In a perceptive article in Newsweek (June 20, 1983) Kenneth Woodward calls the present Pope a socialist and cites Ronald Modras as supporting this judgment. Gregory Baum gives the same impression in the New Catholic World (July/August, 1983). Indeed Baum’s commentary on the Encyclical On Labor (1981) describes the Pope’s socialism as, 1) moral, 2) liberationist, 3) cooperative, 4) international, 5) reformist, 6) including some features of Marxism, and 7) non-ideological. (Baum, The Priority of Labor, Paulist Press, 1982.)
However, if we attend to what most people who will read this means by the term, it is inaccurate to classify the Pope’s position as simply socialist. The two most objectionable features of some actual socialist societies today are their atheism and totalitarianism. No one claims that John Paul II accepts these aberrations. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines socialism as: “A political and economic theory of social organization based on collective or governmental ownership and democratic management of the essential means for the production and distribution of goods.” Bernard Wuellner’s Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy gives the same definition, except for the insertion of the parenthesis (capital goods) after essential means. Of course capitalism is the opposing theory that material goods should be held and managed privately, for the profit of their owners. In their extreme forms neither pure capitalism nor complete socialism exist in present-day states. Both embody certain features of private and of collective possession.
John Paul II seems to take it for granted that a good deal of variation between more or less public ownership is permissible in different parts of the world. What he does object to is the situation in which working people are treated as marketable commodities and excluded from policy decisions by a different class, the owners who recognize no responsibility, except to their own interests. From the very beginning his labor Encyclical leaves no doubt that where laborers are treated as a “special kind of merchandise” we have “a reversal of order, whatever the program or name under which it occurs,” and this should “rightly be called capitalism.” (On Human Work, St. Paul Editions, 1982, sect. 7.) While critical of both pure socialism and extreme capitalism, John Paul’s greater concerns seem to be with the laissez-faire character of capitalism and its radical alienation of entrepreneurs from workers. Baum may somewhat overstress this view but the Pope does see more value in labor than in capital. Karol Wojtyla is still proud of the fact that he once served his time as a manual laborer.
All of this is an obvious outgrowth of the Pope’s early thinking as a professor of philosophy. His book, The Acting Person (1969, hereafter TAP) argues throughout that work, action, praxis, bring men to self-fulfillment. This is but an extension of the Thomistic maxim, operatio sequitur esse (action is an indicator of actual being). In the talk that then Cardinal Wojtyla gave at the 1974 Thomistic Congress (Rome/Naples) he declared: “self-determination constitutes the very core of my work, The Acting Person.” Such self- determination, he further explained, “constitutes the very essence of man’s freedom.” Thus far he appeared to be stressing the realization of the individual self through personal activity. But he was well aware of the societal dimension of personal development, for he proceeded to argue that “the man able to be master of himself can also become a gift to others.” This relational image of the person in the larger context of human society rescues his anthropology from individualism and opens the way to man’s role in Christian brotherhood. The same theme runs through the last chapter of TAP.
Basic to this progress from the good of the individual to the common good of society is the theme of participation. As John Paul sees it: “To be capable of participation thus indicates that man, when he acts together with other men, retains in this acting the personalistic value of his own action and at the same time shares in the realization and the results of communal acting.” (TAP p. 269) This is not mere theory, but participation; “we do not mean the person in the abstract but a concrete person in his dynamic correlation with the action.” (TAP p. 271)
One type of participation is found in the solidarity theme. This is not a notion created by Lech Walesa or the trade union movement. “Solidarity means a constant readiness to accept and to realize one’s share in the community because of one’s membership within that particular community.” (TAP p. 285) It has broad application to many different kinds of communities and the loyalties and coherence that distinguish them. Solidarity does not mean blind acceptance of all the aims and means used in a community: an authentic member should work for the improvement of his group.
Is this socialism, then? It would seem to be a modified socialism, better called “solidarism” to distinguish it from many other versions. It is by no means a break with earlier Christian tradition. Most of the Church Fathers advocated a type of communal organization in which the needs of all people would be satisfied by charitable sharing of goods. Thomas Aquinas plainly taught that there is a difference between the right to acquire, manage and distribute material possessions (best exercised by private ownership) and the quite different right to use material goods (which is the natural privilege of all people in common). This means that no one is entitled to keep excess utility goods from the consumption of those in need. (See my chapter, “Material Possessions and Thomism,” in Ethics in Crisis, 1966.) The Thomistic social teaching is not very different from the Marxist slogan: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” If we must classify Pope John Paul, he could well be called a Thomistic socialist.