Condemning Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism: the Church’s view on the Nature of Work

Pope Saint John Paul II was very aware of the rich philosophical, historical, political, and theological traditions he inherited from the many years of human history preceding him.  As a result, many of his own writings explicitly echo that which his predecessors wrote.  His encyclical Laborem Exercens is no exception.  Written to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, JPII’s encyclical on work takes up many of the same themes introduced by Leo XIII.  Though there are many areas of overlap between these two documents, two themes stand out among the others as profoundly applicable today: Man’s relation to work, and a caution against two major economic systems which degrade Man to merely an item for use.

JPII attests to the intricate relation between Man’s nature and work in a very direct statement.  “The Church,” he writes, “is convinced that work is a fundamental dimension of man's existence on earth (LE, 4).”  This conviction is tied in with Man’s anthropology as rational and yet still animal: “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 (LE, introduction).”  For JPII, Man works because he needs to live, but he also works because his reason imposes an obligation to care for those without reason.

Leo XIII introduces the intricate link between Man’s nature and his vocation to work in a more roundabout way.  He begins with a scathing indictment of socialism, proclaiming that, “every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own (RN, 6).”  For Leo, the right to private property is not simply a right to dominate, however: it is linked to Man’s fundamental need to work, and by extension to live.  “Man's needs do not die out, but forever recur,” he writes, “although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow.  Nature accordingly must have given to Man a source that is stable and remaining always with him, from which he might look to draw continual supplies.  And this stable condition of things he finds solely in the earth and its fruits (RN, 7).”  It is only because Man is a person, who can think and abstract what he will need tomorrow, and who will need to work in order to make those needs met that Man has the right to property.

As we have seen, Leo actually begins with a reflection on social economic systems, and derives from their errs and insight into Man’s nature as working being.  He makes no bones about rejecting socialism in its entirety (“the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind [RN, 15],” but socialism is not the only economic system to receive condemnation.  In fact, Leo specifically notes unbridled capitalism as the grave error which gives rise to socialism as a supposed remedy.  “Working men have been surrendered,” he writes, “isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition… the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. (RN, 3).”

JPII is no stranger to socialism or communism.  As such, he has no qualms about echoing Leo’s condemnation of them as economic systems.  Moreover, he preserves Leo’s insight into the direct relation between unbridled capitalism and these collectivist economies, with a slightly different view as to what that relation is.  Where Leo saw unbridled capitalism and socialism in a relationship of cause and effect, JPII sees them as really indistinguishable (and in a sense of the same nature) in their practical affects on the person: “capitalism has a definite historical meaning as a system, an economic and social system, opposed to ‘socialism’ or "communism.’ But… 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 (LE, 7).”  

It may be an uncomfortable topic for us in the West to hear that the Church has, in a sense, condemned capitalism in the exact same breath as she has condemned socialism.  But where it might be uncomfortable, it ought not be surprising.  For JPII as it was for Leo XIII, the focus of any economic system is to elevate, aid, and facilitate the living situation of persons.  As such, Man is not free to do whatever he can get away with among consenting adults, any more than he can be reduced to a cog contributing to the abstract community.  Man is first and foremost a creator, and an actor upon the earth.  He must have liberty and autonomy to work out his own living, but must also take responsibility for the lives of those around him, especially those in his employ.  In short, he must live with a view to a life of solidarity with those among whose company he exists.