Catholic Faith
Legion of Mary
Ioannes Paulus PP. II
Laborem exercens
To His Venerable Brothers
in the Episcopate
to the Priests to the Religious Families
to the sons and daughters of the Church
and to all Men and Women of good will
on Human Work
on the ninetieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum
1981.09.14
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Blessing
Venerable Brothers and Dear Sons and Daughters,
Greetings and apostolic Blessing
THROUGH WORK man must earn his daily bread1 and contribute to the
continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to
elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society
within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same
family. And work means any activity by man, whether manual or
intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human
activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all
the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is
predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself. Man is
made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God
himself2, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth3. From
the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the
characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose
activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is
capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying
his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of
humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons.
And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it
constitutes its very nature.
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Human Work on the Ninetieth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum
Since 15 May of the present year was the ninetieth anniversary of the
publication by the great Pope of the "social question", Leo XIII, of
the decisively important Encyclical which begins with the words Rerum
Novarum, I wish to devote this document to human work and, even more,
to man in the vast context of the reality of work. As I said in the
Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, published at the beginning of my service
in the See of Saint Peter in Rome, man "is the primary and fundamental
way for the Church"4,precisely because of the inscrutable mystery of
Redemption in Christ; and so it is necessary to return constantly to
this way and to follow it ever anew in the various aspects in which it
shows us all the wealth and at the same time all the toil of human
existence on earth.
Work is one of these aspects, a perennial and fundamental one, one that
is always relevant and constantly demands renewed attention and
decisive witness. Because fresh questions and problems are always
arising, there are always fresh hopes, but also fresh fears and
threats, connected with this basic dimension of human existence: man's
life is built up every day from work, from work it derives its specific
dignity, but at the same time work contains the unceasing measure of
human toil and suffering, and also of the harm and injustice which
penetrate deeply into social life within individual nations and on the
international level. While it is true that man eats the bread produced
by the work of his hands5 - and this means not only the daily bread by
which his body keeps alive but also the bread of science and progress,
civilization and culture - it is also a perennial truth that he eats
this bread by "the sweat of his face"6, that is to say, not only by
personal effort and toil but also in the midst of many tensions,
conflicts and crises, which, in relationship with the reality of work,
disturb the life of individual societies and also of all humanity.
We are celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the Encyclical Rerum
Novarum on the eve of new developments in technological, economic and
political conditions which, according to many experts, will influence
the world of work and production no less than the industrial revolution
of the last century. There are many factors of a general nature: the
widespread introduction of automation into many spheres of production,
the increase in the cost of energy and raw materials, the growing
realization that the heritage of nature is limited and that it is being
intolerably polluted, and the emergence on the political scene of
peoples who, after centuries of subjection, are demanding their
rightful place among the nations and in international decision-making.
These new conditions and demands will require a reordering and
adjustment of the structures of the modern economy and of the
distribution of work. Unfortunately, for millions of skilled workers
these changes may perhaps mean unemployment, at least for a time, or
the need for retraining. They will very probably involve a reduction or
a less rapid increase in material well-being for the more developed
countries. But they can also bring relief and hope to the millions who
today live in conditions of shameful and unworthy poverty.
It is not for the Church to analyze scientifically the consequences
that these changes may have on human society. But the Church considers
it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those
who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights
are violated, and to help to guide the above-mentioned changes so as to
ensure authentic progress by man and society.
2. In the Organic Development of the Church's Social Action
It is certainly true that work, as a human issue, is at the very centre
of the "social question" to which, for almost a hundred years, since
the publication of the above-mentioned Encyclical, the Church's
teaching and the many undertakings connected with her apostolic mission
have been especially directed. The present reflections on work are not
intended to follow a different line, but rather to be in organic
connection with the whole tradition of this teaching and activity. At
the same time, however, I am making them, according to the indication
in the Gospel, in order to bring out from the heritage of the Gospel
"what is new and what is old"7. Certainly, work is part of "what is
old"- as old as man and his life on earth. Nevertheless, the general
situation of man in the modern world, studied and analyzed in its
various aspects of geography, culture and civilization, calls for the
discovery of the new meanings of human work. It likewise calls for the
formulation of the new tasks that in this sector face each individual,
the family, each country, the whole human race, and, finally, the
Church herself.
During the years that separate us from the publication of the
Encyclical Rerum Novarum, the social question has not ceased to engage
the Church's attention. Evidence of this are the many documents of the
Magisterium issued by the Popes and by the Second Vatican Council,
pronouncements by individual Episcopates, and the activity of the
various centres of thought and of practical apostolic initiatives, both
on the international level and at the level of the local Churches. It
is difficult to list here in detail all the manifestations of the
commitment of the Church and of Christians in the social question, for
they are too numerous. As a result of the Council, the main
coordinating centre in this field is the Pontifical Commission Justice
and Peace, which has corresponding bodies within the individual
Bishops' Conferences. The name of this institution is very significant.
It indicates that the social question must be dealt with in its whole
complex dimension. Commitment to justice must be closely linked with
commitment to peace in the modern world. This twofold commitment is
certainly supported by the painful experience of the two great world
wars which in the course of the last ninety years have convulsed many
European countries and, at least partially, countries in other
continents. It is supported, especially since the Second World War, by
the permanent threat of a nuclear war and the prospect of the terrible
self-destruction that emerges from it.
If we follow the main line of development of the documents of the
supreme Magisterium of the Church, we find in them an explicit
confirmation of precisely such a statement of the question. The key
position, as regards the question of world peace, is that of John
XXIII's Encyclical Pacem in Terris. However, if one studies the
development of the question of social justice, one cannot fail to note
that, whereas during the period between Rerum Novarum and Pius XI's
Quadragesimo Anno the Church's teaching concentrates mainly on the just
solution of the "labour question" within individual nations, in the
next period the Church's teaching widens its horizon to take in the
whole world. The disproportionate distribution of wealth and poverty
and the existence of some countries and continents that are developed
and of others that are not call for a levelling out and for a search
for ways to ensure just development for all. This is the direction of
the teaching in John XXIII's Encyclical Mater et Magistra, in the
Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council,
and in Paul VI's Encyclical Populorum Progressio.
This trend of development of the Church's teaching and commitment in
the social question exactly corresponds to the objective recognition of
the state of affairs. While in the past the "class" question was
especially highlighted as the centre of this issue, in more recent
times it is the "world" question that is emphasized. Thus, not only the
sphere of class is taken into consideration but also the world sphere
of inequality and injustice, and as a consequence, not only the class
dimension but also the world dimension of the tasks involved in the
path towards the achievement of justice in the modern world. A complete
analysis of the situation of the world today shows in an even deeper
and fuller way the meaning of the previous analysis of social
injustices; and it is the meaning that must be given today to efforts
to build justice on earth, not concealing thereby unjust structures but
demanding that they be examined and transformed on a more universal
scale.
3. The Question of Work, the Key to the Social Question
In the midst of all these processes-those of the diagnosis of objective
social reality and also those of the Church's teaching in the sphere of
the complex and many-sided social question-the question of human work
naturally appears many times. This issue is, in a way, a constant
factor both of social life and of the Church's teaching. Furthermore,
in this teaching attention to the question goes back much further than
the last ninety years. In fact the Church's social teaching finds its
source in Sacred Scripture, beginning with the Book of Genesis and
especially in the Gospel and the writings of the Apostles. From the
beginning it was part of the Church's teaching, her concept of man and
life in society, and, especially, the social morality which she worked
out according to the needs of the different ages. This traditional
patrimony was then inherited and developed by the teaching of the Popes
on the modern "social question", beginning with the Encyclical Rerum
Novarum. In this context, study of the question of work, as we have
seen, has continually been brought up to date while maintaining that
Christian basis of truth which can be called ageless.
While in the present document we return to this question once
more-without however any intention of touching on all the topics that
concern it-this is not merely in order to gather together and repeat
what is already contained in the Church's teaching. It is rather in
order to highlight-perhaps more than has been done before-the fact that
human work is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social
question, if we try to see that question really from the point of view
of man's good. And if the solution-or rather the gradual solution-of
the social question, which keeps coming up and becomes ever more
complex, must be sought in the direction of "making life more human"8,
then the key, namely human work, acquires fundamental and decisive
importance.
II. WORK AND MAN
4. In the Book of Genesis
The Church is convinced that work is a fundamental dimension of man's
existence on earth. She is confirmed in this conviction by considering
the whole heritage of the many sciences devoted to man: anthropology,
palaeontology, history, sociology, psychology and so on; they all seem
to bear witness to this reality in an irrefutable way. But the source
of the Church's conviction is above all the revealed word of God, and
therefore what is a conviction of the intellect is also a conviction of
faith. The reason is that the Church-and it is worthwhile stating it at
this point-believes in man: she thinks of man and addresses herself to
him not only in the light of historical experience, not only with the
aid of the many methods of scientific knowledge, but in the first place
in the light of the revealed word of the living God. Relating herself
to man, she seeks to express the eternal designs and transcendent
destiny which the living God, the Creator and Redeemer, has linked with
him.
The Church finds in the very first pages ofthe Book of Genesis the
source of her conviction that work is a fundamental dimension of human
existence on earth. An analysis of these texts makes us aware that they
express-sometimes in an archaic way of manifesting thought-the
fundamental truths about man, in the context of the mystery of creation
itelf. These truths are decisive for man from the very beginning, and
at the same time they trace out the main lines of his earthly
existence, both in the state of original justice and also after the
breaking, caused by sin, of the Creator's original covenant with
creation in man. When man, who had been created "in the image of
God.... male and female"9, hears the words: "Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth and subdue it"10, even though these words do not
refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly
indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world. Indeed,
they show its very deepest essence. Man is the image of God partly
through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate,
the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being,
reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe.
Work understood as a "transitive" activity, that is to say an activity
beginning in the human subject and directed towards an external object,
presupposes a specific dominion by man over "the earth", and in its
turn it confirms and develops this dominion. It is clear that the term
"the earth" of which the biblical text speaks is to be understood in
the flrst place as that fragment of the visible universe that man
inhabits. By extension, however, it can be understood as the whole of
the visible world insofar as it comes within the range of man's
influence and of his striving to satisfy his needs. The expression
"subdue the earth" has an immense range. It means all the resources
that the earth (and indirectly the visible world) contains and which,
through the conscious activity of man, can be discovered and used for
his ends. And so these words, placed at the beginning of the Bible,
never cease to be relevant. They embrace equally the past ages of
civilization and economy, as also the whole of modern reality and
future phases of development, which are perhaps already to some extent
beginning to take shape, though for the most part they are still almost
unknown to man and hidden from him.
While people sometimes speak of periods of "acceleration" in the
economic life and civilization of humanity or of individual nations,
linking these periods to the progress of science and technology and
especially to discoveries which are decisive for social and economic
life, at the same time it can be said that none of these phenomena of
"acceleration" exceeds the essential content of what was said in that
most ancient of biblical texts. As man, through his work, becomes more
and more the master of the earth, and as he confirms his dominion over
the visible world, again through his work, he nevertheless remains in
every case and at every phase of this process within the Creator's
original ordering. And this ordering remains necessarily and
indissolubly linked with the fact that man was created, as male and
female, "in the image of God". This process is,at the same time,
universal: it embraces all human beings, every generation, every phase
of economic and cultural development, and at the same time it is a
process that takes place within each human being, in each conscious
human subject. Each and every individual is at the same time embraced
by it. Each and every individual, to the proper extent and in an
incalculable number of ways, takes part in the giant process whereby
man "subdues the earth" through his work.
5. Work in the Objective Sense: Technology
This universality and, at the same time, this multiplicity of the
process of "subduing the earth" throw light upon human work, because
man's dominion over the earth is achieved in and by means of work.
