"Corporatism" is the Latest Hysterical Right-Wing Accusation

The secret history of a smear

by Mike Konczal | December 15, 2013

Right-wing critics have a new favorite word to malign President Obama’s economic policies: corporatism. Naturally, it’s an ugly word. Whether it evokes Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy or just an image of the rich growing richer through government collusion, it’s a vision nobody would defend. Nobody is for corporatism.

Starting with Tim Carney’s 2009 book Obamanomics the idea that Obama is either consciously or accidently enriching the well-off has become a conservative meme. The right-wing blogosphere uses it, as does conservative intellectual heavyweights like Yuval Levin. Thus liberal readers were surprised the other week to learn that the contraception mandate in health-care reform was “corporatist.” Likewise, it may have been news to you that the Dodd-Frank financial reform overhaul—the one Wall Street is perpetually fighting against—is a corporatist sop to the big banks. The Federal Reserve’s efforts to move the economy closer to something like full employment? Yet more corporatism. Ditto both the stimulus and cap-and-trade.