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I'm one. Not only am I a Christian (of the RC variety), and a socialist, but I'm the latter because I'm the former.
Here are some thoughts I put together last year on this:
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Consider Pius XI's 1931 Encyclical, 'Quadragesimo anno':
"We consider it more advisable, however, in the present condition of human society that, so far as is possible, the work-contract be somewhat modified by a partnership-contract, as is already being done in various ways and with no small advantage to workers and owners. Workers and other employees thus become sharers in ownership or management or participate in some fashion in the profits received." (section 65)
Pius XI, while continuing to uphold the right of private property as a
necessary material basis for personal autonomy and responsibility, also indicated that public ownership was legitimate in principle:
"Socialism inclines toward and in a certain measure approaches the truths which Christian tradition has always held sacred; for it cannot be denied that its demands at times come very near those that Christian reformers of society justly insist upon.... For certain kinds of property, it is rightly contended, ought to be reserved to the State since they carry with them a dominating power so great that cannot without danger to the general welfare be entrusted to private individuals." (sections 113-114)
Is the kind of property that carries this potentially dangerous dominating power in fact the typical kind represented by the modern large business corporation? I say YES.
John XXIII reiterated these points in 'Mater et Magistra', his 1961
Encyclical on social issues, as can be seen from these extracts:
"113. But it is not enough to assert that the right to own private property and the means of production is inherent in human nature. We must also insist on the extension of this right in practice to all classes of citizens.
115. Now, if ever, is the time to insist on a more widespread distribution of property, in view of the rapid economic development of an increasing number of States. It will not be difficult for the body politic, by the adoption of various techniques of proved efficiency, to pursue an economic and social policy which facilitates the widest possible distribution of private property in terms of durable consumer goods, houses, land, tools and equipment (in the case of craftsmen and owners of family farms), and shares in medium and large business concerns. This policy is in fact being pursued with considerable success by several of the socially and economically advanced nations.
116. This, of course, is not to deny the lawfulness of State and public ownership of productive goods, especially those which "carry with them a power too great to be left to private individuals without injury to the community at large."
The most extensive elaboration of these themes in Catholic social teaching was provided John Paul II in his 1983 Encyclical 'Laborem exercens':
"Furthermore, in the Church's teaching, ownership has never been understood in a way that could constitute grounds for social conflict in labor. As mentioned above, property is acquired first of all through work in order that it may serve work. This concerns in a special way ownership of the means of production. Isolating these means as a separate property in order to set it up in the form of 'capital' in opposition to 'labor'---and even to practise exploitation of labor---is contrary to the very nature of these means and their possession. They cannot be possessed against labor, they cannot even be possessed for possession's sake, because the only legitimate title to their possession---whether in the form of private ownerhip or in the form of public or collective ownership---is that they should serve labor, and thus, by serving labor, that they should make possible the achievement of the first principle of this order, namely, the universal destination of goods and the right to common use of them. From this point of view, therefore, in consideration of human labor and of common access to the goods meant for man, one cannot exclude the socialization, in suitable conditions, of certain means of production.
"....From this point of view the position of 'rigid' capitalism continues to remain unacceptable, namely the position that defends the exclusive right to private ownership of the means of production as an untouchable 'dogma' of economic life. The principle of respect for work demands that this right should undergo a constructive revision, both in theory and in practice. If it is true that capital, as the whole of the means of production, is at the same time the product of the work of generations, it is equally true that capital is being unceasingly created through the work done with the help of all these means of production, and these means can be seen as a great workbench at which the present generation of workers is working day after day. Obviously we are dealing here with different kinds of work, not only so-called manual labor but also the many forms of intellectual work, including white-collar work and management.
"In the light of the above, the many proposals put forward by experts in Catholic social teaching and by the highest Magisterium of the Church take on special significance: proposals for joint ownership of the means of work, sharing by the workers in the management and/or profits of businesses, so-called shareholding by labor, etc. Whether these various proposals can or cannot be applied concretely, it is clear that recognition of the proper position of labor and the worker in the production process demands various adaptations in the sphere of the right to ownership of the means of production. This is so not only in view of older situations but also, first and foremost, in view of the whole of the situation and the problems in the second half of the present century with regard to the so-called Third World and the various new independent countries that have arisen, especially in Africa but elsewhere as well, in place of the colonial territories of the past.
".....For it must be noted that merely taking these means of production (capital) out of the hands of their private owners is not enough to ensure their satisfactory socialization. They cease to be the property of a certain social group, namely the private owners, and become the property of organized society, coming under the administration and direct control of another group of people, namely those who, though not owning them, from the fact of exercising power in society manage them on the level of the whole national or the local economy.
"This group in authority may carry out its task satisfactorily from the point of view of the priority of labor; but it may also carry it out badly by claiming for itself a monopoly of the administration and disposal of the means of production and not refraining even from offending basic human rights. Thus, merely converting the means of production into State property in the collectivist system is by no means equivalent to 'socializing' that property. We can speak of socializing only when the subject character of society is ensured, that is to say, when on the basis of his work each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part-owner of the great workbench at which he is working with every one else. A way towards that goal could be found by associating labor with the ownership of capital, as far as possible, and by producing a wide range of intermediate bodies with economic, social and cultural purposes; they would be bodies enjoying real autonomy with regard to the public powers, pursuing their specific aims in honest collaboration with each other and in subordination to the demands of the common good, and they would be living communities both in form and in substance, in the sense that the members of each body would be looked upon and treated as persons and encouraged to take an active part in the life of the body." (End of extracts from 'Laborem exercens')
In addition to traditional forms of public ownership of large strategic industries and services, such as postal services, ports, extractive industries, electricity, railways, telecommunications, water (for all of which arguments can still be sensibly made for some measure of public ownership and control), what other forms of 'social' ownership can be persuasively argued for?
