By 2500, Indonesia was the last "nation state" on the planet. Corporatism was the dominant political and economic system throughout the world. Corporatism is generally believed to have sprung full blown from the crises of the 21st Century, like Venus sprang from the brow of Jove. That wasn’t the case. The process of the development of Corporatism was actually long and complex.
The rise of Corporatism began in the 19th Century, and was best represented in its development in the United States in the 20th Century. Corporatism is not limited to corporations founded to gather resources and make a profit for shareholders. It includes numerous nonprofit special interest groups as well, of private individuals contributing to corporations designed for the purpose of shifting public policy for such diverse interests as environmental preservation, labor rights, women’s reproductive rights, religious groups, and others too numerous to name. These various interests and factions used their money through campaign contributions to attempt to swing public policy to their interests, whether they were profit making organizations or not.
There is little doubt, though, that profit making corporations had the major influence on policy, mainly because they controlled more capital, and therefore power. Although gaining in power throughout the 20th Century, the corporations gained a significant boost in the era of the second Bush administration, when the Republican Party, the party allied principally with the corporations, controlled both the White House and the Congress. Although Congress had been yielding its Constitutional duty to the Executive branch for several decades, it gave up its authority at an unprecedented rate during the second Bush administration. In effect, the president became an elected king, and Congress was relegated to the role of a rubber stamp for whatever proposals he might make, without any special regard for Constitutionality or legality. This concentration of power produced the same weaknesses in political, social, and economic structure that had marked the old European monarchies.
Most historians agree that the apparently illegal seizure of power by the second Bush administration was done in good faith with the welfare of the nation at heart. This period was marked by an irrational fear of terrorists, who were believed to be hiding under every rock with nuclear weapons in hand. The administration asked Congress for, and received, essentially unchecked power to fight this largely illusory threat. A hysterical populace willingly surrendered its rights for a false security. Subsequent administrations continued to chip away at the separation of powers until the Executive branch finally became essentially autonomous and the country gradually slipped into a situation where it was completely controlled by the corporations.
The end of the nation states began with the Mexican migration into the United States at the beginning of the 21st Century. This migration was the second wave, the first having occurred a century earlier, when the American corporations induced Congress to allow what amounted to unlimited immigration in the early 20th Century. What had been an "Anglo" (basically British) culture encouraged Germans, Slavs, Italians, and Eastern Europeans to immigrate to the United States to fill jobs that were created by the rapid industrialization of the United States. On the west coast, Chinese immigrants were imported for building railroads, mining, and other day labor type tasks.
The mix of national origins caused by the earlier migration led to the nickname of "The Melting Pot" for the United States. The celebration of the American "melting pot" set the stage for the public to accept the illegal immigration from Mexico in the early 21st Century, and the failure of the American government (the second Bush administration) to enforce immigration laws resulted in the movement of tens of millions of Mexicans into the United States, especially the southwestern area, where they gradually took over the area that had been conquered by the US in the War With Mexico in 1849. This immigration was also a result of corporatism. The corporations favored the lower wages available from the poor immigrants, who were often willing to work for considerably less than the prevailing labor rate. The border between the United States and Mexico effectively ceased to exist, although it had never been very substantial.
Adding to this migration was the availability of easy visas, lobbied in Congress by the corporations, which allowed highly skilled technical personnel working for lower wages than American technical personnel to move in from India and other high poverty, but well educated, countries. This was also a period of "outsourcing", the practice of hiring companies in poor, lower labor rate countries such as India to perform work on computers that had previously been done by Americans. These combined processes were collectively known as "globalization", and were initiated by American corporations that had become multinational in scope and practice. These corporations no longer had any real allegiance to their mother country, the United States. All stakeholders in the corporations -- shareholders, employees, contractors, vendors, suppliers, communities, etc, were scattered across the globe. This "globalization" was the real birth of corporatism.
An additional destabilizing force was a historical debt level, both public and private, made possible by fiat money. There seemed to be no reason to not spend, when the government only had to print more money to keep the economy growing. That this "growth" was largely illusory, being based on the belief that "a little inflation is a good thing", never seemed to occur to the government, and certainly escaped the attention of the mass consumer. The effect was similar to a hamster running in a wheel in his cage. If he is capable of accelerating his wheel, it will eventually break. Likewise, the economy eventually broke. The economic disaster was global, as befitted a world in the throes of globalization.
In this scene of a destabilized political and economic system, the dominant Mexican population of the southwest United States combined with the Mexican population of the northern Mexican states in an attempt to form a new country that they called Aztlan, and attempted to secede from both the United States and Mexico. The population of the southwest US was certainly not exclusively Mexican, but was dominated by those of Mexican descent. Rabble rousing politicians seized on the instability to attempt to convince the population that secession was desirable.
This attempt at secession failed to produce a true civil war on either side of the border. Anglos living in the area, anxious to protect their property and their US citizenship, fought back so that there were no convenient "fronts" except on the city streets. Riots and gang wars became common. Government was helpless to control the situation. The advance of technology and its easy availability made it impossible for a government to win any war or put down any insurrection. The region of Aztlan quickly fell into a state of anarchy.
A similar situation was seen in Europe, where the European Union had eliminated borders between the individual countries. The free flow of labor across borders erased any real nationalism, and the importation of Muslim labor from the Middle East set up a condition very similar to that seen in the illegal immigration of Mexicans into the US. As the global economy collapsed, the Muslims, now a substantial fraction of the population, attempted to take over the governments of the European states, and join them with the governments of the Muslim Middle East. The result was chaos and anarchy, especially in France, which had an immigration policy even more liberal than the United States. No single European country was able to muster sufficient strength to restore order, and the various European states were too much under Muslim influence to make any significant cooperative effort.
American and multinational corporations, anxious to protect their property, took over the tasks of local government, much as the mining companies had provided the government in the mining camps of 19th Century America. They fielded their own armies and police forces and provided for the general welfare of the areas where they were dominant.
People ceased to be citizens of countries as such and became members of corporations. Corporations of various sizes and interests banded together in alliances and factions. The members of the corporations derived not only wages from the corporations but their welfare benefits, etc, that had previously been provided by government. The corporations conducted their own diplomacy based on contracts, both with each other and with the remaining governments of the world. Where contracts were broken, wars resulted.
Gradually, the governments of the world withered and disappeared. The corporations varied in their democracy or despotism. People shifted their allegiance based on employment opportunities and welfare benefits. When they moved from one corporation to another their allegiance moved with them. A corporate citizen in Dallas was just as much the same citizen in Paris.
The nation states did not just give up. The democracies continued to run elections as long as there was still someone willing to go to the trouble to vote. Totalitarian regimes continued for as long they could manage to control their territory. Initially, the governments attempted to regain control of the corporate areas, but they couldn’t compete with the corporations’ superior competence and they couldn’t even maintain their armies. Soldiers deserted and went over to the corporate entities for the better salaries and benefits. In time, the governments could not field armies at all. Token governments remained in place for decades after they ceased to exist as functional entities but they were more imaginary than real.
Corporatism wasn’t planned by anyone. Due to the unique combination of circumstances of the era it just happened, a natural evolution of democracy combined with advancing technology and the effect of fiat money.
