IndieAgora

The modern dilemma of political economy is how societies can move beyond liberal market structures and representative electoral democracy without collapsing into authoritarian domination. The decline of trust in parliamentarism, political parties and the volatility of financialised capitalism tempts elites toward technocracy and citizens toward populist revolt. The challenge is whether institutional transformation can occur without replicating the abuses often associated with state corporatism or centralised command regimes. The question is not novel—Philippe Schmitter famously asked whether the twentieth century remained “the century of corporatism” (Schmitter 1974, p. 85). Yet renewed interest arises because liberal democracies are increasingly unable to resolve distributive conflict, manage social pluralism or legitimate complex governance decisions. Scholars like Cardoso and Mendonça observe that corporatism continues to matter because it reflects enduring questions about interest representation and political mediation (Cardoso & Mendonça 2012, p. 1). The issue has resurfaced under the language of varieties of capitalism, the Third Way and social partnership—but the theoretical tensions remain. The path out of liberal markets must negotiate both the economic problem of redistribution and the normative problem of legitimacy in plural societies.

Liberal markets promised prosperity through competition, decentralised coordination and impersonal exchange. Adam Smith opened The Wealth of Nations with the claim that labour productivity and the allocation of capital determined national opulence (Smith 1776, p. 8). Yet Smith also noted that political preferences and state support shape how capital is distributed and how sectors rise or decline (Smith 1776, pp. 9–10). Later political economists built on these insights to show that market expansion creates inequality, produces volatile cycles and demands public authority to stabilise outcomes. Liberal democracy, for its part, became the institutional counterpart to capitalism: competitive parties, individual voting and constitutionalism provided conflict resolution. However, this normative promise rests on an idealised conception of citizens as rational, informed and able to translate private concerns into public decision-making. In reality, the burden that liberal democracy places upon voters has become a profound flaw.

Jeremy Waldron argues that liberal constitutionalism assumes disagreement but often struggles to resolve fundamental conflict over justice, rights and authority (Waldron 2002, pp. 5–6). The settlement of rights through judicial or elite-driven constitutional interpretation produces alienation when citizens feel excluded from deliberation, but liberal electoralism offers no genuine remedy. Herein lies the strain: liberal democracy retains the outward appearance of popular sovereignty, yet the decisions that most affect citizens’ lives are insulated from electoral input and reside in private lobbies, courts, central banks, global markets or bureaucratic agencies. Despite this, citizens are told they are ultimately responsible for policies and outcomes that they neither designed nor understand. Voting becomes a ritualised act of attribution and blame rather than meaningful participation.

Critiques of democracy such as those of Alain de Benoist target precisely this structure. For Benoist, modern democracy becomes increasingly hollow as representation replaces participation. In The Problem of Democracy, he argues that representation destroys the very idea of popular sovereignty by transferring the decision-making power of the people to professional political classes who do not embody the constituents they claim to serve (de Benoist 2011). Benoist therefore identifies representation as democracy’s founding contradiction: sovereignty cannot genuinely exist where those supposedly exercising it never deliberate or govern directly. Rather than being “government by the people”, liberal democracy is government over the people in their name.

Bob Black expands this critique in Debunking Democracy, observing that democracy has been “glorified but never justified”, and that the mass veneration of democracy obscures its conceptual emptiness (Black 2011, p. 3). He notes that representative democracy survives “more from apathy and force of habit than from genuine conviction” and that the act of voting does not confer agency because losing voters “had no influence on that decision” (Black 2011, pp. 3–5). The assumption that majority rule is inherently just becomes a political superstition; the ballot box allocates obedience, not authority.

Benoist’s critique is deeper still. Representation presumes citizens can be aggregated into homogenous units whose interests are known and transferable. The vote substitutes a counted preference for lived experience, and the representative substitutes a professional cast for organic leadership. Representation functions, he argues, as a depoliticising and deracinating technology that produces depoliticised “masses” rather than politically engaged communities. Citizens become spectators to a system that asks them to consent but forbids them to act. What results is a false universality: the citizen as abstract unit rather than embodied being embedded in locality, profession, culture or community. The supposed equality of representation masks profound inequalities in influence, meaning and capacity. Democracy’s promise of civic power thus becomes a fiction masking political alienation.

