to take the pronouncements and statements of regime supporters and apologists at face value, and will seek examples of actions that can be cited as evidence supporting the apparent genuine nature of the men involved, even to the extent of claiming Primo used Spain's 1925 budget surplus to redeem the pawned sheets of Madrid's poor. Whether such an anecdote is true or factually-based is of little relevance; what is important is that by repeating it, and countless other similar stories, one is guilty first of distracting attention from an examination of the realities of life under the dictators, and second, of promoting and perpetuating the myth that Salazar and Primo were honest men with the best intentions. Such myths only serve to contribute to the notion there was some form of ideologically-motivated project towards the creation of classless and organically democratic, corporate states, in which rights are always contingent upon the fulfilment of one's obligations to society — the kind of double talk that neither lies nor tells the truth. Ultimately, although the structuralists come close to stating that most of the justifications promulgated for the corporatist structure were both opportunistic and propagandistic, they fail to pursue this implicit understanding to its conclusion. This is, I admit, a conscious decision on the part of the structuralists, who prefer to investigate the empirical reality and the consequences of that reality over the 'truths' and 'semi-truths' disseminated in order to sustain the system. The culturalists, while recognising there were some historical continuities between the actions and statements of the dictators and some elements of civil society, tend to exaggerate the significance of certain statements or actions, as well as rely heavily on anecdotal evidence, usually put out in the first place by the dictators' sympathisers, purporting to establish a link between the contemporary age and some 'Golden Age' linked to national achievements for which the people may be rightly proud.
Not so much a conclusion as some questions
There remains a vacuum which has to be filled. Were the corporatist systems in the Iberian peninsula ideologically motivated, or was the 'ideology' of corporatism merely developed as a post facto ploy to provide the quasi legal regimes with some semblance of legitimacy? If the former is true, then it must be possible to identify a movement, however small, that nonetheless understood itself to be imbued with a living and unifying belief. As Primo's son, José Antonio, founder of the Falange Española, said when speaking of his organisation: 'our movement will not be understood if it is though to be merely a way of thinking, it is a way of being'. The question must be asked 'Could — let alone did — such a movement exist' in either of the two nations? If the latter is true, then why did the dictators think making such an appeal would work to their advantage? If there was no popular demand for corporatism, then why did the regimes endeavour to create such a desire? If there was a demand for structural change along 'corporatist' lines, then we must ask ourselves where that demand was situated and who was calling for it. Furthermore, if there was a pre-existing demand for this change, could it not then be argued it was an ideological demand that the dictators used to their advantage, and if this is so, would we be guilty of attempting to maintain a purely semantic distinction between those who genuinely believed (like José Antonio's Falangistas) but who are not in a position to effect change, and those whose support was purely instrumental, but who were in a position to make a change?
The assertion made by the 'culturalists', that Latin cultures in general display signs of suffering from some form of state corporatist imperative — that is, an inherent corporatist ideology — means state corporatism, as supposedly found in Salazar's Estado Novo, would be an inevitable occurrence with or without Salazar. If this were true, we may conclude, as the structuralists appear to imply, the role of Salazar's (and Primo's) corporatist political ideology was subordinate to their appeals to tradition and implicit messianic posturing. However, if it can be argued Iberian corporatism was simply the structural response of the dominant elites to the development of the national economies, and as such showing no real differences from the experiences of earlier developing regimes, then one must contend an examination of the role of corporatist ideology in the establishment of the institutions will, paradoxically, become central to explaining the success of the Portuguese system and the failure of the Spanish.
Tags: corporatism, ideology, structuralism, structuralist, culturalism, culturalist, geneticism, phillipe c. schmitter, howard wiarda, political science
