Ralph Bowen
German Theories of the Corporative State, with Special References to the Period, 1870-1919.
Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1947. First edition. viii/243 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately , is bound in gray cloth, with red lettering to spine and front cover. Book shows very light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Previous owner's name is discreetly written on front flyleaf. Lightly age-toned pages are clean and without markings. Price-clipped dust jacket displays wear, with minor loss, at edges, and sunning to spine panel. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"The establishment, during the past twenty years, of anti-democratic regimes in Italy, in Germany, in Portugal, Spain and other countries, was accomplished in each case by official professions of faith in "corporative" ideas and institutions. In Germany, National Socialist promises to institute a "corporative state" attracted the support of many intellectuals, employers, and workers. In "German Theories of the Corporative State," Dr. Brown traces the development of the principal types of corporatist doctrine in Germany, including the contributions of the early theorists such as Fichte, Hegel, von Gerlach and Gierke.
"Corporatism" is the attempt to solve the problem of social conflict through self-governing vocational groups composed of professional or vocational workers and employers. Corporative ideas and institutions arose as a nationalist school of thought opposed to the libertarianism left in the wake of the French Revolution. The principal emphasis in this book is on the theories developed and propagated after Germany had become a modern industrial nation with sharpening economic, social, and political conflicts. Bismarck was the foremost practitioner of authoritarian corporatism oriented strongly towards Protestant, traditionalist and nationalist groups; Bishop von Ketteler founded Catholic corporatism; while cartel corporatism arose as the joint creation of Walter Rathenau and Richard von Moellendorff.
Dr. Bowen's study, the first in the field, is of interest to leaders of industry and labor, economists and sociologists, and all those concerned with the development of contemporary ideologies."