It is crucial to weave these critiques into the economic argument. Liberal markets and liberal democracy share the same structural flaw: they presume that citizens bear responsibility for outcomes while denying them real participation and voice. Liberal economics promises prosperity but subjects workers to market forces beyond their control; liberal politics promises sovereignty but confines ordinary people to episodic voting that rarely affects policy trajectories. When policies fail, voters are blamed for choosing poorly—democracy turns into a technocratic morality tale instead of a mode of governance.

The weight of this burden distorts political rationality. Benoist points to voter fatigue, instrumental cynicism and apathy as symptoms of democratic exhaustion. Voting becomes either expressive or resigned rather than deliberative. Bob Black catalogues the inherent irrationality of electoral majoritarianism: majority rule is neither epistemically reliable nor normatively fair, and the disenfranchisement embedded in electoral systems means that democracy rarely governs by actual majority will (Black 2011, pp. 6–8). The paradox is acute: liberal democracies continuously lecture their citizens on civic responsibility while undermining the very capacities needed for informed agency. A system that expects an electorate to comprehend complex fiscal and regulatory issues through advertising campaigns and partisan heuristics is structurally incapable of generating legitimacy. The idea that a citizen has failed when outcomes are poor is quite literally “bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people”, as Wilde famously remarked.

Thus, both liberal markets and liberal democracy face crises of legitimacy—not merely inefficiency. This crisis reopens debates about institutional alternatives. One route beyond liberalism historically was corporatism, but as Morck and Yeung show, its early iterations fell into hierarchy, clerical authoritarianism and economic cartelisation (Morck & Yeung 2010, pp. 2–4). The Catholic variants of the 1930s institutionalised social bodies but subordinated them to elite power, producing stagnation, collusion and suppression of dissent. This dark history tempts some to reject corporatism entirely. Yet this would overlook the other corporatist trajectory: negotiated social partnership in Scandinavia, Austria and parts of Western Europe in the post-war period. As Molina and Rhodes show, even after neoliberal critiques declared corporatism dead, it persisted in new forms because it provided a framework for bargaining, coordination and economic stability (Molina & Rhodes 2002, pp. 305–306). The problem, then, is not corporatism as such but which institutional design prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

To avoid tyranny, a non-liberal transition must incorporate pluralism, transparency and contestation. Schmitter’s foundational contribution was to define corporatism as a distinct system of interest intermediation where organised groups participate in governance (Schmitter 1974, p. 86). But subsequent scholars like Streeck observed that the European Union’s attempt to scale corporatist bargaining to supranational levels failed because legitimacy mechanisms were missing and plural interests were not firmly institutionalised (Streeck 1991, p. 2). Thus, corporatist governance cannot be erected by decree; it must evolve from organised social actors who retain autonomy from the state. The corporatist “ghost” Morck and Yeung critique resulted precisely from state imposition rather than negotiated emergent representation (Morck & Yeung 2010, pp. 2–3).

A turn away from liberal democracy thus implies neither technocracy nor authoritarianism but institutional redesign aimed at widening participation beyond the vote. Bob Black’s critique suggests that meaningful governance must displace the fetish of electoral representation and replace it with processes where affected constituencies exercise deliberative influence over decisions that shape their lives. Benoist’s emphasis on plural identities and rooted communities implies that politics must be articulated at levels where people can participate as members of associations rather than atomised individuals. Coleman’s discussion of intercultural representation reinforces this: conflict emerges when difference is weaponised, and post-liberal governance must protect cultural difference rather than assume homogenised citizenship (Coleman 2021, pp. 3–4).

The conceptual key lies in political exchange. Molina and Rhodes argue that corporatism succeeds when bargaining processes generate mutual benefits, not when it is reduced to structural institutional form alone (Molina & Rhodes 2002, p. 306). Cardoso and Mendonça similarly trace the endurance of corporatist study to its ability to connect theory with empirical negotiation over policies (Cardoso & Mendonça 2012, p. 2). Thus, the transition beyond liberalism without tyranny requires deepening negotiated democracy, not suppressing conflict. Negotiation replaces ideological ritual; deliberation replaces electoral spectacle.

