ABSTRACT
Corporatism is a concept that must overcome some historical burdens, among them its continuing association with fascism. The Italian, but also the Spanish and the Portuguese, variety of corporatism claimed to replace class war with class cooperation dictated and guaranteed by an authoritarian state. Social partnership was and is intended to moderate the main conflict of modern society: the conflict between business and labor, between employers and employees. All three models the pope had in mind—liberalism, socialism, and corporatism—were based on that conflict. From the very beginning of the Austrian brand of corporatism, of social partnership, Julius Raab expressed a clear creed: Employers must exercise self-restraint. The more the Austrian economy follows the pattern of the market, the less control political organizations will have over it. The ideological spectrum within both labor and business will become too broad to be handled with old corporatist methods.
