The Church’s Teaching on Labor
Question: There has been much talk of people in the USA educated in socialism. Does this fit into Catholic teaching, for example, ppm the issue of wealth?
Answer: The question of the theology of work is central to a broad, practical solution to what has been called the “social question” since the Industrial Revolution in the early nineteenth century. This Popes have always maintained that the issue of the just wage for work is the key to the solution of this question. “The key problem of social ethics in this case is the just remuneration for work done.”1 Since the difficulty is rooted in the Industrial Revolution as a part of the theological analysis of the problem, it is necessary to examine the history of this question to appreciate the developments which have occurred in social teaching since the nineteenth century.
The most important point is that the economic order is related to and sustains the domestic order. Even without the political order, there still must be an order in which a man obtains his daily bread and the family is supported. The necessity of work and material goods would have applied even in Eden. St. John Paul II defines work as “any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances.”2 Man is called to work. It is one of the characteristics of his nature which sets him apart from the animals. The initial context for this is supplied in Genesis 1: 28 when God commands man after his creation in the image and likeness of God: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.”
This domination on the part of man over the earth is based on the superiority of the spirit over matter and also the fact that human beings are not angels. Since man has a body, material goods are necessary for his life as well as his happiness. This original dominion (dominio) is not absolute. Though man is a spirit, he did not create matter but is place in lordship over it as a steward. “In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits.”3 Man thus participates with and at the direction of God in his dominion over material goods in light of their proper use and not as though creating their substance.
In Eden, this dominion would entail the right and duty to work. This work would not have been toilsome, though. Since man was filled with grace and respect for God’s dominion, he would also have not exploited the earth or others for selfish and egotistical purposes. He would exercise this dominion by the power to procure and dispense material goods through possession (possession). This possession would have been expressed in each being given according to his need and contribution. Material goods would have been placed under the common use of the whole human race as indeed it still is in religious communities. Again, the reason this worked was because man before the sin was in the state of grace and perhaps a continued state of infused contemplation, and there was no sin or unbridled egotism. He did not seek to say “mine” of anything.
This possession is the origin of the famous “universal destination” of human goods which is necessary for determining the reality of theft. In emergency situations, like droughts or famines, the universal destination of human goods takes precedence over private property which did not exist in Eden because it was not necessary. “The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. [. . .] The universal destination of goods remains primordial, even if the promotion of the common good requires respect for the right to private property and its exercise.”4 This universal use is based on exchange and is necessary for the perfection of the domestic and economic order.
With the sin, all this changes. Without grace, the human race cannot arrive at union with God which alone can satisfy the human soul. Other things are substituted for God which cannot possibly give the same satisfaction. Human beings try to control those things which they perceive can bring them happiness, perfection, and satisfaction. One of these is material goods.
Two weaknesses follow from this. The first is that competition enters economics not to provide a better good or service, but to increase wealth at the expense of other. The second is that man now thinks he is the absolute master of the material world and can do what he likes with it. It is there to be exploited, not used and enjoyed.
The institution of private property (proprietas) enters this situation as a conclusion of the more general rights of the natural law of procuring and dispensing goods in the light of the original sin as the best way to ensure each person will have what he needs. historical development. Capital and private property are rooted in the personal and rational order. Property implements the principles of the natural law which encourage man to develop his material goods for his own personal perfection and for the perfection of the common good of society.
The actual method of fixing of how property will be determined and practical means to implementing it in any given society are a matter of positive law based on natural law. The final and formal cause for the existence of property is the service one experts from it. Private ownership is subordinated morally to the common use and practices such as occult compensation and state use of private goods in public emergencies are not justified theft. Rather they are a recognition that with the right to property and property is the corresponding duty to develop it for the common good.
The right of private property, acquired or received in a just way, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind. [. . .] There no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to the reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one’s disposal and use the property of others.5
In the nineteenth century this whole picture underwent a lamentable revision. This gave rise to the socialism and thus the social question which was first addressed by the Church in the encyclical, Rerum Novarum written by Leo XIII in 1891. Most of the major encyclicals have subsequently been written for anniversaries of this original one: Quadragesimo Anno (1931), Laborem Exercens (1981), and Centesimus Annus (1991). Work is a constant factor in all questions of social peace. The essential qualities of human work are the basic key to solving these difficulties.
Many people find the teaching of the Catholic Church on the morality of economic order hard to understand, as it affirms neither strict liberal capitalism nor Marxism. An examination the papal encyclicals is imperative to understand this and the principle which underlie papal teaching is that property and labor both have an individual and social dimension both of which must be affirmed. As is the case with all rights, each includes corresponding duties.
Marxists’ reaction to problems of injustice resolved this class conflict by eliminating property. This was by state ownership. Socialism as taught today basically places all ownership in the state. Citizens are all supported by the state.
The Church’s solution runs a middle course between liberal capitalism, with profit as the only motive and supply and demand as the only law, and Marxism, which seeks to resolve this materialist attitude with the equally materialistic attitude of class struggle producing a freedom of the means of production unleashing matter. This latter idea was based on historical determinism and the total denial of human individuality.
The Church first upheld the right to private property as natural but then also pointed out that this right has the corresponding duty of social development. Church teaching then denied the laissez faire capitalism of the nineteenth century in which economics was based on the deterministic law of supply and demand. It also affirmed that though the state could make laws about property and business it could only play a supplementary role in these. For instance, the state could nationalize an industry like the railroads in a time of emergency like a war. However, when the emergency passed, ownership had to be returned to the private sector according to the principle of subsidiarity.
Third, it recalled the duties of workers to employers for a just day’s work. But he also demanded a salary for such work which recognized that a human being has done this work. The salary was thus declared to be a moral and human problem and not just a commodity to be bought and sold in the market. Finally, it condemned the class struggle as unnatural but also recognized the rights of workers to organize and form unions even if these excluded the employers. The strike is also implicitly recognized although two principles must be affirmed for it to be morally good. It must be non-violent and it must not be an expression of class warfare. In other words the final purpose of the strike must be to encourage the employers to act like employers and not simply to defeat them.
The simple answer would be that while there are times when the state may need to intervene in finance, private property is still a right and encourages personal responsibility. Socialism is immoral because it seeks to replace the person and the family with the all-powerful state.
About Fr. Brian Mullady, OP
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