Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

foreseen a few decades ago. For automation is able to create certain preconditions that make it
easier for the working person to struggle upwards to a work ethics and professional ethics in
the advanced industrial society. Through automation, work is becoming more animated, so
that there is talk of its 'requalification'; the monotonous manipulations, namely, can be performed
by the automatic machines themselves from now on. Marx's prophecy that the automatic
factory will fully eliminate the skilled worker has proved false. We need, on the contrary,
skilled workers for the manufacture of complicated automatic machines, for setting up
production, for jigmaking, for the supervision and maintenance of the automatic machines,
and not least for their repair. Human work is shifting more and more from the realm of production
to that of the preparation for production and its control. In addition, man no longer
sees his enemy in machines and apparatuses, as was often the case a hundred years ago. he
has become accustomed to dealing with technology from childhood and faces it with a certain
casualness, which does not mean carelessness. Technology seems neither eerie nor cumbersome,
particularly when the machines and automatic devices are perfect in their kind and truly
modem. Nevertheless, those responsible in government and economics should observe and
steer developments in the realm of micro-electronics which, as the 'Club of Rome' feared in its
report For Better or for Worse, lead not only to the taking over of dirty and heavy work by
micro-electronic apparatuses, but would in time supplant all human activity, so that an age of
'total' free time and thus of an unfulfilled, boring life would come about.
3. Basic Power Structures and Personal Management
In economic enterprises, it is not invested capital, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, but
man that stands in the foreground: „In economic enterprises it is persons who work together,
that is, free and independent human beings created to the image of God“ (Gaudium et spes,
68). Here the principle holds that „the social order and its development must unceasingly
work to the benefit of the human person if the disposition of affairs is to be subordinated to
the personal realm and not contrariwise“ (ibid. 26). From this it follows that „without prejudice
to the necessary unity of operations“, „the active participation of everyone in the running
of an enterprise“ should be fostered, where the concrete forms of co-determination must be
defined „in appropriately determined ways“ (ibid. 68). Whereas the encyclical Quadragesimo
anno cautiously hinted at the right of co- determination (n.65) and Pius XII was reserved (the
addresses of May 7, 1949 and June 3, 1950), the counciliar popes John XXIII (Mater et magistra,
91-92) and Paul VI 14 as well as the Council itself spoke unequivocally for the employees'
right of co-determination in the individual enterprises and on a level above and beyond
the company in question. It is noteworthy that in the authentic Latin text the same expression
is used for the „active participation“ (actuosa participatio) of employees in co-administration
which in the Constitution of Sacred Liturgy designates the „active participation“ of the faithful
in the divine services (art. 27). Pope John Paul II also declares that a labor system resting
on the primacy of man over capital must overcome „the opposition between labor and capital“
„in its very basis.“ The Pope specifies not only a just wage, but also co- determination, profit
sharing, and co-ownership. In this way, the worker becomes aware „that he is working for
himself' (Laborem exercens, 13-15).
Institutional and organizational measures are not able of themselves to make an enterprise an
association of free people. What is decisive is rather the personal relationship between the
leaders of the enterprise and the employees. The importance of the right personnel management
in the working and professional life of the industrial society can hardly be overestimated.
Personnel management ( as guidance of people that are in any way subordinate to superiors)
and education (as the awakening and development of the valuable aptitudes of man)
are not contradictory, but ordered to one an- other. Properly understood, both serve the great
task of forming people, i.e. helping them to find the shape of their humanity. All personnel
14 Address of June 8, 1964: AAS (1964): 574ff.
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