The outcome is not obvious. If a just wage is accomplished and the people are able to share in such developments (CENTESIMUS ANNUS), it is a good thing. It's important to note that, redistribution doesn't mean take from the rich and give to the poor. It can just as well be accomplished through just economic transactions. If a just owner is able to provide more to his employees because of it, what wrong is done here?
Undoubtedly, a just wage is a good thing. However, it is not sufficient by itself to ensure adequate development according to
Rerum Novarum (1891),
Quadragesimo Anno (1931)
Populorum Progressio (1967),
Laborem Exercens (1981) or
Evangelii Gaudium (2013).
According to the principle of subsidiarity, we should be striving for a system with proportionate competences at each appropriate level of authority. Wherever a given sphere is best equipped to address a given matter in the most efficient way possible and in a manner most beneficial to the individual citizen, then it should have it. That’s what subsidiarity means in a Catholic context.
Now, in his 2008 encyclical
Caritas in veritate, Pope Benedict XVI noted that the state / political community has an important responsibility for ensuring that the economy is oriented toward the common good:
Caritas in veritate (June 29, 2009) | BENEDICT XVI
32. Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country’s international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development
36. Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic . This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.
37 Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics,
39 Paul VI in Populorum Progressio called for the creation of a model of market economy capable of including within its range all peoples and not just the better off…
In this way he was applying on a global scale the insights and aspirations contained in Rerum Novarum , written when, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the idea was first proposed — somewhat ahead of its time — that the civil order, for its self-regulation, also needed intervention from the State for purposes of redistribution .
Moreover, he decried in the same encyclical that global capitalism had led in recent decades to a ‘downsizing of social security systems’ through budgetary cuts in public spending:
25. From the social point of view, systems of protection and welfare, already present in many countries in Paul VI’s day, are finding it hard and could find it even harder in the future to pursue their goals of true social justice in today’s profoundly changed environment. The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market.
These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State. Systems of social security can lose the capacity to carry out their task, both in emerging countries and in those that were among the earliest to develop, as well as in poor countries. Here budgetary policies, with cuts in social spending often made under pressure from international financial institutions, can leave citizens powerless in the face of old and new risks; such powerlessness is increased by the lack of effective protection on the part of workers’ associations.
Later on, Benedict XVI also adds that solidarity “
cannot . . . be merely delegated to the State,” arguing that there must be space for exercises of solidarity within the economy distinct from the efforts of the state (no. 38).
However, the fact that the economy needs 'self-regulation' and 'intervention from the State', as Benedict notes above, was stated clearly by Pope Leo XIII in
Rerum Novarum at the end of the nineteenth century:
Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891) | LEO XIII
(13) But, when what necessity demands has been supplied , and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over...
(37.) When there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State . And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government.
In this respect, in 2014 Pope Francis called for:
To participants in the Meeting of the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (9 May 2014) | Francis
“the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the State, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society.”
Incidentally, in his earlier 2013 apostolic exhortation
Evangelii Gaudium he cited St. John Chrysostom as a model for today:
EVANGELII GAUDIUM
“I encourage financial experts and political leaders to ponder the
words of one of the sages of antiquity [Doctor of the Church John Chrysostom, a
fourth-century saint]: ‘Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from
them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but
theirs’” (2013, 57).
The reason for all of this is that, to reference Pope St. John Paul II again from his 1981 encyclical:
“Christian tradition has never upheld this right [to private property] 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.” Laborem Exercens (On Human Work) #14.
Again in 1965
Gaudium et Spes, one of the most important constitutions of Vatican II, affirmed:
Gaudium et spes
69. God intended the earth with everything contained in it for the use of all human beings and peoples. Thus, under the leadership of justice and in the company of charity, created goods should be in abundance for all in like manner.[8]
Whatever the forms of property may be, as adapted to the legitimate institutions of peoples, according to diverse and changeable circumstances, attention must always be paid to this universal destination of earthly goods. In using them, therefore, man should regard the external things that he legitimately possesses not only as his own but also as common in the sense that they should be able to benefit not only him but also others.[9]
On the other hand, the right of having a share of earthly goods sufficient for oneself and one’s family belongs to everyone. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church held this opinion, teaching that men are obliged to come to the relief of the poor and to do so not merely out of their superfluous goods.[10] If one is in extreme necessity, he has the right to procure for himself what he needs out of the riches of others.[11]
Since there are so many people prostrate with hunger in the world, this sacred council urges all, both individuals and governments, to remember the aphorism of the Fathers, “Feed the man dying of hunger, because if you have not fed him, you have killed him,”[12] and really to share and employ their earthly goods, according to the ability of each, especially by supporting individuals or peoples with the aid by which they may be able to help and develop themselves.
By its very nature private property has a social quality which is based on the law of the common destination of earthly goods….
If this social quality is overlooked, property often becomes an occasion of passionate desires for wealth and serious disturbances, so that a pretext is given to the attackers for calling the right itself into question…
Indeed, insufficiently cultivated estates should be distributed to those who can make these lands fruitful; in this case, the necessary things and means, especially educational aids and the right facilities for cooperative organization, must be supplied. Whenever, nevertheless, the common good requires expropriation, compensation must be reckoned in equity after all the circumstances have been weighed."
This is millennia old and consistent doctrinal teaching, across the ages from the Patristics to the scholastics to the contemporary papal encyclicals.
In the citations for the Pastoral Constitution, the council fathers referenced St. Basil the Great, Lactantius, St. Augustine of Hippo, Pope St. Gregory the Great, St. Bonaventure and St. Albert the Great, among other Fathers and Doctors (
GS 69.1).
In short, when the right to private ownership of the means of production comes in conflict with the common good, the common good always trumps private property, because its stewardship entails social obligations by its very nature arising from the universal destination of goods that precedes any division of property under human law.
