Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

oad strata of the population possess so much that they do not fall into economic dependency
either on other strata or on the state. That in no way means an indiscriminate leveling of persons
or possessions, since greater or less personal initiative and thrift - along with many other
factors - will always lead to differences of wealth. Here it is to be noted that in the industrial
society property is in no way identical with capital assets, but appears in a sixfold form:
a) Wage and Salary
The employee most clearly experiences what it means ‘to have something as his or her own’
through wages or salary. Although this form of property is not very permanent, since for the
most part it is spent in a short period of time for daily subsistence, it nevertheless forms the
most important source for the employee from which all other forms of property must arise.
b) Furniture, Household Equipment etc.
The second kind of property is more permanent, namely, everything that people possess in
their homes in the way of furniture, household equipment, and the like. Today a desire to save
up in order to purchase these goods is discernible, and this target saving is in any case to be
welcomed as opposed to the immediate expenditure of one’s entire income in the direct consumption
of food and drink. Since the monetary reform, considerable property assets of this
kind have been accumulated in German households.
c) Savings
Now as ever, savings in the narrower sense, be it a question of a savings account, a building
and loan association, or the taking out of a life insurance policy, are also of importance. Nevertheless,
money saving is more widespread among the middle class than among the working
class. Thus, in the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, the savings quota of recipients
of an average net income amounts to only three per cent compared with a savings quota of 8.5
per cent for all households together. Further, in the industrial society, money saving is mostly
not a saving for times of need, but voluntary target saving for larger purchases and thus a
postponement of consumption rather than a renunciation of consumption. Moreover, the devaluation
of money weakens the desire to save.
d) Legal Claim to Social Insurance
Saving for times of need, which was a typical attitude of the nineteenth century, has become
less important today because modern man depends on the system of ‘social security’ in sickness,
unemployment, and disability, as well as old age, and this represents a fourth form of
property or wealth in modern society, namely, the legal claim to social insurance. Since the
benefits paid by social insurance are determined in a decisive way by prior contributions,
claims to social insurance belong from a sociological point of view to the honestly acquired
wealth of modern man insofar as they are conditioned by advance payments - a conception
that the German Federal Social Court has upheld repeatedly.
e) Housing Property
The powerful secondary system of ‘social security’ should not, however, blind us to the fact
that man can only gain a personal relation to property when he resolves to save through a decision
of free will. The acquisition of one’s own home occupies a prominent place here, and
thus we encounter a fifth form of property of extreme socio-political importance. Because of
its long period of use, a middle position between genuine consumer goods and commercial
investment goods attaches, as it were, to a home of one’s own.
f) Stocks and Bonds
Finally, among the different forms of property, there is participation in capital formation.
Here one may well observe that, in general, none of the steps in the series should be skipped
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