A further barrier arises: plural societies generate disagreement not only over economic distribution but over identity, belonging and recognition. Liberal democracy fails here too. Its universalist civic model assumes that all identities can be translated into general interests through voting, but as Waldron notes, disagreement over rights and justice cannot be resolved merely through voting rules (Waldron 2002, p. 6). Benoist therefore critiques democracy as a metaphysical illusion that obscures substantive pluralism. Citizens do not vote as universal agents but as embedded beings, and their concerns cannot be mediated through aggregated preferences alone. Therefore, a post-liberal system cannot merely institutionalise functional groups—it must institutionalise cultural difference and protect diversity.

To avoid tyranny, four transformations are required. First, representation must shift from individual atomised citizenship toward functional representation of professions, communities and civic institutions, but without collapsing into monopoly. Schmitter insisted that corporatism becomes authoritarian when representation is monopolised from above (Schmitter 1974, p. 89). Instead, autonomous associations must retain internal democracy and contestability. Grant’s analysis of group politics in Britain shows how corporatist decline led to fragmentation into single-issue lobbies, which overload governance and obscure deliberation (Grant 2008, p. 2). Rebuilding aggregated associational bodies therefore revives the mediating institutions that liberal democracy atrophied.

Second, the economic transition must be guided by negotiated social planning rather than central command or unregulated markets. Adam Smith already identified the importance of state guidance, noting how policy favoured towns over agriculture and shaped capital flows (Smith 1776, pp. 9–10). Modern corporatism institutionalised this through social pacts, wage bargaining and selective industrial strategy. Molina and Rhodes emphasise that corporate ordering is not static; it evolves to match economic pressures, incorporating new actors in new contexts (Molina & Rhodes 2002, p. 306). This flexibility is crucial: post-liberal governance must retain responsiveness to shocks without reverting to authoritarian hierarchy.

Third, the normative settlement of rights must be democratised beyond courts and parliaments. Waldron’s insistence that disagreement over rights is inevitable highlights a potential danger: alternative governance models may suppress disagreement in the name of unity (Waldron 2002, p. 6). To avoid tyranny, a corporatist or intercultural system must institutionalise deliberative conflict through referenda, assemblies and pluralist arbitration. Streeck’s observation that European corporatism floundered due to lack of public contestation at supranational levels reinforces this argument (Streeck 1991, p. 2).

Finally, cultural pluralism must not be erased by institutional unity. Coleman’s argument that literature fosters empathy suggests that post-liberal governance must cultivate symbolic and narrative inclusion, not merely technocratic arrangement (Coleman 2021, pp. 3–4). Corporatism’s authoritarian variants banned dissent, marginalised minorities and elevated a singular identity. A non-tyrannical transition requires both structured participation and recognition of difference.

The practical architecture that avoids tyranny looks like this: social councils constituted by organised, autonomous interest bodies; binding negotiation between labour, employers, civic associations and state actors; referenda or deliberative assemblies to ratify major settlements; decentralisation of authority according to subsidiarity; and strong constitutional protections for plural identity. The state becomes an arbiter and coordinator, not a monopolist of representation. As Cardoso and Mendonça observe, corporatism’s continued relevance lies in its capacity to mediate conflicting interests through institutional development (Cardoso & Mendonça 2012, p. 2).

Seen in this light, the limits of liberal democracy become a catalyst for transformation rather than nostalgia for an eroding ideal. Liberal systems are eroding under pressures of globalisation, information asymmetry and increasingly complex governance problems. The electoral citizen, overwhelmed by misinformation and excluded from policymaking, becomes both scapegoat and spectator. Benoist’s observation that democracy functions as political religion explains why liberal elites cling to its symbols even as its substance evaporates. Bob Black’s critique underscores that voting is structurally incapable of providing legitimacy when voters are powerless losers as often as winners (Black 2011, p. 4). The crisis of democracy is deeper than turnout or trust—it is epistemic and structural.

