Corporativism in Europe

Banal statements are not always useless. We may therefore recall that the master artisan combines in his person the factors of production: capital and labor. The shop management and the business transactions (purchase of raw material and sale of products) were so limited that he could also do manual labor. He therefore differed so little from the journeyman, who had always the chance of becoming master, and from the apprentice, who himself was a future journeyman, that a community spirit reigned among them. When we leave the handicraft economics of the Middle Ages to study modern industry, we face a dissociation of the factors of production: the functions of capital and labor are rested in distinct economic subjects and labor is divided into the specializations that we have mentioned above. The trades are many within each enterprise and the workers are hired after offering their services to the owners' representatives: hence, the phenomenon of an exchange of service for wages, which is its price. In capitalism, the factors of production meet in a market, and are united by a contract. We had to recall these obvious facts concerning the labor market, and the labor contract, because European corporativism challenges these fundamental ideas.