There thus emerges the meaning of work in an objective sense, which
finds expression in the various epochs of culture and civilization. Man
dominates the earth by the very fact of domesticating animals, rearing
them and obtaining from them the food and clothing he needs, and by the
fact of being able to extract various natural resources from the earth
and the seas. But man "subdues the earth" much more when he begins to
cultivate it and then to transform its products, adapting them to his
own use. Thus agriculture constitutes through human work a primary
field of economic activity and an indispensable factor of production.
Industry in its turn will always consist in linking the earth's
riches-whether nature's living resources, or the products of
agriculture, or the mineral or chemical resources-with man's work,
whether physical or intellectual. This is also in a sense true in the
sphere of what are called service industries, and also in the sphere of
research, pure or applied.
In industry and agriculture man's work has today in many cases ceased
to be mainly manual, for the toil of human hands and muscles is aided
by more and more highly perfected machinery. Not only in industry but
also in agriculture we are witnessing the transformations made possible
by the gradual development of science and technology. Historically
speaking, this, taken as a whole, has caused great changes in
civilization, from the beginning of the "industrial era" to the
successive phases of development through new technologies, such as the
electronics and the microprocessor technology in recent years.
While it may seem that in the industrial process it is the machine that
"works" and man merely supervises it, making it function and keeping it
going in various ways, it is also true that for this very reason
industrial development provides grounds for reproposing in new ways the
question of human work. Both the original industrialization that gave
rise to what is called the worker question and the subsequent
industrial and post-industrial changes show in an eloquent manner that,
even in the age of ever more mechanized "work", the proper subject of
work continues to be man.
The development of industry and of the various sectors connected with
it, even the most modern electronics technology, especially in the
fields of miniaturization, communications and telecommunications and so
forth, shows how vast is the role of technology, that ally of work that
human thought has produced, in the interaction between the subject and
object of work (in the widest sense of the word). Understood in this
case not as a capacity or aptitude for work, but rather as a whole set
of instruments which man uses in his work, technology is undoubtedly
man's ally. It facilitates his work, perfects, accelerates and augments
it. It leads to an increase in the quantity of things produced by work,
and in many cases improves their quality. However, it is also a fact
that, in some instances, technology can cease to be man's ally and
become almost his enemy, as when the mechanization of work "supplants"
him, taking away all personal satisfaction and the incentive to
creativity and responsibility, when it deprives many workers of their
previous employment, or when, through exalting the machine, it reduces
man to the status of its slave.
If the biblical words "subdue the earth" addressed to man from the very
beginning are understood in the context of the whole modern age,
industrial and post-industrial, then they undoubtedly include also a
relationship with technology, with the world of machinery which is the
fruit of the work of the human intellect and a historical confirmation
of man's dominion over nature.
The recent stage of human history, especially that of certain
societies, brings a correct affirmation of technology as a basic
coefficient of economic progress; but, at the same time, this
affirmation has been accompanied by and continues to be accompanied by
the raising of essential questions concerning human work in
relationship to its subject, which is man. These questions are
particularly charged with content and tension of an ethical and an
ethical and social character. They therefore constitute a continual
challenge for institutions of many kinds, for States and governments,
for systems and international organizations; they also constitute a
challenge for the Church.
6. Work in the Subjective Sense: Man as the Subject of Work
In order to continue our analysis of work, an analysis linked with the
word of the Bible telling man that he is to subdue the earth, we must
concentrate our attention on work in the subjective sense, much more
than we did on the objective significance, barely touching upon the
vast range of problems known intimately and in detail to scholars in
various fields and also, according to their specializations, to those
who work. If the words of the Book of Genesis to which we refer in this
analysis of ours speak of work in the objective sense in an indirect
way, they also speak only indirectly of the subject of work; but what
they say is very eloquent and is full of great significance.
Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as the "image of
God" he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of
acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about
himself, and with a tendency to self-realization. As a person, man is
therefore the subject ot work. As a person he works, he performs
various actions belonging to the work process; independently of their
objective content, these actions must all serve to realize his
humanity, to fulfil the calling to be a person that is his by reason of
his very humanity. The principal truths concerning this theme were
recently recalled by the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution
Gaudium et Spes, especially in Chapter One, which is devoted to man's
calling.
And so this "dominion" spoken of in the biblical text being meditated
upon here refers not only to the objective dimension of work but at the
same time introduces us to an understanding of its subjective
dimension. Understood as a process whereby man and the human race
subdue the earth, work corresponds to this basic biblical concept only
when throughout the process man manifests himself and confirms himself
as the one who "dominates". This dominion, in a certain sense, refers
to the subjective dimension even more than to the objective one: this
dimension conditions the very ethical nature of work. In fact there is
no doubt that human work has an ethical value of its own, which clearly
and directly remain linked to the fact that the one who carries it out
is a person, a conscious and free subject, that is to say a subject
that decides about himself.
This truth, which in a sense constitutes the fundamental and perennial
heart of Christian teaching on human work, has had and continues to
have primary significance for the formulation of the important social
problems characterizing whole ages.
The ancient world introduced its own typical differentiation of people
into dasses according to the type of work done. Work which demanded
from the worker the exercise of physical strength, the work of muscles
and hands, was considered unworthy of free men, and was therefore given
to slaves. By broadening certain aspects that already belonged to the
Old Testament, Christianity brought about a fundamental change of ideas
in this field, taking the whole content of the Gospel message as its
point of departure, especially the fact that the one who, while being
God, became like us in all things11 devoted most of the years of his
life on earth to manual work at the carpenter's bench. This
circumstance constitutes in itself the most eloquent "Gospel of work",
showing that the basis for determining the value of human work is not
primarily the kind of work being done but the fact that the one who is
doing it is a person. The sources of the dignity of work are to be
sought primarily in the subjective dimension, not in the objective one.
Such a concept practically does away with the very basis of the ancient
differentiation of people into classes according to the kind of work
done. This does not mean that, from the objective point of view, human
work cannot and must not be rated and qualified in any way. It only
means that the primary basis of tbe value of work is man himself, who
is its subject. This leads immediately to a very important conclusion
of an ethical nature: however true it may be that man is destined for
work and called to it, in the first place work is "for man" and not man
"for work". Through this conclusion one rightly comes to recognize the
pre-eminence of the subjective meaning of work over the objective one.
Given this way of understanding things, and presupposing that different
sorts of work that people do can have greater or lesser objective
value, let us try nevertheless to show that each sort is judged above
all by the measure of the dignity of the subject of work, that is to
say the person, the individual who carries it out. On the other hand:
independently of the work that every man does, and presupposing that
this work constitutes a purpose-at times a very demanding one-of his
activity, this purpose does not possess a definitive meaning in itself.
In fact, in the final analysis it is always man who is the purpose of
the work, whatever work it is that is done by man-even if the common
scale of values rates it as the merest "service", as the most
monotonous even the most alienating work.
7. A Threat to the Right Order of Values
It is precisely these fundamental affirmations about work that always
emerged from the wealth of Christian truth, especially from the very
message of the "Gospel of work", thus creating the basis for a new way
of thinking, judging and acting. In the modern period, from the
beginning of the industrial age, the Christian truth about work had to
oppose the various trends of materialistic and economistic thought.
For certain supporters of such ideas, work was understood and treated
as a sort of "merchandise" that the worker-especially the industrial
worker-sells to the employer, who at the same time is the possessor of
the capital, that is to say, of all the working tools and means that
make production possible. This way of looking at work was widespread
especially in the first half of the nineteenth century. Since then,
explicit expressions of this sort have almost disappeared, and have
given way to more human ways of thinking about work and evaluating it.
The interaction between the worker and the tools and means of
production has given rise to the development of various forms of
capitalism - parallel with various forms of collectivism - into which
other socioeconomic elements have entered as a consequence of new
concrete circumstances, of the activity of workers' associations and
public autorities, and of the emergence of large transnational
enterprises. Nevertheless, the danger of treating work as a special
kind of "merchandise", or as an impersonal "force" needed for
production (the expression "workforce" is in fact in common use) always
exists, especially when the whole way of looking at the question of
economics is marked by the premises of materialistic economism.
A systematic opportunity for thinking and evaluating in this way, and
in a certain sense a stimulus for doing so, is provided by the
quickening process of the development of a onesidedly materialistic
civilization, which gives prime importance to the objective dimension
of work, while the subjective dimension-everything in direct or
indirect relationship with the subject of work-remains on a secondary
level. In all cases of this sort, in every social situation of this
type, there is a confusion or even a reversal of the order laid down
from the beginning by the words of the Book of Genesis: man is treated
as an instrument of production12, whereas he-he alone, independently of
the work he does-ought to be treated as the effective subject of work
and its true maker and creator. Precisely this reversal of order,
whatever the programme or name under which it occurs, should rightly be
called "capitalism"-in the sense more fully explained below. Everybody
knows that capitalism has a definite historical meaning as a system, an
economic and social system, opposed to "socialism" or "communism". But
in the light of the analysis of the fundamental reality of the whole
economic process-first and foremost of the production structure that
work is-it should be recognized that the error of early capitalism can
be repeated wherever man is in a way treated on the same level as the
whole complex of the material means of production, as an instrument and
not in accordance with the true dignity of his work-that is to say,
where he is not treated as subject and maker, and for this very reason
as the true purpose of the whole process of production.
This explains why the analysis of human work in the light of the words
concerning man's "dominion" over the earth goes to the very heart of
the ethical and social question. This concept should also find a
central place in the whole sphere of social and economic policy, both
within individual countries and in the wider field of international and
intercontinental relationships, particularly with reference to the
tensions making themselves felt in the world not only between East and
West but also between North and South. Both John XXIII in the
Encyclical Mater et Magistra and Paul VI in the Encyclical Populorum
Progressio gave special attention to these dimensions of the modern
ethical and social question.
8. Worker Solidarity
When dealing with human work in the fundamental dimension of its
subject, that is to say, the human person doing the work, one must make
at least a summary evaluation of developments during the ninety years
since Rerum Novarum in relation to the subjective dimension of work.
Although the subject of work is always the same, that is to say man,
nevertheless wide-ranging changes take place in the objective aspect.
While one can say that, by reason of its subject, work is one single
thing (one and unrepeatable every time), yet when one takes into
consideration its objective directions one is forced to admit that
there exist many works, many different sorts of work. The development
of human civilization brings continual enrichment in this field. But at
the same time, one cannot fail to note that in the process of this
development not only do new forms of work appear but also others
disappear. Even if one accepts that on the whole this is a normal
phenomenon, it must still be seen whether certain ethically and
socially dangerous irregularities creep in, and to what extent.
It was precisely one such wide-ranging anomaly that gave rise in the
last century to what has been called "the worker question", sometimes
described as "the proletariat question" . This question and the
problems connected with it gave rise to a just social reaction and
caused the impetuous emergence of a great burst of solidarity between
workers, first and foremost industrial workers. The call to solidarity
and common action addressed to the workers-especially to those engaged
in narrowly specialized, monotonous and depersonalized work in
industrial plants, when the machine tends to dominate man - was
important and eloquent from the point of view of social ethics. It was
the reaction against the degradation of man as the subject of work, and
against the unheard-of accompanying exploitation in the field of wages,
working conditions and social security for the worker. This reaction
united the working world in a community marked by great solidarity.
Following tlle lines laid dawn by the Encyclical Rerum Novarum and many
later documents of the Church's Magisterium, it must be frankly
recognized that the reaction against the system of injustice and harm
that cried to heaven for vengeance13 and that weighed heavily upon
workers in that period of rapid industrialization was justified from
the point of view of social morality. This state of affairs was
favoured by the liberal socio-political system, which, in accordance
with its "economistic" premises, strengthened and safeguarded economic
initiative by the possessors of capital alone, but did not pay
sufficient attention to the rights of the workers, on the grounds that
human work is solely an instrument of production, and that capital is
the basis, efficient factor and purpose of production.
From that time, worker solidarity, together with a clearer and more
committed realization by others of workers' rights, has in many cases
brought about profound changes. Various forms of neo-capitalism or
collectivism have developed. Various new systems have been thought out.
