Between history and ideology. The Middle Ages and Medievalism in Italian economic thought on corporations

This paper investigates the relationship between corporatist economic thought and medieval guilds (here: corporations), exploring whether and how medieval ideas influenced various strands of Italian corporatism, and how concepts from the Middle Ages were received and transformed. The study focuses on how those concepts – in particular corporation-based economic structures – were reinterpreted to legitimise modern economic visions. After defining mediaevalism and corporatism, it classifies different forms of Italian corporatism and highlights the influence of Giuseppe Toniolo on the Catholic strand of corporatist thought, the only one explicitly shaped by historical studies on the Middle Ages. Ultimately, it assesses how references to the Middle Ages served ideological purposes, rooting novel economic visions in a selectively reconstructed medieval past.