Capital and technology are merely tools to assist us in our work. The labor of men and women is always a primary efficient cause, while capital, the whole collection of investment and means of production, remains always a mere instrument at the service of labor. Yet we have created an economic system in which labor is often treated as a kind of merchandise the industrial worker sells to the employer, who is the controller of the capital.
In John Paul II’s understanding, the workers and only the workers ought to be treated as the true makers and creators: “Work is a good thing for human beings—a good thing for their humanity—because through work they not only transform nature, adapting it to their own needs, but they also achieve fulfillment as human beings and indeed in a sense become more human” (Laborem Exercens, 9; from The Priority of Labor, Gregory Baum).
In this same document he outlines a number of issues that have to be faced. Workers might be brought into the ownership, planning, and management of the corporation. Ownership by capital is not an exclusive right reserved for the wealthy. Workers also have the human rights that belong to all for a decent life for them and their families. But the principal change mechanism in John Paul’s mind was the right of workers to organize in unions. In this passage he uses—perhaps nostalgically—the word solidarity, the name of the labor union that helped bring down Communism in his beloved Poland. Workers everywhere have the right to be in solidarity with one another, “the right of association, that is, to form associations for the purpose of defending the vital interests of those employed in the various professions. These associations are called labor or trade unions.…
“Modern unions,” he continues, “grew up from the struggle of the workers…to protect their just rights vis-à-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production. Their task is to defend the existential interests of workers in all sectors in which their rights are concerned….Organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life, especially in modern industrialized societies” (Laborem Exercens, 20).

Finally, Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on the present economic crisis by introducing into the discussion the idea of greed. It’s a word that has been used much lately in public discourse and, I’m sure, in Sunday homilies. It might be a good way to bring these reflections to a close. The financial world, Pope Benedict says, has been overtaken by greed for unheard-of profits in recent years. In his Christmas message of 2008, the Pope called on the Light of Christ to shine forth “wherever selfishness of individuals and groups prevails over the common good…wherever an increasingly uncertain future is regarded with apprehension, even in affluent nations.” We are a people living in apprehension because of the greed of bankers and financiers. Benedict continued, “If people look only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart.” It is, he says, a time to reach out to those in need.
With so many people suffering, we are presented with a rich opportunity to reach out to those in need. Stories of neighbors helping neighbors abound these days. NBC Nightly News has been running a series of such stories, sent in by viewers across the country—mothers reaching out to mothers and their children when a home or a job has been lost, workers pitching in financially to save coworkers’ jobs that would otherwise have been lost. Good old-fashioned neighborliness, it seems, is breaking out all over.

It is also a time perhaps, as we observe the greed of those financiers who brought about this crisis, not to forget “the beam in our own eye,” namely, our own greed that has contributed to this greatly inflated bubble our economy has become. For a long time now, the STC has pointed to the consumerism that marks our capitalist societies. Credit-card debt attests to this reality. Yet in the aftermath of September 11, we were encouraged to go out and shop, and in the summer of this economic downturn, we were told the same thing, as if buying more and consuming more would bring us out of these national catastrophes. We knew better. The problems are far bigger than consumption can cure.

We need to rectify a capitalism that has ballooned into something of an ogre for many; we need government to reassert its rightful place in regulating business and banking and in providing the services—like health care—people need; we need to restore labor and working men and women to their rightful place at the heart of our economy. We need also to look at the greed in our own hearts and establish deeper and better values than simply consuming more. Many Americans are taking stock these days. This is a good thing.

Father Richard Schiblin is retired and living with the Redemptorist community in Berkeley, California. His ministries have included serving as a retreat director and a pastor and setting up a Redemptorist justice and peace desk in Rome.