Workers can often share in running businesses and in controlling their
productivity, and in fact do so. Through appropriate associations, they
exercise influence over conditions of work and pay, and also over
social legislation. But at the same time various ideological or power
systems, and new relationships which have arisen at various levels of
society, have allowed flagrant injustices to persist or have created
new ones. On the world level, the development of civilization and of
communications has made possible a more complete diagnosis of the
living and working conditions of man globally, but it has also revealed
other forms of injustice, much more extensive than those which in the
last century stimulated unity between workers for particular solidarity
in the working world. This is true in countries which have completed a
certain process of industrial revolution. It is also true in countries
where the main working milieu continues to be agriculture or other
similar occupations.
Movements of solidarity in the sphere of work-a solidarity that must
never mean being closed to dialogue and collaboration with others- can
be necessary also with reference to the condition of social groups that
were not previously included in such movements but which, in changing
social systems and conditions of living, are undergoing what is in
effect "proletarianization" or which actually already find themselves
in a "proletariat" situation, one which, even if not yet given that
name, in fact deserves it. This can be true of certain categories or
groups of the working " intelligentsia", especially when ever wider
access to education and an ever increasing number of people with
degrees or diplomas in the fields of their cultural preparation are
accompanied by a drop in demand for their labour. This unemployment of
intellectuals occurs or increases when the education available is not
oriented towards the types of employment or service required by the
true needs of society, or when there is less demand for work which
requires education, at least professional education, than for manual
labour, or when it is less well paid. Of course, education in itself is
always valuable and an important enrichment of the human person; but in
spite of that, "proletarianization" processes remain possible.
For this reason, there must be continued study of the subject of work
and of the subject's living conditions. In order to achieve social
justice in the various parts of the world, in the various countries,
and in the relationships between them, there is a need for ever new
movements of solidarity of the workers and with the workers. This
solidarity must be present whenever it is called for by the social
degrading of the subject of work, by exploitation of the workers, and
by the growing areas of poverty and even hunger. The Church is firmly
committed to this cause, for she considers it her mission, her service,
a proof of her fidelity to Christ, so that she can truly be the "Church
of the poor". And the "poor" appear under various forms; they appear in
various places and at various times; in many cases they appear as a
result of the violation of the dignity of human work: either because
the opportunities for human work are limited as a result of the scourge
of unemployment, or because a low value is put on work and the rights
that flow from it, especially the right to a just wage and to the
personal security of the worker and his or her family.
9. Work and Personal Dignity
Remaining within the context of man as the subject of work, it is now
appropriate to touch upon, at least in a summary way, certain problems
that more closely define the dignity of human work, in that they make
it possible to characterize more fully its specific moral value. In
doing this we must always keep in mind the biblical calling to "subdue
the earth"14, in which is expressed the will of the Creator that work
should enable man to achieve that "dominion" in the visible world that
is proper to him.
God's fundamental and original intention with regard to man, whom he
created in his image and after his likeness15, was not withdrawn or
cancelled out even when man, having broken the original covenant with
God, heard the words: "In the sweat of your face you shall eat
bread"16. These words refer to the sometimes heavy toil that from then
onwards has accompanied human work; but they do not alter the fact that
work is the means whereby man achieves that "dominion" which is proper
to him over the visible world, by "subjecting" the earth. Toil is
something that is universally known, for it is universally experienced.
It is familiar to those doing physical work under sometimes
exceptionally laborious conditions. It is familiar not only to
agricultural workers, who spend long days working the land, which
sometimes "bears thorns and thistles"17, but also to those who work in
mines and quarries, to steel-workers at their blast-furnaces, to those
who work in builders' yards and in construction work, often in danger
of injury or death. It is likewise familiar to those at an intellectual
workbench; to scientists; to those who bear the burden of grave
responsibility for decisions that will have a vast impact on society.
It is familiar to doctors and nurses, who spend days and nights at
their patients' bedside. It is familiar to women, who, sometimes
without proper recognition on the part of society and even of their own
families, bear the daily burden and responsibility for their homes and
the upbringing of their children. It is familiar to all workers and,
since work is a universal calling, it is familiar to everyone.
And yet, in spite of all this toil-perhaps, in a sense, because of
it-work is a good thing for man. Even though it bears the mark of a
bonum arduum, in the terminology of Saint Thomas18, this does not take
away the fact that, as such, it is a good thing for man. It is not only
good in the sense that it is useful or something to enjoy; it is also
good as being something worthy, that is to say, something that
corresponds to man's dignity, that expresses this dignity and increases
it. If one wishes to define more clearly the ethical meaning of work,
it is this truth that one must particularly keep in mind. Work is a
good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work
man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he
also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense,
becomes "more a human being".
Without this consideration it is impossible to understand the meaning
of the virtue of industriousness, and more particularly it is
impossible to understand why industriousness should be a virtue: for
virtue, as a moral habit, is something whereby man becomes good as
man19. This fact in no way alters our justifiable anxiety that in work,
whereby matter gains in nobility, man himself should not experience a
lowering of his own dignity20. Again, it is well known that it is
possible to use work in various ways against man, that it is possible
to punish man with the system of forced labour in concentration camps,
that work can be made into a means for oppressing man, and that in
various ways it is possible to exploit human labour, that is to say the
worker. All this pleads in favour of the moral obligation to link
industriousness as a virtue with the social order of work, which will
enable man to become, in work, "more a human being" and not be degraded
by it not only because of the wearing out of his physical strength
(which, at least up to a certain point, is inevitable), but especially
through damage to the dignity and subjectivity that are proper to him.
10. Work and Society: Family and Nation
Having thus conflrmed the personal dimension of human work, we must go
on to the second sphere of values which is necessarily linked to work.
Work constitutes a foundation for the formation of family life, which
is a natural right and something that man is called to. These two
spheres of values-one linked to work and the other consequent on the
family nature of human life-must be properly united and must properly
permeate each other. In a way, work is a condition for making it
possible to found a family, since the family requires the means of
subsistence which man normally gains through work. Work and
industriousness also influence the whole process of education in the
family, for the very reason that everyone "becomes a human being"
through, among other things, work, and becoming a human being is
precisely the main purpose of the whole process of education.
Obviously, two aspects of work in a sense come into play here: the one
making family life and its upkeep possible, and the other making
possible the achievement of the purposes of the family, especially
education. Nevertheless, these two aspects of work are linked to one
another and are mutually complementary in various points.
It must be remembered and affirmed that the family constitutes one of
the most important terms of reference for shaping the social and
ethical order of human work. The teaching of the Church has always
devoted special attention to this question, and in the present document
we shall have to return to it. In fact, the family is simultaneously a
community made possible by work and the first school of work, within
the home, for every person.
The third sphere of values that emerges from this point of view-that of
the subject of work-concerns the great society to which man belongs on
the basis of particular cultural and historical links. This
society-even when it has not yet taken on the mature form of a
nation-is not only the great "educator" of every man, even though an
indirect one (because each individual absorbs within the family the
contents and values that go to make up the culture of a given nation);
it is also a great historical and social incarnation of the work of all
generations. All of this brings it about that man combines his deepest
human identity with membership of a nation, and intends his work also
to increase the common good developed together with his compatriots,
thus realizing that in this way work serves to add to the heritage of
the whole human family, of all the people living in the world.
These three spheres are always important for human work in its
subjective dimension. And this dimension, that is to say, the concrete
reality of the worker, takes precedence over the objective dimension.
In the subjective dimension there is realized, first of all, that
"dominion" over the world of nature to which man is called from the
beginning according to the words of the Book of Genesis. The very
process of "subduing the earth", that is to say work, is marked in the
course of history, and especially in recent centuries, by an immense
development of technological means. This is an advantageous and
positive phenomenon, on condition that the objective dimension of work
does not gain the upper hand over the subjective dimension, depriving
man of his dignity and inalienable rights or reducing them.
III. CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOUR AND CAPITAL IN THE PRESENT PHASE OF HISTORY
11. Dimensions of the Conflict
The sketch of the basic problems of work outlined above draws
inspiration from the texts at the beginning of the Bible and in a sense
forms the very framework of the Church's teaching, which has remained
unchanged throughout the centuries within the context of different
historical experiences. However, the experiences preceding and
following the publication of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum form a
background that endows that teaching with particular expressiveness and
the eloquence of living relevance. In this analysis, work is seen as a
great reality with a fundamental influence on the shaping in a human
way of the world that the Creator has entrusted to man; it is a reality
closely linked with man as the subject of work and with man's rational
activity. In the normal course of events this reality fills human life
and strongly affects its value and meaning. Even when it is accompanied
by toil and effort, work is still something good, and so man develops
through love for work. This entirely positive and creative, educational
and meritorious character of man's work must be the basis for the
judgments and decisions being made today in its regard in spheres that
include human rights, as is evidenced by the international declarations
on work and the many labour codes prepared either by the competent
legislative institutions in the various countries or by organizations
devoting their social, or scientific and social, activity to the
problems of work. One organization fostering such initiatives on the
international level is the International Labour Organization, the
oldest specialized agency of the United Nations Organization.
In the following part of these considerations I intend to return in
greater detail to these important questions, recalling at least the
basic elements of the Church's teaching on the matter. I must however
first touch on a very important field of questions in which her
teaching has taken shape in this latest period, the one marked and in a
sense symbolized by the publication of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum.
Throughout this period, which is by no means yet over, the issue of
work has of course been posed on the basis of the great conflict that
in the age of, and together with, industrial development emerged
between "capital" and "labour", that is to say between the small but
highly influential group of entrepreneurs, owners or holders of the
means of production, and the broader multitude of people who lacked
these means and who shared in the process of production solely by their
labour. The conflict originated in the fact that the workers put their
powers at the disposal of the entrepreneurs, and these, following the
principle of maximum profit, tried to establish the lowest possible
wages for the work done by the employees. In addition there were other
elements of exploitation, connected with the lack of safety at work and
of safeguards regarding the health and living conditions of the workers
and their families.
This conflict, interpreted by some as a socioeconomic class conflict,
found expression in the ideological conflict between liberalism,
understood as the ideology of capitalism, and Marxism, understood as
the ideology of scientiflc socialism and communism, which professes to
act as the spokesman for the working class and the worldwide
proletariat. Thus the real conflict between labour and capital was
transformed into a systematic class struggle, conducted not only by
ideological means but also and chiefly by political means. We are
familiar with the history of this conflict and with the demands of both
sides. The Marxist programme, based on the philosophy of Marx and
Engels, sees in class struggle the only way to eliminate class
injustices in society and to eliminate the classes themselves. Putting
this programme into practice presupposes the collectivization of the
means of production so that,through the transfer of these means from
private hands to the collectivity, human labour will be preserved from
exploitation.
This is the goal of the struggle carried on by political as well as
ideological means. In accordance with the principle of "the
dictatorship of the proletariat", the groups that as political parties
follow the guidance of Marxist ideology aim by the use of various kinds
of influence, including revolutionary pressure, to win a monopoly of
power in each society, in order to introduce the collectivist system
into it by eliminating private ownership of the means of production.
According to the principal ideologists and leaders of this broad
international movement, the purpose of this programme of action is to
achieve the social revolution and to introduce socialism and, finally,
the communist system throughout the world.
As we touch on this extremely important field of issues, which
constitute not only a theory but a whole fabric of socioeconomic,
political, and international life in our age, we cannot go into the
details, nor is this necessary, for they are known both from the vast
literature on the subject and by experience. Instead, we must leave the
context of these issues and go back to the fundamental issue of human
work, which is the main subject of the considerations in this document.
It is clear, indeed, that this issue, which is of such importance for
man-it constitutes one of the fundamental dimensions of his earthly
existence and of his vocation-can also be explained only by taking into
account the full context of the contemporary situation.
