I personally blame both.
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Em. I hate to be contrary, but a corporation in Corporatism really does come from corporazione, the Italian word for medieval guilds, not the American sense of a modern business.
Fascist Italy’s corporazioni were various trade guilds like the Wood Guild, Clothing Guild, Construction Guild, etc. that were made up of workers and employers and were responsible for determining labor contracts for their field. A representative of the trade guild would get a seat in parliament… well in theory. In practice the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations was controlled by Mussolini and he outlawed anyone who might challenge him.
After the fall of Fascism, the term “corporatism” fell out of favor, but the idea continued on. Social Corporatism, for instance, is at the heart of the Nordic system.
Unfortunately, the term is misused by some to refer to corporatocracy and the quote to associate it with Fascism.
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I know. I would joke around with the ignorant leftist’s misunderstanding that Mussolini’s corporatism was all about supporting American-style for-profit companies instead of voluntary associations like the guilds you mentioned. These were seen as power blocs to be manipulated or banned as political expediency demanded.
The reality as far as for-profit companies in relation to fascism exists but in a different way. Conservative capitalists do see fascists as their guard labour and defenders of the “free” market – foolishly and repeatedly, since fascists have shown themselves to be economic neo-feudalists at heart who consider themselves as the natural owners of industry.
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How to become a Nazi, in the dumbest possible way.
Start as a republican. Define yourself as a conservative,
Demonize liberalism, the ideology of your political adversary.
Discover Carl Schmitt.
Read his critiques of liberalism.
Discover that he was a Nazi
Do likewise.
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That Schmitt completely escaped justice after the war is one of the few complete failures of the Nuremberg tribunals. As an influential legal theorist, he was as if not more culpable than most of the judges who received prison sentences and certainly more unrepentant than some of them. Via neoCon creeps like Strauss and Gonzales and Yoo, one can draw a direct line between him and the conservative American legal theorists trying to justify MAGAt fascism today.
That said, there are a lot more dumb ways for people to become Nazis. I doubt most of the current crop of arseholes even in Germany, let alone America, know who Schmitt is.
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I’m a capitalist (I own capital) as well as a believer in capitalism, albeit the modern regulated market variety with a healthy welfare state rather than theoretical free market kind, and I certainly don’t see fascists as anything but harmful.
There certainly are those who think they can manipulate fascists into supporting economic policies they like, but that’s an incredibly dangerous game being played by short-sighted fools. I mean, ffs, Trump managed to push Mercantalist policies despite his babysitters. I shudder to think what someone far more competent could do.
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What this discussion points to is that a lot of individuals s across the political spectrum have profound misunderstandings about what fascism is
A conservative American capitalist can view fascists as easily controlled enforcers, despite historical evidence that the attitude will backfire on them in one form or another.
A so-called “political independent” In the U.S. will take the presence of fasces on the walls of Congress as evidence that the U.S. has and has a fascist system, and therefore both duopoly parties are fascist. Where someone with actual knowledge of the republic’s history would understand why they were really there.
And a poorly educated American leftist who misinterprets the meaning of the term “corporatism” might conclude that fascism is primarily a problem of corporate elites pulling the strings, and ignore the bigotry against the Other that always undergirds right-wing populism.
In past years I could use such varieties of ignorance as fodder for jokes about those who so confidently displayed their complete lack of knowledge. However, as I noted above, times has changed and since 2015 (if not earlier) the dangers posed by them are no longer a laughing matter.
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… oh good, a completely unnecessary argument about a fake quote even though everybody here knows better 
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It’s rather amazing how many books and sites it has made it into, sometimes complete with fake citations. There are nearly two decade old Wikipedia arguments about it.
Sometimes I wonder how fake quotes like that come about. Is it intentional or someone misremembering something? I wonder how would one go about introducing a fake quote…
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