equitable and communal economic system within the boundaries of acapi-
talistsociety, and the co-operative movement rapidly became very popular,
rising from 15,000 members in 1851 to over 400,000 in 1875. A manufactur-
ing and wholesale division, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, was estab-
lished in 1864, and annual congresses of members followed soon after. In 1917
the Co-operative Congress agreed to organize as a political party and field
parliamentary candidates, although it quickly became very closely identified
with theLabour Party. Although both retail and wholesale divisions of the
Co-operative Union still exist, and are important commercially in some areas
of the country, it is no longer able to produce a financial incentive to
membership any greater than the general attraction of reduced prices in any
large supermarket, and has long ceased to have any general social or political
importance (although the Co-operative Party continues to sponsor Labour and
Co-operative candidates at elections in the United Kingdom).
The idea of co-operative organizations producing fairer prices by mutual
co-operation remains common everywhere in the world. Most US univer-
sities, for example, have large shops organized on such principles and where
profit is distributed as a dividend to members, and the wholesale distribution of
agricultural produce in both Italy and France is often handled by farmers’ co-
operatives. Any enterprise founded by a group of workers regarding themselves
as equal, whether as an original initiative or to take over a collapsed company, is
likely to be called a co-operative.
Corporatism
Corporatism has at least two distinct meanings. Historically it has designated a
form of social organization in which corporations, non-government bodies
with great authority over the lives and professional activities of their members,
have played an intermediary role between public and state. In origin this goes
back to the medieval pluralism in which the great trade guilds or corporations
controlled the activities of craftsmen and traders; at the height of their power
the guilds represented a third force in society along with the church and the
nobility.
Although the Industrial Revolution killed off this form of social organiza-
tion, it reappeared at the beginning of the 20th century as a theoretical concept
in the work of EmileDurkheim. It also found a political expression, more
fac ̧ade than reality, in the institutions offascismin the 1930s and 1940s.
Franco’scorporatist design for Spanish society was the longest lived and
perhaps most genuine, althoughMussolini’sItaly also had serious corporatist
elements. In its 20th-century version the theory suggested that people engaged
in a particular trade—employers as well as workers—had more in common
with one another than with people of the sameclassorstatuswho worked in
Corporatism