I saw this political analysis by a commited left winger - if you leave out the partisanship-ness, it still seems like a very good analysis of what happens when corporate power merges wholeheartedly with political power.  This follows up on the schoolhouse rock article I pointed to awhile back.

I especially like the analysis of the Italian political experience.

The truth is, a complete merging of political and corporate power as a "stable" political and economic structure is sustainable for quite a long time.  I would venture to say that if you view corporations as just another version of the class system, then this is the default organizational structure that the world has experienced, with brief forays into a mode with greater concern for social and economic justice.

In the United States, it may well be that the 40 years between the end of WW2 and Reagan's term, may be the one, never again achievable period of time, where the ruling class actually shared power with other interests - a true professional civic class, and labor, which represented a voice for the lower and middle class (as problematic as this voice can be).

How does this relate to the evolutionary structure of social organizations? 

Well, I'll throw out two possibilites -

a.  The United States has passed its moment, and is in the "end stages" of it's social and political hegemon.  Camelot is gone, after all. This "end stage" may take awhile, or it may not. 
b. Counter-intuitively, the political-corporate alliance  is the authentic expression of the Lower Right, and any progression of novelty in the social and political sphere has to start from taking this alliance as the practical and "right" expression of the will-to-power in a social and economic form.

Thoughts?