It is little wonder then that the class antagonism between owners and workers that fueled so many socialist uprisings in the 19th and 20th centuries is still prevalent today. Moreover, the ideology of individualism, a pernicious outgrowth of liberal ideology proper, contributes to a socio-economic situation where the professions have been atomized and workers have lost a sense of solidarity with each other.

Although post-industrial economies such as the United States present their own unique challenges and difficulties, the wider problems associated with economic liberalism were readily apparent more than a century ago when Pope Leo XIII laid down his landmark encyclical Rerum novarum. With the rapid spread of industrialization and the global economic catastrophe wrought by unchecked avarice in the early 20th century, Pope Pius XI, in his own social encyclical Quadragesimo anno, called for a departure from liberal economic order back to a guild-based system more akin to what existed in the Middle Ages. The system Pius XI proposed is commonly referred to as corporatism.

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