Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

piece-work bonuses, and the like. Lenin had to admit that the Bolshevist man was „still far,
very far“ from that Bolshevist work ethic that „springs from the habit of working for the common
good“ and moves people to act selflessly for the community as a whole „without norms,
without counting on pay, without a wage agreement.“ For that reason, one has to force people
to work: „Down...with that one who thinks to shirk his or her work...! Long live the discipline
of work and the zeal for work!...Eternal fame to those who carry along millions of working
persons with them!“ 46
Second, whereas private ownership serves the clear division and delimitation of jurisdictions
and realms of responsibility within the economy, a community of goods leads to disorder and
unclearness, since each one would concern himself or herself indiscriminately about everything
possible belonging to the community and want to deal with it according to his or her
own fancy. In order to avoid this confusion (Thomas Aquinas speaks of confusio), a central
administration must be introduced which requires an enormous bureaucratic machinery. Such
a system, thought Thomas Aquinas (Pol. II, 4), could best be implemented if one were to
make the workers into slaves whom one could place under a central control at will.
Third, a community of goods is the root of social unrest. In reference to Aristotle, Thomas
Aquinas points to the fact that in the collective economy the working people would, in their
murmuring, protest to the functionaries (murmurantes de majoribus, Pol. II, 4) that they, the
workers, had to slave for meager portions, whereas the functionaries lived in ease and took the
lion’s share of the profits. A former president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet,
Michail Ivanovich Kalinin, unintentionally reported an example of this murmuring of workers
on the collective against the functionaries. During a visit to his native village, a kholhoz, Kalinin
was walking out to the fields „in the company of six or seven of the leading village functionaries.“
„As we approached, one of the working women cried out, pointing to my companions:
‘Michail Ivanovich, just look how many men you have brought to stroll around the field,
while we women have to work!...’Well, why don’t you get them to work,’ I asked. ‘That’s
easier said than done’ the women explained. I then turned to my companions (the president
and the secretary of the village soviet, the president of the collective, the Comsomol and training
functionaries, etc.) and told them that they could easily mow two hectares of flax, since
the people were all in the fields anyway and there was therefore nothing to do in the village.
This decision provoked lively enthusiasm among the women.“ 47
Fourth, a community of goods implies - especially with the tremendous production machinery
of the modern economy - an enormous concentration of power which, since man „lies in
wickedness,“ must provoke simply irresistible temptations to the misuse of that power. Whoever
possesses total economic power also has at his or her disposal power over politics, the
military, propaganda, social policy, and the police.
Fifth, a centrally administered community of goods threatens the freedom and dignity of man,
an argument that was specially emphasized by Pius XII. Private property is not only „an element
of the social order, a necessary presupposition for the spirit of enterprise,“ but one of the
strongest guarantees „for the freedom and dignity of man created in the likeness of God,“ so
that „the right to private ownership must stand fast as the unshakeable foundation for every
rightful economic and social order“ (Pius XII, September, l, l944). The immense sociopolitical
importance of private ownership lies in this effect on the social order. The economic
dependence of the collective entails a lack of political, cultural, and religious freedom. When
the state becomes the only employer, the preservation „of its rightful life and liberty“ is
threatened so that „detestation of political society would quickly take the place of desire for
it“ (Rerum novarum, 11). Alexander Rüstow, however, calls the dishonest phrase that all the
means of production belong to the entire people „Lesson Two of the Child’s Primer.“ Alexander
Solzhenitsyn remarks that the Russian people have indeed liberated themselves from
46 Lenin, Ausgewählte Werke, II:646, 666f.
47 M. I. Kalinin, Die Macht des Sowjetstaates (Berlin, 1946), 15.
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