The alternative is visible in neoliberalism: fragmented interest politics (Grant 2008, p. 2), weakened sovereignty (Streeck 1991, p. 2) and financialised inequality (Morck & Yeung 2010, pp. 3–4). Liberal democracy no longer mediates conflict effectively, and liberal markets intensify insecurity rather than stability. The transition beyond both therefore demands institutional imagination: binding negotiation, plural representation, intercultural recognition and societal safeguards against executive overreach.

The path beyond liberal markets and liberal electoralism is neither technocracy nor populism but negotiated democracy. The early corporatists misidentified unity with hierarchy, whereas modern corporatists emphasise exchange and pluralism. The lesson is clear: corporatism becomes tyrannical only when monopolised; it becomes democratic when deliberative. The transition to such a model demands cultural humility, institutional patience and the political will to admit that neither market nor vote alone can ground legitimacy in fragmented societies.


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References

Black, B. (2011). Debunking Democracy. Self-published.

Cardoso, J. & Mendonça, P. (2012). Corporatism and Beyond: An Assessment of Recent Literature. Institute of Social Sciences Working Paper.

Coleman, N. (2021). The Right to Difference: Interculturality and Human Rights in Contemporary German Literature. University of Michigan Press.

de Benoist, A. (2011). The Problem of Democracy. Arktos.

Grant, W. (2008). ‘The Changing Patterns of Group Politics in Britain’. British Politics, 3, pp. 204–222.

Molina, O. & Rhodes, M. (2002). ‘Corporatism: The Past, Present, and Future of a Concept’. Annual Review of Political Science, 5, pp. 305–331.

Morck, R. & Yeung, B. (2010). ‘Corporatism and the Ghost of the Third Way’, Capitalism and Society, 5(3).

Schmitter, P. (1974). ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, The Review of Politics, 36(1), pp. 85–131.

Smith, A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: W. Strahan & T. Cadell.

Streeck, W. (1991). From National Corporatism to Transnational Pluralism: European Interest Politics and the Single Market. University of Wisconsin–Madison Working Paper.

Waldron, J. (2002). ‘Introduction: Disagreements on Justice and Rights’. New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy, 6, pp. 5–14.

Very nicely compiled and informative.

I'll give a more raw interpretation of why I think things aren't working and are unlikely to be resolved by what is mentioned above since it didn't make mention of these issues too clearly.

We have no example of the ideal successively in action so far. What happens, though it looks different, has been the same. The predatory people take advantage, brutally, of whoever and whatever they can, because they can, and they make sure that consequences are minimal for the safety of theor kind. When competition is spoken of, it is mainly those types really competing and winning through nasty tactics others might not be willing to do.

Governments are corp-rupt at this point, they are fully corrupted by corporations, are corporate agents, they do not represent anyone but themselves and others of the wealthy class. Their job is to maximimize exploitation and to make the r*pe more lubricated so that the friction isn't so much that it can't occur or continue. The job of the people in general is to suck it and get brutally f*cked and m*rdered. This is long how it has been and is possibly becoming worse than ever before, as there are becoming no physical spaces to escape to in order to face mostly friendly, decent, and comparitovely restrained wolves rather than rapacious richies.

This will never end without all those things that are repeatedly promoted as evil, by those Frankenf*cks who fear it like fire, but likewise had and would again manipulate their ways to game things against the general populace that they primarily prey upon.

What is missing are, in my opinion, good intentions, what I'd call Godliness or Goodliness, but mere Goodliness might not cut it, and people have been told to disdain any mention of God because of the so-called God and Gods of evildoers, like the one found in the Bible and what myths are emphasized to highlight the obscene and unjust.

The government, if it is to exist at all, has to function as purely noble in intentions, favoring the general populace, who are not put into castes or classes, and it should only be around for regulating things to maximize the safety, prosperity, and pleasure, the quality of life and the length of time it is enjoyed through all various stages and conditions with no advantages given to any group and no excesses given to certain others like disabled people, only that they are brought to a near equally high standard or the norm which should be targeted towards an ideal height of absolutely no incidents and everything quickly covered and cared for. That is not at all how things function or how the people who go into policy making seem to think at all, and those who might may even be pushed out or locked out in various ways because of their unwillingness and inability to "play the game" made necessary by the predators wanting to screen and filter only their own sorts of sh*ts that they can control and coerce into cooperation through bribery and dirt collected due to the vice filled people they purposefully allow into their circles since they can never be in a position to do much damage to any of the others in the criminal cabal.

