Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

Work, because of its subjective or personal character, is superior to every other factor connected with productivity; this principle applies, in particular, with regard to capital. The term “capital” has different meanings today. Sometimes it indicates the material means of production in a given enterprise, sometimes the financial resources employed to bring about production or used in stock market operations. One can also speak of “human capital” to refer to human resources, that is, to man himself in his capacity to engage in labour, to make use of knowledge and creativity, to sense the needs of his fellow workers and a mutual understanding with other members of an organization. The term “social capital” is also used to indicate the capacity of a collective group to work together, the fruit of investments in a mutually-binding fiduciary trust. This variety of meanings offers further material for reflecting on what the relationship between work and capital may be today.

The Church's social doctrine has not failed to insist on the relationship between labour and capital, placing in evidence both the priority of the first over the second as well as their complementarities. Labour has an intrinsic priority 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”^{593John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 12: AAS 73 (1981), 606.}. This “is part of the abiding heritage of the Church's teaching”^{594John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 12: AAS 73 (1981), 608.}. There must exist between work and capital a relationship of complementarities: the very logic inherent within the process of production shows that the two must mutually permeate one another and that there is an urgent need to create economic systems in which the opposition between capital and labour is overcome^{595Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 13: AAS 73 (1981), 608-612.}. In times when “capital” and “hired labour”, within a less complicated economic system, used to identify with a certain precision not only two elements of production but also and above all two concrete social classes, the Church affirmed that both were in themselves legitimate^{596Cf. Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno: AAS 23 (1931), 194-198.}: “Capital cannot stand without labour, nor labour without capital”^{597Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum: Acta Leonis XIII, 11 (1892), 109.}. This is a truth that applies also today, because “it is altogether false to ascribe either to capital alone or to labour alone what is achieved by the joint work of both; and it is utterly unjust that the one should arrogate unto itself what is being done, denying the effectiveness of the other”^{598Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno: AAS 23 (1931), 195.}.

In considering the relationship between labour and capital, above all with regard to the impressive transformations of our modern times, we must maintain that the “principal resource” and the “decisive factor” ^{599John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 32: AAS 83 (1991), 833.} at man's disposal is man himself, and that “the integral development of the human person through work does not impede but rather promotes the greater productivity and efficiency of work itself”^{600John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 43: AAS 83 (1991), 847.}. In fact, the world of work is discovering more and more that the value of “human capital” is finding expression in the consciences of workers, in their willingness to create relationships, in their creativity, in their industriousness in promoting themselves, in their ability consciously to face new situations, to work together and to pursue common objectives. These are strictly personal qualities that belong to the subject of work more than to the objective, technical, or operational aspects of work itself. All of this entails a new perspective in the relationship between labour and capital. We can affirm that, contrary to what happened in the former organization of labour in which the subject would end up being less important than the object, than the mechanical process, in our day the subjective dimension of work tends to be more decisive and more important than the objective dimension.

The relationship between labour and capital often shows traits of antagonism that take on new forms with the changing of social and economic contexts. In the past, the origin of the conflict between capital and labour was found above all “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”.^{601John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 11: AAS 73 (1981), 604.} In our present day, this conflict shows aspects that are new and perhaps more disquieting: scientific and technological progress and the globalization of markets, of themselves a source of development and progress, expose workers to the risk of being exploited by the mechanisms of the economy and by the unrestrained quest for productivity.^{602Cf. John Paul II, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (6 March 1999), 2: L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, 17 March 1999, p. 3.}

One must not fall into the error of thinking that the process of overcoming the dependence of work on material is of itself capable of overcoming alienation in the workplace or the alienation of labour. The reference here is not only to the many pockets of non-work, concealed work, child labour, underpaid work, exploitation of workers — all of which still persist today — but also to new, much more subtle forms of exploitation of new sources of work, to over-working, to work-as-career that often takes on more importance than other human and necessary aspects, to excessive demands of work that makes family life unstable and sometimes impossible, to a modular structure of work that entails the risk of serious repercussions on the unitary perception of one's own existence and the stability of family relationships. If people are alienated when means and ends are inverted, elements of alienation can also be found in the new contexts of work that is immaterial, light, qualitative more than quantitative, “either through increased sharing in a genuinely supportive community or through increased isolation in a maze of relationships marked by destructive competitiveness and estrangement”.^{603John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 41: AAS 83 (1991), 844.}