Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

tion of a formula which should allow the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital to be
high, whilst using rule and custom and the moral law to keep down the rate of interest.“ 70 This
shows that the foundations of the theoretical economics of the scholastics „were sounder than
was much subsequent work, in the sense that a considerable part of the economics of the later
nineteenth century might have been developed from these bases more quickly and with less
trouble than it actually cost to develop it.“ 71
§ 3 Earned Income
l. Two Erroneous Theses
„Human labor which is expended in the production and exchange of goods or in the performance
of economic services is superior to the other elements of economic life. For the latter
have only the nature of tools“; work, however, „comes immediately from the person“
(Gaudium et spes, 67). This important statement of the Second Vatican Council gives to work
its proper place in the process of economic distribution. Even in terms of scope and function,
wage and salary income is more important than ground rent and interest. In the advanced industrial
states, more than eighty per cent of those working are non-self-employed. The share
of gross incomes from wage and salary-earning work in the national income rose in the Federal
Republic of Germany from 60.4% in the year l960 to 65.6% in the year l965 and climbed
to 67.8% in the year l970, to 72.3% in the year l975, and, after a small temporary decrease,
reached 72.4% in the year l980. The highest share of gross income from wage and salaryearning
work in the national economy was reached in the year l98l with 73.6%. In forming a
judgment on earned income, two erroneous theses must first be rejected.
a) It has been asserted that only work - thus neither ground rent nor interest on capital nor
business profit - has a morally justified claim to income and property formation. Christian
social teaching rejects this thesis and also recognizes, along with the aforementioned claims,
the legitimate „occupancy of a thing not owned by anyone“ (Quadragesimo anno, 52), which
plays a role in the appropriation of immense quantities of air for nitrogen production in the
chemical industry, for example, and which could perhaps acquire a new importance with the
conquering of space.
b) The thesis that in every case man becomes by his work the owner of the goods produced is
also erroneous. It does indeed say in the encyclical Rerum novarum that „as effects follow
their cause, so it is right for the fruit of labor to belong to those who have given their labor.“
(Rerum novarum, 9). But this proposition holds only for the work that an individual performs
in his or her own name and on his or her own piece of work, and thus for the „individual
product,“ but not for the work that takes place with the co-operation of many in the modern
economy with its division of labor, and thus not for the „social product.“ In modern factories,
„the labor of one person and the property of another must be associated, for neither can produce
anything without the other“, from which it follows that „it is wholly false to ascribe to
property alone or to labor alone whatever has been obtained through the combined effort of
both, and it is wholly unjust for either, denying the efficacy of the other, to arrogate to itself
whatever has been produced“(Quadragesimo anno,53.)
2. The Complexity of the Wage Problem
Today, the wage problem must be seen in its many aspects; one then recognizes that the question
about the right or just wage is posed on four different levels:
70 J. M. Keynes († 1946), The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, The Collected Writings of
John Maynard Keynes, vol. 7 (London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., l973), 351-352.
71 Joseph Alois Schumpeter († 1950), History of Economic Analysis, 2nd ed. (London, 1955), 97.
121