To cure this ill, socialists incite the poor to a jealous hatred of those who possess. They claim that all private property must be abolished, that each person's goods must be common to all.
That their administration must revert to municipalities or to the State. Through this transfer of property and this equal distribution of wealth and its advantages among citizens, they flatter themselves with offering an effective remedy to present ills.
But such a theory, far from being capable of ending the conflict, would harm the worker if put into practice. Moreover, it is supremely unjust, as it violates the legitimate rights of property owners, distorts the functions of the State, and tends to completely overturn the social order.
Socialism is harmful to the worker. Indeed, as is easy to understand, the intrinsic reason for the work undertaken by anyone practicing a trade, the immediate goal aimed at by the worker, is to acquire property that he will own as his own and as belonging to him.
For, if he places his strength and energy at the disposal of others, it is evidently only to obtain the means to provide for his upkeep and the needs of life. He expects from his labor the strict and rigorous right not only to receive his wages but also to use them as he sees fit.
If, therefore, by reducing his expenses, he has managed to save a little and if, to ensure its preservation, he has, for example, invested it in a field, that field is assuredly nothing but transformed wages. The property thus acquired will belong to the worker in the same way as the remuneration for his labor.
Now, it is evident that this constitutes precisely the right to movable and immovable property. Thus, this conversion of private property into collective property, so highly praised by socialism, would have no other effect than to make the situation of workers more precarious, by depriving them of the free disposal of their wages and thereby removing all hope and possibility of increasing their patrimony and improving their condition.
But, and this seems even more serious, the proposed remedy is in flagrant opposition to justice, for private and personal property is a natural right for man. Indeed, in this respect, there is a very great difference between man and animals without reason. The latter do not govern themselves; they are directed and governed by nature, through a double instinct which, on the one hand, keeps their activity constantly alert and develops their strength, and on the other, simultaneously provokes and circumscribes each of their movements.
A first instinct drives them to the preservation and defense of their own life, a second to the propagation and preservation of the species. Animals easily achieve this double result by using the things present within their reach. They would, moreover, be incapable of aiming beyond, since they are moved only by the senses and by each particular object that the senses perceive. Human nature is quite different.
In man, first of all, the faculties of the animal are found in their perfection. Consequently, it falls to him, as to the animal, to enjoy material objects. But these faculties, even possessed in their fullness, far from constituting the whole of human nature, are far inferior to it and are made to obey and be subject to it.
What excels in us, what makes us men and essentially distinguishes us from the beast, is the spirit or reason. By virtue of this prerogative, we must recognize in man not only the general faculty of using external things, in the manner of all animals, but also the stable and perpetual right to possess them, both those that are consumed by use and those that remain after having served us.
The True Remedies
The first principle to put forward is that man must accept this necessity of his nature which makes it impossible, in civil society, for all to be raised to the same level. Undoubtedly, this is what socialists pursue.
But against nature, all efforts are in vain. It is nature, in fact, that has arranged among men differences as multiple as they are profound: differences in intelligence, talent, skill, health, strength; necessary differences, from which the inequality of conditions spontaneously arises.
This inequality, moreover, turns to the profit of all, of society as well as individuals. Social life requires a very varied organization and very diverse functions. What precisely leads men to share these functions is above all the difference in their respective conditions.
Regarding labor in particular, man, even in the state of innocence, was not destined to live in idleness. But what the will would have freely embraced as a pleasant exercise became, after sin, a necessity imposed as an expiation and accompanied by suffering. "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life".
Likewise, all the other calamities that have befallen man will have no end or respite here below, because the fatal fruits of sin are bitter, harsh, acrid, and they necessarily accompany man until his last breath. Yes, pain and suffering are the lot of humanity, and no matter how much men try everything, attempt everything to banish them, they will never succeed, no matter what resources they deploy or what forces they set in motion.
If there are those who claim to have the power to do so, if there are those who promise the poor a life free from suffering and hardship, entirely given over to rest and perpetual enjoyments, those certainly deceive the people and set traps for them from which will emerge, in the future, calamities more terrible than those of the present. It is better to see things as they are, and, as We have said, to seek elsewhere a remedy capable of alleviating our ills.
The two classes are not enemies, but complementary. Rich and poor. Capital and labor.
The capital error in the present question is to believe that the two classes are natural enemies of one another, as if nature had armed the rich and the poor to fight each other in an obstinate duel. This is an assertion so unreasonable and false that the truth is found in an absolutely opposite doctrine.
In the human body, the members, despite their diversity, adapt marvelously to one another, so as to form a whole that is exactly proportioned and could be called symmetrical. Thus, in society, the two classes are destined by nature to unite harmoniously and to hold each other in perfect balance. They have an imperative need for one another: there can be no capital without labor, nor labor without capital.
Concord begets order and beauty. On the contrary, from perpetual conflict can only result the confusion of savage struggles. Now, to settle this conflict and cut the evil at its root, Christian institutions have at their disposal admirable and varied means.
The Duties of Justice for Workers and Those for Employers.
And first of all, the whole body of religious truths, of which the Church is the guardian and interpreter, is of a nature to bring together and reconcile the rich and the poor, by reminding both classes of their mutual duties. Above all other duties, we must place those that derive from justice.
Among these duties, here are those that concern the poor and the worker. He must provide integrally and faithfully all the work to which he has committed himself by a contract that is free and in accordance with equity. He must not harm his employer, either in his property or in his person. His demands themselves must be free from violence and never take the form of sedition.
He must flee wicked men who, in deceitful speeches, suggest exaggerated hopes to him and make him great promises, which only lead to sterile regrets and the ruin of fortunes.
As for the rich and employers, they must not treat the worker as a slave; it is just that they respect in him the dignity of man, further elevated by that of the Christian. Manual labor, by the common testimony of reason and Christian philosophy, far from being a subject of shame, honors man, because it provides him with a noble means of sustaining his life.
What is shameful and inhuman is to use man as a vile instrument of profit, to value him only in proportion to the vigor of his arms. Christianity, moreover, prescribes that account be taken of the spiritual interests of the worker and the good of his soul. It falls to employers to ensure that the worker has sufficient time to devote to piety; that he is not delivered to seduction and corrupting solicitations; that nothing comes to weaken in him the spirit of family or the habits of thrift. Employers are also forbidden to impose on their subordinates work beyond their strength or inconsistent with their age or sex.
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"A devouring usury: Capital does not produce by itself. 'Money does not beget money.' But it produces really and therefore yields legitimately if it unites with labor to assist the worker, whether employer, merchant, or laborer, by providing him with raw materials or instruments of work, or by marketing his products. It thus forms with him a sort of association of which it shares the risks and, on this condition, it can, without usury, draw a profit proportional to the service rendered."
(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a 2ae, Q. LXXVIII, art. 2, Ad 5um)
Source: The Encyclical Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII) "On the Condition of Workers" – By Canon P. Tiberghien – 1932