12. The Priority of Labour
The structure of the present-day situation is deeply marked by many
conflicts caused by man, and the technological means produced by human
work play a primary role in it. We should also consider here the
prospect of worldwide catastrophe in the case of a nuclear war, which
would have almost unimaginable possibilities of destruction. In view of
this situation we must first of all recall a principle that has always
been taught by the Church: the principle ot the priority of labour over
capital. This principle directly concerns the process of production: in
this process labour is always a primary efficient cause, while capital,
the whole collection of means of production, remains a mere instrument
or instrumental cause. This principle is an evident truth that emerges
from the whole of man's historical experience.
When we read in the first chapter of the Bible that man is to subdue
the earth, we know that these words refer to all the resources
contained in the visible world and placed at man's disposal. However,
these resources can serve man only through work. From the beginning
there is also linked with work the question of ownership, for the only
means that man has for causing the resources hidden in nature to serve
himself and others is his work. And to be able through his work to make
these resources bear fruit, man takes over ownership of small parts of
the various riches of nature: those beneath the ground, those in the
sea, on land, or in space. He takes all these things over by making
them his workbench. He takes them over through work and for work.
The same principle applies in the successive phases of this process, in
which the first phase always remains the relationship of man with the
resources and riches of nature. The whole of the effort to acquire
knowledge with the aim of discovering these riches and specifying the
various ways in which they can be used by man and for man teaches us
that everything that comes from man throughout the whole process of
economic production, whether labour or the whole collection of means of
production and the technology connected with these means (meaning the
capability to use them in work), presupposes these riches and resources
of the visible world, riches and resources that man finds and does not
create. In a sense man finds them already prepared, ready for him to
discover them and to use them correctly in the productive process. In
every phase of the development of his work man comes up against the
leading role of the gift made by "nature", that is to say, in the final
analysis, by the Creator At the beginning of man's work is the mystery
of creation. This affirmation, already indicated as my starting point,
is the guiding thread of this document, and will be further developed
in the last part of these reflections.
Further consideration of this question should confirm our conviction of
the priority of human labour over what in the course of time we have
grown accustomed to calling capital. Since the concept of capital
includes not only the natural resources placed at man's disposal but
also the whole collection of means by which man appropriates natural
resources and transforms them in accordance with his needs (and thus in
a sense humanizes them), it must immediately be noted that all these
means are the result of the historical heritage of human labour. All
the means of production, from the most primitive to the ultramodern
ones-it is man that has gradually developed them: man's experience and
intellect. In this way there have appeared not only the simplest
instruments for cultivating the earth but also, through adequate
progress in science and technology, the more modern and complex ones:
machines, factories, laboratories, and computers. Thus everything that
is at the service of work, everything that in the present state of
technology constitutes its ever more highly perfected "instrument", is
the result of work.
This gigantic and powerful instrument-the whole collection of means of
production that in a sense are considered synonymous with "capital"- is
the result of work and bears the signs of human labour. At the present
stage of technological advance, when man, who is the subjectof work,
wishes to make use of this collection of modern instruments, the means
of production, he must first assimilate cognitively the result of the
work of the people who invented those instruments, who planned them,
built them and perfected them, and who continue to do so. Capacity for
work-that is to say, for sharing efficiently in the modern production
process-demands greater and greater preparation and, before all else,
proper training. Obviously, it remains clear that every human being
sharing in the production process, even if he or she is only doing the
kind of work for which no special training or qualifications are
required, is the real efficient subject in this production process,
while the whole collection of instruments, no matter how perfect they
may be in themselves, are only a mere instrument subordinate to human
labour.
This truth, which is part of the abiding heritage of the Church's
teaching, must always be emphasized with reference to the question of
the labour system and with regard to the whole socioeconomic system. We
must emphasize and give prominence to the primacy of man in the
production process, the primacy of man over things. Everything
contained in the concept of capital in the strict sense is only a
collection of things. Man, as the subject of work, and independently of
the work that he does-man alone is a person. This truth has important
and decisive consequences.
13. Economism and Materialism
In the light of the above truth we see clearly, first of all, that
capital cannot be separated from labour; in no way can labour be
opposed to capital or capital to labour, and still less can the actual
people behind these concepts be opposed to each other, as will be
explained later. A labour system can be right, in the sense of being in
conformity with the very essence of the issue, and in the sense of
being intrinsically true and also morally legitimate, if in its very
basis it overcomes the opposition between labour and capital through an
effort at being shaped in accordance with the principle put forward
above: the principle of the substantial and real priority of labour, of
the subjectivity of human labour and its effective participation in the
whole production process, independently of the nature of the services
provided by the worker.
Opposition between labour and capital does not spring from the
structure of the production process or from the structure of the
economic process. In general the latter process demonstrates that
labour and what we are accustomed to call capital are intermingled; it
shows that they are inseparably linked. Working at any workbench,
whether a relatively primitive or an ultramodern one, a man can easily
see that through his work he enters into two inheritances: the
inheritance of what is given to the whole of humanity in the resources
of nature, and the inheritance of what others have already developed on
the basis of those resources, primarily by developing technology, that
is to say, by producing a whole collection of increasingly perfect
instruments for work. In working, man also "enters into the labour of
others"21. Guided both by our intelligence and by the faith that draws
light from the word of God, we have no difficulty in accepting this
image of the sphere and process of man's labour. It is a consistent
image, one that is humanistic as well as theological. In it man is the
master of the creatures placed at his disposal in the visible world. If
some dependence is discovered in the work process, it is dependence on
the Giver of all the resources of creation, and also on other human
beings, those to whose work and initiative we owe the perfected and
increased possibilities of our own work. All that we can say of
everything in the production process which constitutes a whole
collection of "things", the instruments, the capital, is that it
conditions man's work; we cannot assert that it constitutes as it were
an impersonal "subject" putting man and man's work into a position of
dependence.
This consistent image, in which the principle of the primacy of person
over things is strictly preserved, was broken up in human thought,
sometimes after a long period of incubation in practical living. The
break occurred in such a way that labour was separated from capital and
set in opposition to it, and capital was set in opposition to labour,
as though they were two impersonal forces, two production factors
juxtaposed in the same "economistic" perspective. This way of stating
the issue contained a fundamental error, what we can call the error of
economism, that of considering human labour solely according to its
economic purpose. This fundamental error of thought can and must be
called an error of materialism, in that economism directly or
indirectly includes a conviction of the primacy and superiority of the
material, and directly or indirectly places the spiritual and the
personal (man's activity, moral values and such matters) in a position
of subordination to material reality. This is still not theoretical
materialism in the full sense of the term, but it is certainly
practical materialism, a materialism judged capable of satisfying man's
needs, not so much on the grounds of premises derived from materialist
theory, as on the grounds of a particular way of evaluating things, and
so on the grounds of a certain hierarchy of goods based on the greater
immediate attractiveness of what is material.
The error of thinking in the categories of economism went hand in hand
with the formation of a materialist philosophy, as this philosophy
developed from the most elementary and common phase (also called common
materialism, because it professes to reduce spiritual reality to a
superfluous phenomenon) to the phase of what is called dialectical
materialism. However, within the framework of the present
consideration, it seems that economism had a decisive importancefor the
fundamental issue of human work, in particular for the separation of
labour and capital and for setting them up in opposition as two
production factors viewed in the above mentioned economistic
perspective; and it seems that economism influenced this non-humanistic
way of stating the issue before the materialist philosophical system
did. Nevertheless it is obvious that materialism, including its
dialectical form, is incapable of providing sufficient and definitive
bases for thinking about human work, in order that the primacy of man
over the capital instrument, the primacy of the person over things, may
find in it adequate and irrefutable confirmation and support. In
dialectical materialism too man is not first and foremost the subject
of work and the efficient cause of the production process, but
continues to be understood and treated, in dependence on what is
material, as a kind of "resultant" of the economic or production
relations prevailing at a given period.
Obviously, the antinomy between labour and capital under consideration
here-the antinomy in which labour was separated from capital and set up
in opposition to it, in a certain sense on the ontic level, as if it
were just an element like any other in the economic process-did not
originate merely in the philosophy and economic theories of the
eighteenth century; rather it originated in the whole of the economic
and social practice of that time, the time of the birth and rapid
development of industrialization, in which what was mainly seen was the
possibility of vastly increasing material wealth, means, while the end,
that is to say, man, who should be served by the means, was ignored. It
was this practical error that struck a blow first and foremost against
human labour, against the working man, and caused the ethically just
social reaction already spoken of above. The same error, which is now
part of history, and which was connected with the period of primitive
capitalism and liberalism, can nevertheless be repeated in other
circumstances of time and place, if people's thinking starts from the
same theoretical or practical premises. The only chance there seems to
be for radically overcoming this error is through adequate changes both
in theory and in practice, changes in line with the definite conviction
of the primacy of the person over things, and of human labour over
capital as a whole collection of means of production.
14. Work and Ownership
The historical process briefly presented here has certainly gone beyond
its initial phase, but it is still taking place and indeed is spreading
in the relationships between nations and continents. It needs to be
specified further from another point of view. It is obvious that, when
we speak of opposition between labour and capital, we are not dealing
only with abstract concepts or "impersonal forces" operating in
economic production. Behind both concepts there are people, living,
actual people: on the one side are those who do the work without being
the owners of the means of production, and on the other side those who
act as entrepreneurs and who own these means or represent the owners.
Thus the issue of ownership or property enters from the beginning into
the whole of this difficult historical process. The Encyclical Rerum
Novarum, which has the social question as its theme, stresses this
issue also, recalling and confirming the Church's teaching on
ownership, on the right to private property even when it is a question
of the means of production. The Encyclical Mater et Magistra did the
same.
The above principle, as it was then stated and as it is still taught by
the Church, diverges radically from the programme of collectivism as
proclaimed by Marxism and put into pratice in various countries in the
decades following the time of Leo XIII's Encyclical. At the same time
it differs from the programme of capitalism practised by liberalism and
by the political systems inspired by it. In the latter case, the
difference consists in the way the right to ownership or property is
understood. Christian tradition has never upheld this right as absolute
and untouchable. On the contrary, it has always understood this right
within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods
of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated
to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for
everyone.
Furthermore, in the Church's teaching, ownership has never been
understood in a way that could constitute grounds for social conflict
in labour. As mentioned above, property is acquired first of all
through work in order that it may serve work. This concerns in a
special way ownership of the means of production. Isolating these means
as a separate property in order to set it up in the form of "capital"
in opposition to "labour"-and even to practise exploitation of
labour-is contrary to the very nature of these means and their
possession. They cannot be possessed against labour, they cannot even
be possessed for possession's sake, because the only legitimate title
to their possession- whether in the form of private ownerhip or in the
form of public or collective ownership-is that they should serve
labour, and thus, by serving labour, that they should make possible the
achievement of the first principle of this order, namely, the universal
destination of goods and the right to common use of them. From this
point of view, therefore, in consideration of human labour and of
common access to the goods meant for man, one cannot exclude the
socialization, in suitable conditions, of certain means of production.
In the course of the decades since the publication of the Encyclical
Rerum Novarum, the Church's teaching has always recalled all these
principles, going back to the arguments formulated in a much older
tradition, for example, the well-known arguments of the Summa
Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas22.
In the present document, which has human work as its main theme, it is
right to confirm all the effort with which the Church's teaching has
striven and continues to strive always to ensure the priority of work
and, thereby, man's character as a subject in social life and,
especially, in the dynamic structure of the whole economic process.
From this point of view the position of "rigid" capitalism continues to
remain unacceptable, namely the position that defends the exclusive
right to private ownership of the means of production as an untouchable
"dogma" of economic life. The principle of respect for work demands
that this right should undergo a constructive revision, both in theory
and in practice. If it is true that capital, as the whole of the means
of production, is at the same time the product of the work of
generations, it is equally true that capital is being unceasingly
created through the work done with the help of all these means of
production, and these means can be seen as a great workbench at which
the present generation of workers is working day after day. Obviously
we are dealing here with different kinds of work, not only so-called
manual labour but also the many forms of intellectual work, including
white-collar work and management.
