Corporatist state structures preserve rather than transform existing class order

Evidence

In reality the corporative trend has operated to shore up crumbling positions of the middle classes and not to eliminate them, and is becoming, because of the vested interests that arise from the old foundations, more and more a machinery to preserve the existing order just as it is rather than a propulsive force. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1092

Categorization

• XREF: Core Gramsci-adjacent mechanism: how putatively reformist institutional forms function conservatively — directly parallels later arguments about how liberal multicultural or anti-racist frameworks can stabilise rather than undo exclusion.
• DEEPTHINKING: A compressed statement of the conservative-function-of-reform mechanism: corporative trends preserve the existing order by absorbing and neutralising pressure, a paradigm-shifting lens applicable well beyond Italy.