Actually, the title of this posting should be, “How Work Can
Be Both Fulfilling and Remunerative,” but that doesn’t draw the reader in . . .
besides seeming a little crass and materialistic, don’t you think?
Anyway, one of the things John Paul II stressed in Laborem Exercens, his 1981 encyclical on
human work, is the fact that work performed for no purpose other than to gain
income is degrading to the dignity of the human person. We’re meant for better things, such as (in
human terms) becoming better people as people, and (in religious or God-related
terms) becoming more what we think (with properly formed consciences) Whoever
we worship as God wants us to be.
Since CESJ is not a church, and the Just Third Way is not a
religion, we don’t get into areas of faith, except to note that we think it’s
important, and the government has the responsibility of providing a proper
environment within which religion (or lack thereof) can flourish through the
free and uncoerced choice of people. We
confine ourselves to matters of economic and social justice in conformity with
the natural law.
Given that, we can address the problem of work.
The fact is, as technology advances, one purpose of work
gets removed: income generation. As
technology takes over more and more of the task of producing marketable goods
and services (don’t forget that “production equals income”), owners of
technology gain more income, while owners of labor are left with little or
nothing.
Is the answer, then, to take income away from owners of technology
and redistribute it to owners of labor?
That may be necessary as a short term expedient, but there is no way
that is a solution. It violates justice
in that it takes away from owners of technology what is theirs by right, and
violates charity by trying to substitute distribution on the basis of need for
distribution on the basis of relative value of inputs.
The answer to the problem of income is to realize that, if
owners of technology are gaining income, and owners of labor are losing income,
then owners of labor must become owners of technology. That is what Capital Homesteading is designed
to do, but without taking anything away from current owners of technology or
inflating the currency. We’ve covered
this many times before, and you
can review it again by clicking on this link.
The issue we’re addressing here, however, is, if work is no longer
useful for the purpose of generating income, what good is it?
The answer is that, assuming we approach it with the right attitude, work always retains its meaning,
but it must also have a purpose. In fact, work without purpose might not even
be “real” work at all, regardless how much effort and resources are put into it.
That is where Aristotle’s concept of “leisure work” comes
in. There will always be work that is
absolutely essential for the purpose of advancing personal growth and the preservation and advance of
civilization. The problem is that the
most valuable types of leisure work often result in little or no income
generation. People need to be taught that the purpose of advancing personal growth and civilization can replace the purpose of income generation where work is concerned. Let the technology we own work to generate our income, while we get on to the important work.
This may be one of the things Pope Francis might want to
consider emphasizing — once people can (finally) be convinced that, one,
something must be done to keep people alive now, and, two, that emergency
measures are not solutions, and a permanent solution, not a temporary
expedient, is what is needed.
Maybe it should go into an encyclical on the principles of
economic justice.
#30#