In the light of the above, the many proposals put forward by experts in
Catholic social teaching and by the highest Magisterium of the Church
take on special significance23: proposals for joint ownership of the
means of work, sharing by the workers in the management and/or profits
of businesses, so-called shareholding by labour, etc. Whether these
various proposals can or cannot be applied concretely, it is clear that
recognition of the proper position of labour and the worker in the
production process demands various adaptations in the sphere of the
right to ownership of the means of production. This is so not only in
view of older situations but also, first and foremost, in view of the
whole of the situation and the problems in the second half of the
present century with regard to the so-called Third World and the
various new independent countries that have arisen, especially in
Africa but elsewhere as well, in place of the colonial territories of
the past.
Therefore, while the position of "rigid" capitalism must undergo
continual revision, in order to be reformed from the point of view of
human rights, both human rights in the widest sense and those linked
with man's work, it must be stated that, from the same point of view,
these many deeply desired reforms cannot be achieved by an a priori
elimination of private ownership of the means of production. For it
must be noted that merely taking these means of production (capital)
out of the hands of their private owners is not enough to ensure their
satisfactory socialization. They cease to be the property of a certain
social group, namely the private owners, and become the property of
organized society, coming under the administration and direct control
of another group of people, namely those who, though not owning them,
from the fact of exercising power in society manage them on the level
of the whole national or the local economy.
This group in authority may carry out its task satisfactorily from the
point of view of the priority of labour; but it may also carry it out
badly by claiming for itself a monopoly of the administration and
disposal of the means of production and not refraining even from
offending basic human rights. Thus, merely converting the means of
production into State property in the collectivist system is by no
means equivalent to "socializing" that property. We can speak of
socializing only when the subject character of society is ensured, that
is to say, when on the basis of his work each person is fully entitled
to consider himself a part-owner of the great workbench at which he is
working with every one else. A way towards that goal could be found by
associating labour with the ownership of capital, as far as possible,
and by producing a wide range of intermediate bodies with economic,
social and cultural purposes; they would be bodies enjoying real
autonomy with regard to the public powers, pursuing their specific aims
in honest collaboration with each other and in subordination to the
demands of the common good, and they would be living communities both
in form and in substance, in the sense that the members of each body
would be looked upon and treated as persons and encouraged to take an
active part in the life of the body24.
15. The "Personalist" Argument
Thus, the principle of the priority of labour over capital is a
postulate of the order of social morality. It has key importance both
in the system built on the principle of private ownership of the means
of production and also in the system in which private ownership of
these means has been limited even in a radical way. Labour is in a
sense inseparable from capital; in no way does it accept the antinomy,
that is to say, the separation and opposition with regard to the means
of production that has weighed upon human life in recent centuries as a
result of merely economic premises. When man works, using all the means
of production, he also wishes the fruit of this work to be used by
himself and others, and he wishes to be able to take part in the very
work process as a sharer in responsibility and creativity at the
workbench to which he applies himself.
From this spring certain specific rights of workers, corresponding to
the obligation of work. They will be discussed later. But here it must
be emphasized, in general terms, that the person who works desires not
only due remuneration for his work; he also wishes that, within the
production process, provision be made for him to be able to know that
in his work, even on something that is owned in common, he is working
"for himself". This awareness is extinguished within him in a system of
excessive bureaucratic centralization, which makes the worker feel that
he is just a cog in a huge machine moved from above, that he is for
more reasons than one a mere production instrument rather than a true
subject of work with an initiative of his own. The Church's teaching
has always expressed the strong and deep convinction that man's work
concerns not only the economy but also, and especially, personal
values. The economic system itself and the production process benefit
precisely when these personal values are fully respected. In the mind
of Saint Thomas Aquinas25, this is the principal reason in favour of
private ownership of the means of production. While we accept that for
certain well founded reasons exceptions can be made to the principle of
private ownership-in our own time we even see that the system of
"socialized ownership" has been introduced-nevertheless the personalist
argument still holds good both on the level of principles and on the
practical level. If it is to be rational and fruitful, any
socialization of the means of production must take this argument into
consideration. Every effort must be made to ensure that in this kind of
system also the human person can preserve his awareness of working "for
himself". If this is not done, incalculable damage is inevitably done
throughout the economic process, not only economic damage but first and
foremost damage to man.
IV. RIGHTS OF WORKERS
16. Within the Broad Context of Human Rights
While work, in all its many senses, is an obligation, that is to say a
duty, it is also a source of rights on the part of the worker. These
rights must be examined in the broad context of human rights as a
whole, which are connatural with man, and many of which are proclaimed
by various international organizations and increasingly guaranteed by
the individual States for their citizens Respect for this broad range
of human rights constitutes the fundamental condition for peace in the
modern world: peace both within individual countries and societies and
in international relations, as the Church's Magisterium has several
times noted, especially since the Encyclical Pacem in Terris. The human
rights that flow from work are part of the broader context of those
fundamental rights of the person.
However, within this context they have a specific character
corresponding to the specific nature of human work as outlined above.
It is in keeping with this character that we must view them. Work is,
as has been said, an obligation, that is to say, a duty, on the part of
man. This is true in all the many meanings of the word. Man must work,
both because the Creator has commanded it and because of his own
humanity, which requires work in order to be maintained and developed.
Man must work out of regard for others, especially his own family, but
also for the society he belongs to, the country of which he is a child,
and the whole human family of which he is a member, since he is the
heir to the work of generations and at the same time a sharer in
building the future of those who will come after him in the succession
of history. All this constitutes the moral obligation of work,
understood in its wide sense. When we have to consider the moral
rights, corresponding to this obligation, of every person with regard
to work, we must always keep before our eyes the whole vast range of
points of reference in which the labour of every working subject is
manifested.
For when we speak of the obligation of work and of the rights of the
worker that correspond to this obligation, we think in the first place
of the relationship between the employer, direct or indirect, and the
worker.
The distinction between the direct and the indirect employer is seen to
be very important when one considers both the way in which labour is
actually organized and the possibility of the formation of just or
unjust relationships in the field of labour.
Since the direct employer is the person or institution with whom the
worker enters directly into a work contract in accordance with definite
conditions, we must understand as the indirect employer many different
factors, other than the direct employer, that exercise a determining
influence on the shaping both of the work contract and, consequently,
of just or unjust relationships in the field of human labour.
17. Direct and Indirect Employer
The concept of indirect employer includes both persons and institutions
of various kinds, and also collective labour contracts and the
principles of conduct which are laid down by these persons and
institutions and which determine the whole socioeconomic system or are
its result. The concept of "indirect employer" thus refers to many
different elements. The responsibility of the indirect employer differs
from that of the direct employer-the term itself indicates that the
responsibility is less direct-but it remains a true responsibility: the
indirect employer substantially determines one or other facet of the
labour relationship, thus conditioning the conduct of the direct
employer when the latter determines in concrete terms the actual work
contract and labour relations. This is not to absolve the direct
employer from his own responsibility, but only to draw attention to the
whole network of influences that condition his conduct. When it is a
question of establishing an ethically correct labour policy, all these
influences must be kept in mind. A policy is correct when the objective
rights of the worker are fully respected.
The concept of indirect employer is applicable to every society, and in
the first place to the State. For it is the State that must conduct a
just labour policy. However, it is common knowledge that in the present
system of economic relations in the world there are numerous links
between individual States, links that find expression, for instance, in
the import and export process, that is to say, in the mutual exchange
of economic goods, whether raw materials, semimanufactured goods, or
finished industrial products. These links also create mutual
dependence, and as a result it would be difficult to speak, in the case
of any State, even the economically most powerful, of complete
self-sufficiency or autarky.
Such a system of mutual dependence is in itself normal. However, it can
easily become an occasion for various forms of exploitation or
injustice and as a result influence the labour policy of individual
States; and finally it can influence the individual worker, who is the
proper subject of labour. For instance the highly industrialized
countries, and even more the businesses that direct on a large scale
the means of industrial production (the companies referred to as
multinational or transnational), fix the highest possible prices for
their products, while trying at the same time to fix the lowest
possible prices for raw materials or semi-manufactured goods. This is
one of the causes of an ever increasing disproportion between national
incomes. The gap between most of the richest countries and the poorest
ones is not diminishing or being stabilized but is increasing more and
more, to the detriment, obviously, of the poor countries. Evidently
this must have an effect on local labour policy and on the worker's
situation in the economically disadvantaged societies. Finding himself
in a system thus conditioned, the direct employer fixes working
conditions below the objective requirements of the workers, especially
if he himself wishes to obtain the highest possible profits from the
business which he runs (or from the businesses which he runs, in the
case of a situation of "socialized" ownership of the means of
production).
It is easy to see that this framework of forms of dependence linked
with the concept of the indirect employer is enormously extensive and
complicated. It is determined, in a sense, by all the elements that are
decisive for economic life within a given society and state, but also
by much wider links and forms of dependence. The attainment of the
worker's rights cannot however be doomed to be merely a result of
economic systems which on a larger or smaller scale are guided chiefly
by the criterion of maximum profit. On the contrary, it is respect for
the objective rights of the worker-every kind of worker: manual or
intellectual, industrial or agricultural, etc.-that must constitute the
adequate and fundamental criterion for shaping the whole economy, both
on the level of the individual society and State and within the whole
of the world economic policy and of the systems of international
relationships that derive from it.
Influence in this direction should be exercised by all the
International Organizations whose concern it is, beginning with the
United Nations Organization. It appears that the International Labour
Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations and other bodies too have fresh contributions to offer on this
point in particular. Within the individual States there are ministries
or public departments and also various social institutions set up for
this purpose. All of this effectively indicates the importance of the
indirect employer-as has been said above-in achieving full respect for
the worker's rights, since the rights of the human person are the key
element in the whole of the social moral order.
18. The Employment Issue
When we consider the rights of workers in relation to the "indirect
employer", that is to say, all the agents at the national and
international level that are responsible for the whole orientation of
labour policy, we must first direct our attention to a fundamental
issue: the question of finding work, or, in other words, the issue of
suitable employment for all who are capable of it. The opposite of a
just and right situation in this field is unemployment, that is to say
the lack of work for those who are capable of it. It can be a question
of general unemployment or of unemployment in certain sectors of work.
The role of the agents included under the title of indirect employer is
to act against unemployment, which in all cases is an evil, and which,
when it reaches a certain level, can become a real social disaster. It
is particularly painful when it especially affects young people, who
after appropriate cultural, technical and professional preparation fail
to find work, and see their sincere wish to work and their readiness to
take on their own responsibility for the economic and social
development of the community sadly frustrated. The obligation to
provide unemployment benefits, that is to say, the duty to make
suitable grants indispensable for the subsistence of unemployed workers
and their families, is a duty springing from the fundamental principle
of the moral order in this sphere, namely the principle of the common
use of goods or, to put it in another and still simpler way, the right
to life and subsistence.
In order to meet the danger of unemployment and to ensure employment
for all, the agents defined here as "indirect employer" must make
provision for overall planning with regard to the different kinds of
work by which not only the economic life but also the cultural life of
a given society is shaped; they must also give attention to organizing
that work in a correct and rational way. In the final analysis this
overall concern weighs on the shoulders of the State, but it cannot
mean onesided centralization by the public authorities. Instead, what
is in question is a just and rational coordination, within the
framework of which the initiative of individuals, free groups and local
work centres and complexes must be safeguarded, keeping in mind what
has been said above with regard to the subject character of human
labour.
The fact of the mutual dependence of societies and States and the need
to collaborate in various areas mean that, while preserving the
sovereign rights of each society and State in the field of planning and
organizing labour in its own society, action in this important area
must also be taken in the dimension of international collaboration by
means of the necessary treaties and agreements. Here too the criterion
for these pacts and agreements must more and more be the criterion of
human work considered as a fundamental right of all human beings, work
which gives similar rights to all those who work, in such a way that
the living standard of the workers in the different societies will less
and less show those disturbing differences which are unjust and are apt
to provoke even violent reactions. The International Organizations have
an enormous part to play in this area. They must let themselves be
guided by an exact diagnosis of the complex situations and of the
influence exercised by natural, historical, civil and other such
circumstances. They must also be more highly operative with regard to
plans for action jointly decided on, that is to say, they must be more
effective in carrying them out.
