Notes from “Rerum Novarum: On Capital and Labor”

I understand the new pope credits the work of Pope Leo XIII, particularly his “Rerum Novarum: On Capital and Labor”, as the reason he took the name Pope Leo XIV. It’s a very short book (I gather it was first delivered orally). I finished it last night.

Leo wrote it in 1897, at a time when the abuses of modern industry were giving rise to reactionary socialist movements. I think it’s an outstanding little book (whether or not one is a believer). Leo simultaneously defends private property and capitalists’ right to their stuff while also effectively calling it sinful to pay meager wages or take advantage of another’s desperate situation for one’s own gain.

If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.

Workers’ consent to a low wage or a terrible working condition does not absolve the capitalist of the responsibility to ensure that they have fair wages and good working conditions. And he even defines unfair: Any wage at which a frugal person can’t reasonably support himself and a family is unfair.

He never mentions this, but there is clearly huge pressure in a financialized business (which had been a very rare thing prior to the early 1800s) for the operator to “create shareholder value” via the very abuses Leo admonishes, and those pressures are far less present in a closely held business when a/the major owner is the operator. The owner/operator can choose to be beneficent without worrying about losing his job, and he is also free to make the reasonable decision that he’d rather all of his workers be a bit more comfortable than he keep an extra 1% margin.

I suppose we didn’t yet have a “consumer economy”, but a lot of his admonishments apply today and extend to the company/consumer relationship. A company can degrade the health of its consumers in pursuit of profit, but while that may be legal, it is clearly immoral. And with financialization being way more widespread, it is way more important that the message be heard: Just because a consumer is willing to buy a good that he knows harms him, that does not mean you are absolved of moral responsibility for selling it to him. You are no more absolved of moral responsibility for your good’s impact on your buyer’s well-being than the employer is absolved of the moral responsibility to provide safe working conditions.

And I like how he distinguishes between legal rights and moral obligations. I don’t think he ever explicitly says it, but if one is not free to act immorally, then one can never be free to act virtuously, and such things as kindness, love, charity, grace, etc can’t exist.