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Barkley, 
 
Corporatism was much more than the idea of harmony between classes, 
although it certainly advocated this harmony. It was concerned about the 
harmony between all groups in society. Moreover, when at the end of the 
19th century it became official Catholic ideology in pope Leo's manifesto 
Rerum Novarum, it stressed the distribution between wages and profits as 
much as the income distribution between small and large firms. 
 
In the Netherlands the influence of corporatistic ideas was always strong. 
The eye-catching result of Dutch corporatism is European agricultural 
policy. This policy was modelled in line was Dutch corporatistic practises. 
It all started with the idea that the agricultural firm should - for its 
indispensable place in society - be protected. The first measures were 
price regulations: indeed Pope Leo's just price (which he took over from 
Acquino without any idea of the economic consequences.) 
 
It does not matter in this respect, that the architect of European 
agricultural policy, Mansholt, was a Dutch social democrat. At the time - 
second half of the 20th century - the Catholic corporatistic ideas had more 
or less merged with the social democratic ideas of planning. 
 
When looking for 'types' of corporatism it is not sufficient to look at the 
Nazi countries, Austria and Sweden only. First it ought to be noticed that 
facsism in Italy was very different from facsims in Germany. Next. I 
suspect, that your focussing on Austria and Sweden depends on your outlook 
that corporatism is about the harmony between capitalists and labourers. 
 
By the way, I can't imagine how pope Leo's Rerum Novarum could have had any 
influence in Sweden. The pope certainly would not have liked the 
participation of women in the labour process. 
 
Dutch corporatism is, in my view, the institutional remnant of that prewar 
WW2, not those new wars) battle fought between advocates and adversaries of 
a liberal economy. 
 
The best start for the study of Dutch economic history is, of course, M. 
Wintle, 2000, An Econonomic and Social History of the Netherlands, 1800 - 
1920, CUP. Evert Schoorl and I wrote something about the peculiar agreement 
between social democrats and catholics, which resulted in te postwar (again 
WW2) Dutch economic order. (In M. Psalidopoulos, 2000, The Canon in the 
History of Economics, Routlege.) 
 
Henk Plasmeijer 
 
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