In this direction it is possible to actuate a plan for universal and
proportionate progress by all, in accordance with the guidelines of
Paul VI's Encyclical Populorum Progressio. It must be stressed that the
constitutive element in this progress and also the most adequate way to
verify it in a spirit of justice and peace, which the Church proclaims
and for which she does not cease to pray to the Father of all
individuals and of all peoples, is the continual reappraisal of man's
work, both in the aspect of its objective finality and in the aspect of
the dignity of the subject of all work, that is to say, man. The
progress in question must be made through man and for man and it must
produce its fruit in man. A test of this progress will be the
increasingly mature recognition of the purpose of work and increasingly
universal respect for the rights inherent in work in conformity with
the dignity of man, the subject of work.
Rational planning and the proper organization of human labour in
keeping with individual societies and States should also facilitate the
discovery of the right proportions between the different kinds of
employment: work on the land, in industry, in the various services,
white-collar work and scientific or artistic work, in accordance with
the capacities of individuals and for the common good of each society
and of the whole of mankind. The organization of human life in
accordance with the many possibilities of labour should be matched by a
suitable system of instruction and education, aimed first of all at
developing mature human beings, but also aimed at preparing people
specifically for assuming to good advantage an appropriate place in the
vast and socially differentiated world of work.
As we view the whole human family throughout the world, we cannot fail
to be struck by a disconcerting fact of immense proportions: the fact
that, while conspicuous natural resources remain unused, there are huge
numbers of people who are unemployed or under-employed and countless
multitudes of people suffering from hunger. This is a fact that without
any doubt demonstrates that both within the individual political
communities and in their relationships on the continental and world
level there is something wrong with the organization of work and
employment, precisely at the most critical and socially most important
points.
19. Wages and Other Social Benefits
After outlining the important role that concern for providing
employment for all workers plays in safeguarding respect for the
inalienable rights of man in view of his work, it is worthwhile taking
a closer look at these rights, which in the final analysis are formed
within the relationship between worker and direct employer. All that
has been said above on the subject of the indirect employer is aimed at
defining these relationships more exactly, by showing the many forms of
conditioning within which these relationships are indirectly formed.
This consideration does not however have a purely descriptive purpose;
it is not a brief treatise on economics or politics. It is a matter of
highlighting the deontological and moral aspect. The key problem of
social ethics in this case is that of just remuneration for work done.
In the context of the present there is no more important way for
securing a just relationship between the worker and the employer than
that constituted by remuneration for work. Whether the work is done in
a system of private ownership of the means of production or in a system
where ownership has undergone a certain "socialization", the
relationship between the employer (first and foremost the direct
employer) and the worker is resolved on the basis of the wage, that is
through just remuneration for work done.
It should also be noted that the justice of a socioeconomic system and,
in each case, its just functioning, deserve in the final analysis to be
evaluated by the way in which man's work is properly remunerated in the
system. Here we return once more to the first principle of the whole
ethical and social order, namely, the principle of the common use of
goods. In every system, regardless of the fundamental relationships
within it between capital and labour, wages, that is to say
remuneration for work, are still a practical means whereby the vast
majority of people can have access to those goods which are intended
for common use: both the goods of nature and manufactured goods. Both
kinds of goods become accessible to the worker through the wage which
he receives as remuneration for his work. Hence, in every case, a just
wage is the concrete means of verifying the justice of the whole
socioeconomic system and, in any case, of checking that it is
functioning justly. It is not the only means of checking, but it is a
particularly important one and, in a sense, the key means.
This means of checking concerns above all the family. Just remuneration
for the work of an adult who is responsible for a family means
remuneration which will suffice for establishing and properly
maintaining a family and for providing security for its future. Such
remuneration can be given either through what is called a family
wage-that is, a single salary given to the head of the family fot his
work, sufficient for the needs of the family without the other spouse
having to take up gainful employment outside the home-or through other
social measures such as family allowances or grants to mothers devoting
themselves exclusively to their families. These grants should
correspond to the actual needs, that is, to the number of dependents
for as long as they are not in a position to assume proper
responsibility for their own lives.
Experience confirms that there must be a social re-evaluation of the
mother's role, of the toil connected with it, and of the need that
children have for care, love and affection in order that they may
develop into responsible, morally and religiously mature and
psychologically stable persons. It will redound to the credit of
society to make it possible for a mother-without inhibiting her
freedom, without psychological or practical discrimination, and without
penalizing her as compared with other women-to devote herself to taking
care of her children and educating them in accordance with their needs,
which vary with age. Having to abandon these tasks in order to take up
paid work outside the home is wrong from the point of view of the good
of society and of the family when it contradicts or hinders these
primary goals of the mission of a mother26.
In this context it should be emphasized that, on a more general level,
the whole labour process must be organized and adapted in such a way as
to respect the requirements of the person and his or her forms of life,
above all life in the home, taking into account the individual's age
and sex. It is a fact that in many societies women work in nearly every
sector of life. But it is fitting that they should be able to fulfil
their tasks in accordance with their own nature, without being
discriminated against and without being excluded from jobs for which
they are capable, but also without lack of respect for their family
aspirations and for their specific role in contributing, together with
men, to the good of society. The true advancement of women requires
that labour should be structured in such a way that women do not have
to pay for their advancement by abandoning what is specific to them and
at the expense of the family, in which women as mothers have an
irreplaceable role.
Besides wages, various social benefits intended to ensure the life and
health of workers and their families play a part here. The expenses
involved in health care, especially in the case of accidents at work,
demand that medical assistance should be easily available for workers,
and that as far as possible it should be cheap or even free of charge.
Another sector regarding benefits is the sector associated with the
right to rest. In the first place this involves a regular weekly rest
comprising at least Sunday, and also a longer period of rest, namely
the holiday or vacation taken once a year or possibly in several
shorter periods during the year. A third sector concerns the right to a
pension and to insurance for old age and in case of accidents at work.
Within the sphere of these principal rights, there develops a whole
system of particular rights which, together with remuneration for work,
determine the correct relationship between worker and employer. Among
these rights there should never be overlooked the right to a working
environment and to manufacturing processes which are not harmful to the
workers' physical health or to their moral integrity.
20. Importance of Unions
All these rights, together with the need for the workers themselves to
secure them, give rise to yet another right: the right of association,
that is to form associations for the purpose of defending the vital
interests of those employed in the various professions. These
associations are called labour or trade unions. The vital interests of
the workers are to a certain extent common for all of them; at the same
time however each type of work, each profession, has its own specific
character which should find a particular reflection in these
organizations.
In a sense, unions go back to the mediaeval guilds of artisans, insofar
as those organizations brought together people belonging to the same
craft and thus on the basis of their work. However, unions differ from
the guilds on this essential point: the modern unions grew up from the
struggle of the workers-workers in general but especially the
industrial workers-to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the
entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production. Their task is
to defend the existential interests of workers in all sectors in which
their rights are concerned. The experience of history teaches that
organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life,
especially in modern industrialized societies. Obviously, this does not
mean that only industrial workers can set up associations of this type.
Representatives of every profession can use them to ensure their own
rights. Thus there are unions of agricultural workers and of
white-collar workers; there are also employers' associations. All, as
has been said above, are further divided into groups or subgroups
according to particular professional specializations.
Catholic social teaching does not hold that unions are no more than a
reflection of the "class" structure of society and that they are a
mouthpiece for a class struggle which inevitably governs social life.
They are indeed a mouthpiece for the struggle for social justice, for
the just rights of working people in accordance with their individual
professions. However, this struggle should be seen as a normal
endeavour "for" the just good: in the present case, for the good which
corresponds to the needs and merits of working people associated by
profession; but it is not a struggle "against" others. Even if in
controversial questions the struggle takes on a character of opposition
towards others, this is because it aims at the good of social justice,
not for the sake of "struggle" or in order to eliminate the opponent.
It is characteristic of work that it first and foremost unites people.
In this consists its social power: the power to build a community. In
the final analysis, both those who work and those who manage the means
of production or who own them must in some way be united in this
community. In the light of this fundamental structure of all work-in
the light of the fact that, in the final analysis, labour and capital
are indispensable components of the process of production in any social
system-it is clear that, even if it is because of their work needs that
people unite to secure their rights, their union remains a constructive
factor of social order and solidarity, and it is impossible to ignore
it.
Just efforts to secure the rights of workers who are united by the same
profession should always take into account the limitations imposed by
the general economic situation of the country. Union demands cannot be
turned into a kind of group or class "egoism", although they can and
should also aim at correcting-with a view to the common good of the
whole of society- everything defective in the system of ownership of
the means of production or in the way these are managed. Social and
socioeconomic life is certainly like a system of "connected vessels",
and every social activity directed towards safeguarding the rights of
particular groups should adapt itself to this system.
In this sense, union activity undoubtedly enters the field of politics,
understood as prudent concern for the common good. However, the role of
unions is not to "play politics" in the sense that the expression is
commonly understood today. Unions do not have the character of
political parties struggling for power; they should not be subjected to
the decision of political parties or have too close links with them. In
fact, in such a situation they easily lose contact with their specific
role, which is to secure the just rights of workers within the
£ramework of the common good of the whole of society; instead
they become an instrument used for other purposes.
Speaking of the protection of the just rights of workers according to
their individual professions, we must of course always keep in mind
that which determines the subjective character of work in each
profession, but at the same time, indeed before all else, we must keep
in mind that which conditions the specific dignity of the subject of
the work. The activity of union organizations opens up many
possibilities in this respect, including their efforts to instruct and
educate the workers and to foster their selfeducation. Praise is due to
the work of the schools, what are known as workers' or people's
universities and the training programmes and courses which have
developed and are still developing this field of activity. It is always
to be hoped that, thanks to the work of their unions, workers will not
only have more, but above all be more: in other words, that they will
realize their humanity more fully in every respect.
One method used by unions in pursuing the just rights of their members
is the strike or work stoppage, as a kind of ultimatum to the competent
bodies, especially the employers. This method is recognized by Catholic
social teaching as legitimate in the proper conditions and within just
limits. In this connection workers should be assured the right to
strike, without being subjected to personal penal sanctions for taking
part in a strike. While admitting that it is a legitimate means, we
must at the same time emphasize that a strike remains, in a sense, an
extreme means. It must not be abused; it must not be abused especially
for "political" purposes. Furthermore it must never be forgotten that,
when essential community services are in question, they must in every
case be ensured, if necessary by means of appropriate legislation.
Abuse of the strike weapon can lead to the paralysis of the whole of
socioeconomic life, and this is contrary to the requirements of the
common good of society, which also corresponds to the properly
understood nature of work itself.
21. Dignity of Agricultural Work
All that has been said thus far on the dignity of work, on the
objective and subjective dimension of human work, can be directly
applied to the question of agricultural work and to the situation of
the person who cultivates the earth by toiling in the fields. This is a
vast sector of work on our planet, a sector not restricted to one or
other continent, nor limited to the societies which have already
attained a certain level of development and progress. The world of
agriculture, which provides society with the goods it needs for its
daily sustenance, is of fundamental importance. The conditions of the
rural population and of agricultural work vary from place to place, and
the social position of agricultural workers differs from country to
country. This depends not only on the level of development of
agricultural technology but also, and perhaps more, on the recognition
of the just rights of agricultural workers and, finally, on the level
of awareness regarding the social ethics of work.
Agricultural work involves considerable difficulties, including
unremitting and sometimes exhausting physical effort and a lack of
appreciation on the part of society, to the point of making
agricultural people feel that they are social outcasts and of speeding
up the phenomenon of their mass exodus from the countryside to the
cities and unfortunately to still more dehumanizing living conditions.
