individual rights. Subsequently corporatist systems and corporate privilege throughout Europe were abolished in response to the French Revolution. From 1789 to the 1850s, most supporters of corporatism were reactionaries. A number of reactionary corporatists favoured corporatism in order to end liberal capitalism and restore the feudal system. Counter to the reactionaries were the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon whose proposed 'industrial class' would have had the representatives of various economic groups sit in the political chambers, in contrast to the popular representation of liberal democracy. Progressive corporatism From the 1850s onward, progressive corporatism developed in response to classical liberalism and Marxism. These corporatists supported providing group rights to members of the middle classes and working classes in order to secure cooperation among the classes. This was in opposition to the Marxist conception of class conflict. By the 1870s and 1880s, corporatism experienced a revival in Europe with the creation of workers' unions that were committed to negotiations with employers. In his work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft ("Community and Society") of 1887, Ferdinand Tönnies began a major revival of corporatist philosophy associated with the development of neo-medievalism, increasing promotion of guild socialism and causing major changes to theoretical sociology. Tönnies claims that organic communities based upon clans, communes, families and professional groups are disrupted by the mechanical society of economic classes imposed by capitalism. The Nazis used Tönnies' theory to promote their notion of Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community"). However, Tönnies opposed Nazism and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1932 to oppose fascism in Germany and was deprived of his honorary professorship by Adolf Hitler in 1933. Corporatism in the Roman Catholic Church In 1881, Pope Leo XIII commissioned theologians and social thinkers to study corporatism and provide a definition for it. In 1884 in Freiburg, the commission declared that corporatism was a "system of social organization that has at its base the grouping of men according to the community of their natural interests and social functions, and as true and proper organs of the state they direct and coordinate labor and capital in matters of common interest". Corporatism is related to the sociological concept of structural functionalism. Corporatism's popularity increased in the late 19th century and a corporatist internationale was formed in 1890, followed by the publishing of Rerum novarum by the Catholic Church that for the first time declared the Church's blessing to trade unions and recommended for organized