Ask five Catholics what is Catholic Social Teaching, and you’ll get six different answers. Similarly, what is “social justice"? Different people will have different answers. In this piece we will concentrate on the Catholic Church’s social teaching on economics, and specifically, socialism and capitalism. In the last 150 years three different Popes have written encyclicals addressing the issue: Pope Leo XIII in 1891 in his Encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Pius XI in 1931 and Pope John Paul II in 1991. The second and third of these followed and built-upon the original of Leo XIII whereby he warned of the evil of socialism and the condition of the working class.
After describing the oppressive conditions of the working class in 1891, Leo XIII asks whether socialism or capitalism is the answer. It is important to note that the Church is not proposing any model of economic system. The Church is speaking out on the morality of each system. Which one provides for the dignity of the human person? Leo specifically condemns socialism as being contrary to the well-being of the human family. Rerum Novarum is a brilliant piece of literature and a superb document; well written and argued. He describes the faults of socialism: “To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State.” Leo continues: “if these (socialist policies) were to be carried out, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer."
Leo argues that socialism deprives man of property, economic and political freedom. “Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interest of every wage-earner and deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of bettering his condition in life.” This remedy goes against justice, Leo argues. Every man has the inherent human right of controlling his life. This is a right that distinguished him from animals. He was endowed with this right from his creator. He refers to a human being given dominion over the earth and all that is in it, including animals and the fruit of the land: “Hence, man not only should possess the fruits of the earth but also the very soil. There is no need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State.”
Leo argues that nature and the laws of nature go with man’s freedom to do what he likes with the fruits of his labor. “Those who deny these rights do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced. Is it just that the fruit of man’s own sweat and labor should be possessed and enjoyed by anyone else?” Private property is in conformity with human nature, Leo argues. He makes the case that socialism is analogous to coveting your neighbor’s property; a reference to one of the Ten Commandments. The web site Prageru.com has a terrific five-minute video titled “Was Jesus a Socialist?” Click here to view it.
Man freely must be able to offer his labor for just payment. His labor will enable him to buy his own property. This will enable him to support his family and pass on his property to his children. Socialism denies this ability, and therefore is an assault on human dignity. “Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children.”
Leo then makes a frontal assault on socialism: “The practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of human existence. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself.” Leo contends that socialism destroys the family and is against natural justice. “Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community goods, must be utterly rejected.”
Pius the XI in his 1931 Quadragesimo Anno Encyclical, building on the work of Leo XIII, is even more emphatic on the dangers of socialism. Pius XI updates Leo’s encyclical by talking about how socialism morphed into communism; a more lethal system than socialism. He also attacks bad capitalism with the accumulation of wealth to the few in which free competition has destroyed itself and economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market. “Communism teaches and seeks two objectives: Unrelenting class warfare and absolute extermination of private ownership by employing every and all means, even the most violent.” Pius XI goes on: “We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teaching of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.
Here is where Pius XI makes a bold statement that some, may have heartburn over: “If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Christian socialism are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.” He’s not done yet. Speaking of socialism: “We have found it laboring under the gravest of evils. We have also summoned Communism and Socialism again to judgment and have found all their forms, even the most modified, to wander far from the precepts of the Gospel.”
Pope John Paul II on the 100thanniversary of Rerum Novarum in 1991 published a re-reading of it. John Paul II talks about the failure of communism. He, again, confirms what Leo XIII and Pius XI stated in their two encyclicals. As to capitalism he states that “if by capitalism is meant an economic system which recognized the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative.” John Paul II argues that “man fulfils himself by using his intelligence and freedom. Man’s dignity is tied to his freedom. Like Leo and Pius XI, John Paul II rails against socialism and communism: “This, the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God. Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law, and on the basis of correct conception of the human person.”
Milton Friedman, the famous American economist, in an interview with TV talk show host Phil Donahue in the late 1970s has a short answer on capitalism vs socialism. Click here to view it.
No comments:
Post a Comment