Added to this are the lack of adequate professional training and of
proper equipment, the spread of a certain individualism, and also
objectively unjust situations. In certain developing countries,
millions of people are forced to cultivate the land belonging to others
and are exploited by the big landowners, without any hope of ever being
able to gain possession of even a small piece of land of their own.
There is a lack of forms of legal protection for the agricultural
workers themselves and for their families in case of old age, sickness
or unemployment. Long days of hard physical work are paid miserably.
Land which could be cultivated is left abandoned by the owners. Legal
titles to possession of a small portion of land that someone has
personally cultivated for years are disregarded or left defenceless
against the "land hunger" of more powerful individuals or groups. But
even in the economically developed countries, where scientific
research, technological achievements and State policy have brought
agriculture to a very advanced level, the right to work can be
infringed when the farm workers are denied the possibility of sharing
in decisions concerning their services, or when they are denied the
right to free association with a view to their just advancement
socially, culturally and economically.
In many situations radical and urgent changes are therefore needed in
order to restore to agriculture-and to rural people-their just value as
the basis for a healthy economy, within the social community's
development as a whole. Thus it is necessary to proclaim and promote
the dignity of work, of all work but especially of agricultural work,
in which man so eloquently "subdues" the earth he has received as a
gift from God and affirms his "dominion" in the visible world.
22. The Disabled Person and Work
Recently, national communities and international organizations have
turned their attention to another question connected with work, one
full of implications: the question of disabled people. They too are
fully human subjects with corresponding innate, sacred and inviolable
rights, and, in spite of the limitations and sufferings affecting their
bodies and faculties, they point up more clearly the dignity and
greatness of man. Since disabled people are subjects with all their
rights, they should be helped to participate in the life of society in
all its aspects and at all the levels accessible to their capacities.
The disabled person is one of us and participates fully in the same
humanity that we possess. It would be radically unworthy of man, and a
denial of our common humanity, to admit to the life of the community,
and thus admit to work, only those who are fully functional. To do so
would be to practise a serious form of discrimination, that of the
strong and healthy against the weak and sick. Work in the objective
sense should be subordinated, in this circumstance too, to the dignity
of man, to the subject of work and not to economic advantage.
The various bodies involved in the world of labour, both the direct and
the indirect employer, should therefore by means of effective and
appropriate measures foster the right of disabled people to
professional training and work, so that they can be given a productive
activity suited to them. Many practical problems arise at this point,
as well as legal and economic ones; but the community, that is to say,
the public authorities, associations and intermediate groups, business
enterprises and the disabled themselves should pool their ideas and
resources so as to attain this goal that must not be shirked: that
disabled people may be offered work according to their capabilities,
for this is demanded by their dignity as persons and as subjects of
work. Each community will be able to set up suitable structures for
finding or creating jobs for such people both in the usual public or
private enterprises, by offering them ordinary or suitably adapted
jobs, and in what are called "protected" enterprises and surroundings.
Careful attention must be devoted to the physical and psychological
working conditions of disabled people-as for all workers-to their just
remuneration, to the possibility of their promotion, and to the
elimination of various obstacles. Without hiding the fact that this is
a complex and difficult task, it is to be hoped that a correct concept
of labour in the subjective sense will produce a situation which will
make it possible for disabled people to feel that they are not cut off
from the working world or dependent upon society, but that they are
full-scale subjects of work, useful, respected for their human dignity
and called to contribute to the progress and welfare of their families
and of the community according to their particular capacities.
23. Work and the Emigration Question
Finally, we must say at least a few words on the subject of emigration
in search of work. This is an age-old phenomenon which nevertheless
continues to be repeated and is still today very widespread as a result
of the complexities of modern life. Man has the right to leave his
native land for various motives-and also the right to return-in order
to seek better conditions of life in another country. This fact is
certainly not without difficulties of various kinds. Above all it
generally constitutes a loss for the country which is left behind. It
is the departure of a person who is also a member of a great community
united by history, tradition and culture; and that person must begin
life in the midst of another society united by a different culture and
very often by a different language. In this case, it is the loss of a
subject of work, whose efforts of mind and body could contribute to the
common good of his own country, but these efforts, this contribution,
are instead offered to another society which in a sense has less right
to them than the person's country of origin.
Nevertheless, even if emigration is in some aspects an evil, in certain
circumstances it is, as the phrase goes, a necessary evil. Everything
should be done-and certainly much is being done to this end-to prevent
this material evil from causing greater moral harm; indeed every
possible effort should be made to ensure that it may bring benefit to
the emigrant's personal, family and social life, both for the country
to which he goes and the country which he leaves. In this area much
depends on just legislation, in particular with regard to the rights of
workers. It is obvious that the question of just legislation enters
into the context of the present considerations, especially from the
point of view of these rights.
The most important thing is that the person working away from his
native land, whether as a permanent emigrant or as a seasonal worker,
should not be placed at a disadvantage in comparison with the other
workers in that society in the matter of working rights. Emigration in
search of work must in no way become an opportunity for financial or
social exploitation. As regards the work relationship, the same
criteria should be applied to immigrant workers as to all other workers
in the society concerned. The value of work should be measured by the
same standard and not according to the difference in nationality,
religion or race. For even greater reason the situation of constraint
in which the emigrant may find himself should not be exploited. All
these circumstances should categorically give way, after special
qualifications have of course been taken into consideration, to the
fundamental value of work, which is bound up with the dignity of the
human person. Once more the fundamental principle must be repeated: the
hierarchy of values and the profound meaning of work itself require
that capital should be at the service of labour and not labour at the
service of capital.
V. ELEMENTS FOR A SPIRITUALITY OF WORK
24. A Particular Task for the Church
It is right to devote the last part of these reflections about human
work, on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the Encyclical
Rerum Novarum, to the spirituality of work in the Christian sense.
Since work in its subjective aspect is always a personal action, an
actus personae, it follows that the whole person, body and spirit,
participates in it, whether it is manual or intellectual work. It is
also to the whole person that the word of the living God is directed,
the evangelical message of salvation, in which we find many points
which concern human work and which throw particular light on it. These
points need to be properly assimilated: an inner effort on the part of
the human spirit, guided by faith, hope and charity, is needed in order
that through these points the work of the individual human being may be
given the meaning which it has in the eyes of God and by means of which
work enters into the salvation process on a par with the other ordinary
yet particularly important components of its texture.
The Church considers it her duty to speak out on work from the
viewpoint of its human value and of the moral order to which it
belongs, and she sees this as one of her important tasks within the
service that she renders to the evangelical message as a whole. At the
same time she sees it as her particular duty to form a spirituality of
work which will help all people to come closer, through work, to God,
the Creator and Redeemer, to participate in his salvific plan for man
and the world and to deepen their friendship with Christ in their lives
by accepting, through faith, a living participation in his threefold
mission as Priest, Prophet and King, as the Second Vatican Council so
eloquently teaches.
25. Work as a Sharing in the Activity of the Creator
As the Second Vatican Council says, "throughout the course of the
centuries, men have laboured to better the circumstances of their lives
through a monumental amount of individual and collective effort. To
believers, this point is settled: considered in itself, such human
activity accords with God's will. For man, created to God's image,
received a mandate to subject to himself the earth and all that it
contains, and to govern the world with justice and holiness; a mandate
to relate himself and the totality of things to him who was to be
acknowledged as the Lord and Creator of all. Thus, by the subjection of
all things to man, the name of God would be wonderful in all the
earth"27.
The word of God's revelation is profoundly marked by the fundamental
truth that man, created in the image of God, shares by his work in the
activity of the Creator and that, within the limits of his own human
capabilities, man in a sense continues to develop that activity, and
perfects it as he advances further and further in the discovery of the
resources and values contained in the whole of creation. We find this
truth at the very beginning of Sacred Scripture, in the Book of
Genesis, where the creation activity itself is presented in the form of
"work" done by God during "six days"28, "resting" on the seventh day29.
Besides, the last book of Sacred Scripture echoes the same respect for
what God has done through his creative "work" when it proclaims: "Great
and wonderful are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty"30; this is
similar to the Book of Genesis, which concludes the description of each
day of creation with the statement: "And God saw that it was good"31.
This description of creation, which we find in the very first chapter
of the Book of Genesis, is also in a sense the first "gospel of work".
For it shows what the dignity of work consists of: it teaches that man
ought to imitate God, his Creator, in working, because man alone has
the unique characteristic of likeness to God. Man ought to imitate God
both in working and also in resting, since God himself wished to
present his own creative activity under the form of work and rest. This
activity by God in the world always continues, as the words of Christ
attest: "My Father is working still ..."32: he works with creative
power by sustaining in existence the world that he called into being
from nothing, and he works with salvific power in the hearts of those
whom from the beginning he has destined for "rest"33 in union with
himself in his "Father's house"34. Therefore man's work too not only
requires a rest every "seventh day"35), but also cannot consist in the
mere exercise of human strength in external action; it must leave room
for man to prepare himself, by becoming more and more what in the will
of God he ought to be, for the "rest" that the Lord reserves for his
servants and friends36.
Awareness that man's work is a participation in God's activity ought to
permeate, as the Council teaches, even "the most ordinary everyday
activities. For, while providing the substance of life for themselves
and their families, men and women are performing their activities in a
way which appropriately benefits society. They can justly consider that
by their labour they are unfolding the Creator's work, consulting the
advantages of their brothers and sisters, and contributing by their
personal industry to the realization in history of the divine plan"37.
This Christian spirituality of work should be a heritage shared by all.
Especially in the modern age, the spirituality of work should show the
maturity called for by the tensions and restlessness of mind and heart.
"Far from thinking that works produced by man's own talent and energy
are in opposition to God's power, and that the rational creature exists
as a kind of rival to the Creator, Christians are convinced that the
triumphs of the human race are a sign of God's greatness and the
flowering of his own mysterious design. For the greater man's power
becomes, the farther his individual and community responsibility
extends. ... People are not deterred by the Christian message from
building up the world, or impelled to neglect the welfare of their
fellows. They are, rather, more stringently bound to do these very
things"38.
The knowledge that by means of work man shares in the work of creation
constitutes the most profound motive for undertaking it in various
sectors. "The faithful, therefore", we read in the Constitution Lumen
Gentium, "must learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation,
and its orientation to the praise of God. Even by their secular
activity they must assist one another to live holier lives. In this way
the world will be permeated by the spirit of Christ and more
effectively achieve its purpose in justice, charity and peace...
Therefore, by their competence in secular fields and by their personal
activity, elevated from within by the grace of Christ, let them work
vigorously so that by human labour, technical skill, and civil culture
created goods may be perfected according to the design of the Creator
and the light of his Word"39.
26. Christ , the Man of Work
The truth that by means of work man participates in the activity of God
himself, his Creator, was given particular prominence by Jesus
Christ-the Jesus at whom many of his first listeners in Nazareth "were
astonished, saying, 'Where did this man get all this? What is the
wisdom given to him?.. Is not this the carpenter?'"40. For Jesus not
only proclaimed but first and foremost fulfilled by his deeds the
"gospel", the word of eternal Wisdom, that had been entrusted to him.
Therefore this was also "the gospel of work", because he who proclaimed
it was himself a man of work, a craftsman like Joseph of Nazareth41.
And if we do not find in his words a special command to work-but rather
on one occasion a prohibition against too much anxiety about work and
life42- at the same time the eloquence of the life of Christ is
unequivocal: he belongs to the "working world", he has appreciation and
respect for human work. It can indeed be said that he looks with love
upon human work and the different forms that it takes, seeing in each
one of these forms a particular facet of man's likeness with God, the
Creator and Father. Is it not he who says: "My Father is the
vinedresser"43, and in various ways puts into his teaching the
fundamental truth about work which is already expressed in the whole
tradition of the Old Testament, beginning with the Book of Genesis?
