Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

The absolute family wage demanded in the papal encyclicals presupposes - leaving out of
account the economic possibility- that either the average family has many children or that
married couples with no children or only a few children, if they predominate numerically,
adapt themselves in their consumer habits to families with many children. Neither is correct
today. Granting that for all adult employees, including those with many children, wages could
be raised in such a way that they would correspond to the usual socio-cultural standard of
living, the living standard of families with many children would nevertheless, after a brief
period of time, again lie below the new socio-cultural standard, which would be formed by the
higher demands of the unmarried and those with few children. It thus turns out that a mere
fixed wage is inimical to the family’s interests. An equalization of family burdens in the sense
of a relative family wage that would be graduated through family allowances according to
family size is the requirement of the hour. Nevertheless, the demand for the payment of a relative
family wage may not be made on the individual company, since in this case fathers with
many children would be exposed to the danger of unemployment because, in order to save
expenses, companies could be tempted to give preference to single employees or those without
children. Forms of equalization must therefore be found that transcend the individual
company. The equalization between those with no children or only a few children, on the one
hand, and those with many children, on the other, is most clearly realized when it takes place
between the two groups themselves, which is quite possible within individual branches of the
economy and professional groups, in spite of violent resistance from special interest groups.
§ 4 Business Profits
l. Three Factors
Business profits, which can be reduced neither to interest on invested capital, nor reckoned to
be the earnings from the labor output of the self-employed businessman, but represent a residual
income, have been of extraordinary importance in the economic development of modern
industrial states. The great industrial fortunes arose neither from ground rent, nor from interest
on capital, nor from earned income, but from business profits. Business profits can be conditioned
by three factors:
a) Pioneer Profit
The creative initiative of exceptionally gifted entrepreneurs can, through a „new combination
of productive forces“, make possible an advantageous lowering of costs and increase of returns,
which gives rise to a pioneer profit in relation to other entrepreneurs, this was not infrequently
the case, particularly in the nineteenth century. 72
b) Monopoly Profit
Business profits can be made possible through the formation of monopolies and cartels.
c) Marketing Profit
Through high growth rates of the economy, marketing profits can arise when there are small
rates of saving among broad strata of the population and when there is a tax policy that favors
self-financing, which has taken place to a great extent in the Federal Republic of Germany
since its monetary reform.
2.The Judgment of Christian Social Teaching
Christian social teaching advances five statements for judging business profits:
72 J. Schumpeter, Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (Munich-Leipzig, 1926), 287f.
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