It seems to me that the 'wage-earner funds' idea proposed by Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner suggests a number of possibilities. Meidner envisaged a proportion (10-20 percent) of pretax company profits being statutorily mandated to purchase each year new shares in the affected enterprises on behalf of the company's workers. Share capital would thus continually expand, but with a growing and eventually majority percentage over time coming to be owned by employees. The company would receive the money used to purchase the newly issued shares each year as annual injections of fresh investment capital. The money could be seen as a form of employee compensation, and indeed in Meidner's own mind, it was meant to be used as a form of anti-inflationary wage restraint, as well as to provide a greater economic incentive for workers to be productive and efficient, lowered levels of labor strife, and greater social equality.
But one big disadvantage of this proposal is that it would tie up investment capital in the same businesses over time, when it might be more efficiently invested elsewhere in the economy. However, to address this concern, a similar mechanism could be used to create not wage-earner funds, but 'citizen investment funds'. That is, 10 to 20 percent of pretax business profits would be paid into the equivalent of mutual funds, which would be owned by all citizens. These investment bodies would have independent management boards, though subject to democratic oversight, and their performance would be regularly reviewed. Subject to some basic guidelines, they would be able to invest (i.e. purchase shares) in any publicly traded companies. There would perhaps be a number of these funds (a dozen, say), whose competitive performance in terms of dividend and capital growth, could be evaluated comparatively. Citizens could switch their notional stake from one fund to another (though perhaps no more than once a year, or once every several years). Underperforming funds would be subject to penalties, including in the case of the worst performing fund, the transfer and redistribution of a fixed portion of its funds to the other funds and dismissal of management. In other respects, they would operate pretty much like standard mutual funds or pension funds.
Another form of social ownership would be through the use of standard government pension and social security funds to invest, like the general citizen investment funds, in the stock market. Returns from these investment funds (and from those financed by the 'citizen share' of company profits) would be distributed in the form of an annual citizen dividend. Gradually, over time, this 'citizen dividend' would predominate over traditional capitalist dividends.
Among contemporary institutional investors, insurance companies and investment banks have a large role to play. Taking large stakes in such companies would give citizen investment funds, public pension funds, and social security investment funds a leveraged degree of control over the economy as a whole.
None of this would exclude private entrepreneurship. Such businesses would of course receive investment capital from banks (some of which could be partly or wholly socially owned) and directly from the various types of citizen and other public investment funds.
Other forms of social ownership would include traditional worker cooperatives, municipal ownership (of local transportation, say), and private pension funds.
Would-be capitalists could always start businesses and make profits and capital gains. There would be no general prohibition on private enterprise or private ownership. But the ownership of the means of production would gradually become predominantly social in nature, and certainly more evenly distributed.
Combined with traditional forms of public macroeconomic management,
regulations concerning workplace and product safety, environmental regulation, public provision of education and training, public provision of health-care, and a decent social safety net for the unemployed, disabled, and elderly, would the above-described forms of social property be sufficient to merit the name of socialism? I think so, though it wouldn't matter what it was called. And more importantly, would these ideas be workable and worthwhile in comparison to contemporary capitalism?
Obviously none of this could be implemented without thoroughgoing reforms of international financial institutions and some form of renewed control over international financial markets. But starting, say, with the EU----I imagine resistance would be much fiercer in the USA---wouldn't much of this be achievable with broad public support and skilled political leadership? And if it did begin to be implemented in Europe, catch on there, and have, overall, a reasonably successful outcome, would the more traditional form of US capitalism begin to lose its appeal?
Some might argue that in the US and other capitalist nations there are already plenty of citizen investment funds. They're just the standard form of mutual funds, pension funds, and so forth. But almost half of US households own NO stock, directly or indirectly through such investment funds. And almost 60% of US households own either none, or less than $5000 of stock, directly or indirectly. In fact, stock ownership continues to be very concentrated. Although more people own some stock than ever before, the very wealthy own a greater proportion of total issued stock, as well as of total wealth (including real estate, bonds, and other non-stock forms of wealth-holdings) than before also. And it is hard to see how that trend will ever be reversed given the trend of the last several decades in terms of income distribution, which has been sharply upward. As top executives, entrepreneurs and highly paid professionals receive pay packets that increasingly outstrip the earnings of the rest of society, they are likely to dominate even more in the ownership of stock, which itself already contributes to their much higher incomes because of the associated dividends and realized capital gains.
Without a significant and systematic reform of the way people are compensated so as to favor greater ownership stakes for ordinary people, the 'dominating power' of certain kinds of property will continue to be dangerous. And if conservatives truly believe in the importance and value of private property for individual dignity, autonomy, and responsibility , they should want it to be as practical as possible for every person to acquire a significant amount of it.
Comments and responses welcome!
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