The books of the Old Testament contain many references to human work
and to the individual professions exercised by man: for example, the
doctor44, the pharmacist45, the craftsman or artist46, the
blacksmith47-we could apply these words to today's foundry-workers-the
potter48, the farmer49, the scholar50, the sailor51, the builder52, the
musician53, the shepherd54, and the fisherman55. The words of praise
for the work of women are well known56. In his parables on the Kingdom
of God Jesus Christ constantly refers to human work: that of the
shepherd57, the farmer58, the doctor59, the sower60, the householder61,
the servant62, the steward63, the fisherman64, the merchant65, the
labourer66. He also speaks of the various form of women's work67. He
compares the apostolate to the manual work of harvesters68 or
fishermen69. He refers to the work of scholars too70.
This teaching of Christ on work, based on the example of his life
during his years in Nazareth, finds a particularly lively echo in the
teaching of the Apostle Paul. Paul boasts of working at his trade (he
was probably a tent-maker)71, and thanks to that work he was able even
as an Apostle to earn his own bread72. "With toil and labour we worked
night and day, that we might not burden any of you"73. Hence his
instructions, in the form of exhortation and command, on the subject of
work: "Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ
to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living", he writes
to the Thessalonians74. In fact, noting that some "are living in
idleness ... not doing any work"75, the Apostle does not hesitate to
say in the same context: "If any one will not work, let him not eat"76.
In another passage he encourages his readers: "Whatever your task, work
heartly, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord
you will receive the inheritance as your reward"77.
The teachings of the Apostle of the Gentiles obviously have key
importance for the morality and spirituality of human work. They are an
important complement to the great though discreet gospel of work that
we find in the life and parables of Christ, in what Jesus "did and
taught"78.
On the basis of these illuminations emanating from the Source himself,
the Church has always proclaimed what we find expressed in modern terms
in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council: "Just as human activity
proceeds from man, so it is ordered towards man. For when a man works
he not only alters things and society, he develops himself as well. He
learns much, he cultivates his resources, he goes outside of himself
and beyond himself. Rightly understood, this kind of growth is of
greater value than any external riches which can be garnered ... Hence,
the norm of human activity is this: that in accord with the divine plan
and will, it should harmonize with the genuine good of the human race,
and allow people as individuals and as members of society to pursue
their total vocation and fulfil it"79.
Such a vision of the values of human work, or in other words such a
spirituality of work, fully explains what we read in the same section
of the Council's Pastoral Constitution with regard to the right meaning
of progress: "A person is more precious for what he is than for what he
has. Similarly, all that people do to obtain greater justice, wider
brotherhood, and a more humane ordering of social relationships has
greater worth than technical advances. For these advances can supply
the material for human progress, but of themselves alone they can never
actually bring it about"80.
This teaching on the question of progress and development-a subject
that dominates presentday thought-can be understood only as the fruit
of a tested spirituality of human work; and it is only on the basis of
such a spirituality that it can be realized and put into practice. This
is the teaching, and also the programme, that has its roots in "the
gospel of work".
27. Human Work in the Light of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ
There is yet another aspect of human work, an essential dimension of
it, that is profoundly imbued with the spirituality based on the
Gospel. All work, whether manual or intellectual, is inevitably linked
with toil. The Book of Genesis expresses it in a truly penetrating
manner: the original blessing of work contained in the very mystery of
creation and connected with man's elevation as the image of God is
contrasted with the curse that sin brought with it: "Cursed is the
ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your
life"81. This toil connected with work marks the way of human life on
earth and constitutes an announcement of death: "In the sweat of your
face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it
you were taken"82. Almost as an echo of these words, the author of one
of the Wisdom books says: "Then I considered all that my hands had done
and the toil I had spent in doing it"83. There is no one on earth who
could not apply these words to himself.
In a sense, the final word of the Gospel on this matter as on others is
found in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. It is here that we must
seek an answer to these problems so important for the spirituality of
human work. The Paschal Mystery contains the Cross of Christ and his
obedience unto death, which the Apostle contrasts with the disobedience
which from the beginning has burdened man's history on earth84. It also
contains the elevation of Christ, who by means of death on a Cross
returns to his disciples in the Resurrection with the power of the Holy
Spirit.
Sweat and toil, which work necessarily involves the present condition
of the human race, present the Christian and everyone who is called to
follow Christ with the possibility of sharing lovingly in the work that
Christ came to do85. This work of salvation came about through
suffering and death on a Cross. By enduring the toil of work in union
with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the Son of
God for the redemption of humanity. He shows himself a true disciple of
Christ by carrying the cross in his turn every day86 in the activity
that he is called upon to perform.
Christ, "undergoing death itself for all of us sinners, taught us by
example that we too must shoulder that cross which the world and the
flesh inflict upon those who pursue peace and justice"; but also, at
the same time, "appointed Lord by his Resurrection and given all
authority in heaven and on earth, Christ is nòw at work in
people's hearts through the power of his Spirit... He animates,
purifies, and strengthens those noble longings too, by which the human
family strives to make its life more human and to render the whole
earth submissive to this goal"87.
The Christian finds in human work a small part of the Cross of Christ
and accepts it in the same spirit of redemption in which Christ
accepted his Cross for us. In work, thanks to the light that penetrates
us from the Resurrection of Christ, we always find a glimmer of new
life, of the new good, as if it were an announcement of "the new
heavens and the new earth"88 in which man and the world participate
precisely through the toil that goes with work. Through toil-and never
without it. On the one hand this confirms the indispensability of the
Cross in the spirituality of human work; on the other hand the Cross
which this toil constitutes reveals a new good springing from work
itself, from work understood in depth and in all its aspects and never
apart from work.
Is this new good-the fruit of human work-already a small part of that
"new earth" where justice dwells89? If it is true that the many forms
of toil that go with man's work are a small part of the Cross of
Christ, what is the relationship of this new good to the Resurrection
of Christ?
The Council seeks to reply to this question also, drawing light from
the very sources of the revealed word: "Therefore, while we are warned
that it profits a man nothing if he gains the whole world and loses
himself (cf. Lk 9: 25), the expectation of a new earth must not weaken
but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this one. For here
grows the body of a new human family, a body which even now is able to
give some kind of foreshadowing of the new age. Earthly progress must
be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ's kingdom.
Nevertheless, to the extent that the former can contribute to the
better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom
of God"90.
In these present reflections devoted to human work we have tried to
emphasize everything that seemed essential to it, since it is through
man's labour that not only "the fruits of our activity" but also "human
dignity, brotherhood and freedom" must increase on earth91. Let the
Christian who listens to the word of the living God, uniting work with
prayer, know the place that his work has not only in earthly progress
but also in the development ot the Kingdom of God, to which we are all
called through the power of the Holy Spirit and through the word of the
Gospel.
In concluding these reflections, I gladly impart the Apostolic Blessing
to all of you, venerable Brothers and beloved sons and daughters.
I prepared this document for publication on 15 May last, on the
ninetieth anniversary of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, but it is only
after my stay in hospital that I have been able to revise it
definitively.
Given at Castel Gandolfo, on the fourteenth day of September, the Feast
of the Triumph of the Cross, in the year 1981, the third of the
Pontificate.
JOHN PAUL II
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1 Cf. Ps 127(128):2; cf. also Gen 3:17-19; Prov. 10:22; Ex 1:8-14; Jer 22:13.
2 Cf. Gen 1:26.
3 Cf. Gen 1:28.
4 Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, 14: AAS 71 (1979), p. 284.
5 Cf. Ps 127(128):2.
6 Gen 3:19.
7 Cf. Mt 13:52.
8 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 38: AAS 58 (1966), p. 1055.
9 Gen 1: 27.
10 Gen 1:28.
11 Cf. Heb 2:17; Phil 2:5-8.
12 Cf. Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: AAS 23 (1931), p. 221.
13 Dt 24:15; Jas 5:4; and also Gen 4:10.
14 Cf. Gen 1:28.
15 Cf. Gen 1:26-27.
16 Gen 3:19.
17 Heb 6:8; cf. Gen 3:18.
18 Cf. Summa Th. I-II, q. 40, a. 1, c.; I-II, q. 34, a. 2, ad 1.
19 Cf. Summa Th. I-II, q. 40, a. 1, c.; I-II, q. 34, a. 2, ad 1.
20 Cf. Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: AAS 23 (1931), pp. 221-222.
21 Cf. Jn 4:38.
22 On the right to property see Summa Th., II-II, q. 66, arts. 2 and 6;
De Regimine Principum, book 1, chapters 15 and 17. On the social
function of property see Summa Th., II-II, q. 134, art. 1, ad 3.
23 Cf. Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: AAS 23 (1931), p.
199; Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 68: AAS 58 (1966), pp.
1089-1090.
24 Cf. Pope John XXIII, Encyclical Mater et Magistra: AAS 53 (1961), p. 419.
25 Cf. Summa Th., II-II, q. 65, a. 2.
26 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 67: AAS 58 (1966), p. 1089.
27 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 34: AAS 58 (1966), pp.
1052-1053.
28 Cf. Gen 2:2; Ex 20:8, 11; Dt 5:12-14.
29 Cf.Gen 2:3.
30 Rev 15: 3.
31 Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31.
32 Jn 5:17.
33 Cf. Heb 4:1, 9-10.
34 Jn 14:2.
35 Cf. Dt 5:12-14; Ex 20:8-12.
36 Cf. Mt 25:21.
37 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 34: AAS 58 (1966), pp.
1052-1053.
38 Ibid.
39 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council; Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 36: AAS 57 (1965), p. 41.
40 Mk 6:2-3.
41 Cf. Mt 13:55.
42 Cf. Mt 6:25-34.
43 Jn 15:1.
44 Cf. Sir 38:1-3.
45 Cf. Sir 38:4-8.
46 Cf. Ex 31:1-5; Sir 38:27.
47 Cf. Gen 4:22; Is 44:12.
48 Cf. Jer 18:3-4; Sir 38:29-30.
49 Cf. Gen 9:20; Is 5:1-2.
50 Cf. Eccles 12:9-12; Sir 39:1-8.
51 Cf. Ps :107(108): 23-30; Wis 14: 2-3 a.
52 Cf. Gen 11:3; 2 Kings 12:12-13; 22:5-6.
53 Cf. Gen 4:21.
54 Cf. Gen 4:2; 37:3; Ex 3:1; 1 Sam 16:11; et passim.
55 Cf. Ezk 47:10.
56 Cf. Prov 31:15-27.
57 E.g. Jn 10:1-16.
58 Cf. Mk 12:1-12.
59 Cf. Lk 4:23.
60 Cf. Mk 4:1-9.
61 Cf. Mt 13:52.
62 Cf. Mt 24:45; Lk 12:42-48.
63 Cf. Lk 16:1-8.
64 Cf. Mt 13:47-50.
65 Cf. Mt 13:45-46.
66 Cf. Mt 20:1-16.
67 Cf. Mt 13:33; Lk 15:8-9.
68 Cf. Mt 9:37; Jn 4:35-38.
69 Cf. Mt 4:19.
70 Cf. Mt 13:52.
71 Cf. Acts 18:3.
72 Cf. Acts 20:34-35.
73 2 Thess 3:8. Saint Paul recognizes that missionaries have a right to
their keep: 1 Cor 9:6-14; Gal 6:6; 2 Thess 3:9; cf. Lk 10: 7.
74 2 Thess 3:12.
75 2 Thess 3:11.
76 2 Thess 3:10.
77 Col 3:23-24.
78 Cf. Acts 1:1.
79 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 35: AAS 58 (1966), pp.
1053.
80 Ibid.
81 Gen 3:17.
82 Gen 3:19.
83 Eccles 2:11.
84 Cf. Rom 5:19.
85 Cf. Jn 17:4.
86 Cf. Lk 9:23.
87 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 38: AAS 58 (1966), pp.
1055-1056.
88 Cf. 2 Pt 3:13; Rev 21:1.
89 Cf. 2 Pt 3:13.
90 Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 39: AAS 58 (1966), p. 1057.
91 Ibid.