Jail isn't enough for these types of Mafiosa, as they can still operate and function almost as well as they do even behind bars, so it is necessary that their ability to communicate, which is how they influence things, and which they can even do by existing, even having existed, even having died peacefully after some record, real or not, is left of theor deeds, remains to reach anyone else. What is required then is that they not only don't exist anywhere, but if there is any record of them, all that remains is a clear explanation, real or not, of how the only actions they ever took were terrible and why they were terrible, so that no one would dare to follow in their footsteps, and that following in their footsteps would lead to a similar fate, total deletion or the only remarks remaining in reference to such being disparaging, a complete defacing and permanent defamation, and no possibility for a re-assessment, though seeing how even so many most likely vile people find a group of malcontents to glorify them in contrarian bravado, it might be better that even the lessons that could be learned from stories told of devils be deleted too, so that there is no stone at all for the predatory sado-slobbering "cucks" to pour blood on.

The government can not provide benefit to any organized group like a corporation, the government can not be so easily infiltrated by corporate agents working on behalf of such groups, the people put in government positions should be like a jury at best, unwilling and random, they aren't there for any reason and can not make any good of it, they can not profit, their families can not profit, the only way they can make any good of the role for themselves and their families and friends is by benefitting all people, and so their lives have to be like all people and will be returned to that, nor should they be seperated out from the regular life and standards of all people, which they should want to improve, that theor only job is to maintain and otherwise only improve things for everyone, and thus themselves. If the system is not forcefully built and made in such a way to maintain that, it will fall to the ceaseless attempts of the predatory people, who will also be working to undermine and corrupt even the most tightly locked system forced into compliance towards an ideal of noble universal beneficence towards a single class of all human beings, with the penalty of being discovered as predatory somehow being evisceration. Everything should be designed to make harming and gaming things in favor or particular groups at the expense of others as impossible as it can be, and the consequences extremely severe for even trying to push things in the direction of exploitation, to reduce those who dare. The people can have representatives or can represent themselves and every single detail can be discussed, and the prople should not be made so busy or put in compromised situations which force their decisions, nor should there be allowed any kind of total freedom for policies to come through or be allowed to be voted upon if they can be demonstrated to be unfair and causing problems for people, such as slavery becoming legal or a certain class, group, or profession having vast and dangerous power or authority or hording weapons that they can threaten and bully people with.

We are utterly far from anything like this without a plague or a purge that would somehow get rid of the groups that would never want any such a thing to exist anywhere, even destroying every hint of it in any version it may show up in, like even disrupting small groups functioning well.

In my superstitious view, and among my superstitious views is the notion of the importance and usefulness of some superstition, this has a spiritual dimension and these predatory people are what I use the term Godless for, but with a meaning that can include people who claim to believe in God or Gods, as claiming such may mean little overall towards who is aligned towards truly goodness and evilness, but the evil ones are the least afraid seeming of being in the wrong or facing any sort of consequences for what they do and how they harm others. The good are the spiritual foes and perpetual enemies of the evil, and each hates the other almost automatically and even before knowing the reasons to. The evil are the rude, belligerent, inconsiderate people who are against things being happy, smooth, and peaceful for everyone, they disrupt and corrupt and twist right into wrong and wrong into right, and they are always seen withholding good and getting in the way of it and being a constant thorn and irritation and obstruction, demanding stupid and unecessary things, they are pests in their initial form and become monstrous control freaks getting in the way of everyone and everything in their power-tripping form, and really the only way to stop them, because it is some kind of a rot and disease that is sermingly incurable, is that they be laid to rest.

Now there are groups who would disagree with who are the evil ones and who are not, and there may be two opposed to each other thinking that they are both on the side of good.

Some of these things come up in modern debates from the U.S.A. and Europe, which appear to be at a height of tremendous stupidity and obnoxiousness, like the issue of, oh now something is falling here in my space-free apartment.