Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

) Dissemination of wealth through new investments
Three possibilities for sparking the dissemination of wealth through new investments can be
distinguished: businesses themselves could voluntarily introduce suitable forms for their employees
to reinvest their share of the profits. Further, the reinvestment of shared profits could
be arranged through a wage contract between employers’ associations and labor unions. Finally,
the state could favor or even prescribe the reinvestment of shared profits by law. All
three possibilities are the subject of lively discussion today without a given solution having
been generally accepted thus far. In the encyclical Mater et magistra it says, that there is a
„rapid economic development of an increasing number of state. It will not be difficult for the
body politic, by the adoption of various techniques of proved efficiency, to pursue an economic
and social policy which facilitates the widest possible distribution of private property...This
policy is in fact being pursued with considerable success by several of the socially
and economically advanced nations“ (n.115)
Three considerations
Three considerations serve here as a point of departure:
1. The Circle of Beneficiaries
First, it is not infrequently said that only the employees are entitled to participation in capital
formation because, together with capital, they have created the increase of wealth. But here it
is necessary to see the interconnectedness of the national economy. The considerable amount
of self-financing since the Second World War is a matter involving a process of wealth formation
resulting from general economic conditions, which is not due exclusively to the particular
efforts of entrepreneurs, investors, and employees, but was rendered possible by the shifting
of costs on to prices and by tax privileges. Insofar as the higher productivity of a business
rests upon the outstanding performances of the employees working there, they are of course
entitled to a corresponding share in the profits also. If, however, only the workers were to
receive the higher profits of a business resulting from general economic conditions, they
would be drawing an unearned income. Here it is to be observed that, for the most part, it
would be a question of the personnel of large-scale enterprises, to which only 15% of the nonself-employed
working in the Federal Republic of Germany belong.
2. The Danger of the Anonymous Concentration of Power
Second, the effects on social and economic policy of a broad dissemination of capital assets
would be frustrated if capital formation were to be placed, not in the hands of individual people,
but in those of anonymous institutions. Nevertheless, a widely disseminated ownership of
the means of production will only gain a formative influence on the economy when it is not
isolated in the smallest shares among individual owners, thus remaining ineffectual, but when
it is concentrated in some form such as investment funds. What is decisive here is that the
power connected with these combined capital assets be not unscrupulously made to serve special
interests, but be aware that it is obligated to the common good.
3. The Abilities and Willingness to Save
Third, the broad dissemination of ownership is tied to two indispensable presuppositions: the
ability and the willingness to save. An employee is considered able to save when his income
is so high that, after having met the needs of his or her family in a reasonable and moderate
way, something remains which he or she can save and make available for investments. The
ability to save must be combined with the willingness not to convert the surplus portions of
one’s income into additional consumption, but to utilize them for investments. Without the
readiness to assume the rights, duties, and risks connected with ownership in the realm of
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