The priority of labor (cont'd.)

It is, admittedly, a bit odd for me as a Baptist to be such a fan of a papal encyclical. But my enthusiasm for Laborem Exercens is in spite of, not because of, its claim to ecclesiastical authority. I admire it because it presents a thoughtful and principled argument based on and distilled from non-sectarian reasoning.

Look again at the moral reasoning John Paul II employs there in his discussion of the priority of labor:

We must emphasize and give prominence to the primacy of humanity in the production process, the primacy of humanity over things. Everything contained in the concept of capital in the strict sense is only a collection of things. … Humans alone are persons.

His argument there is almost Kantian — that people are more important than things and ought to be regarded as ends, not as means. The conclusions he draws are not based exclusively on sectarian Catholic arguments, or exclusively on appeals to scripture or to church teaching, or on bald assertions of the authority of his office. Appeals to Catholic doctrine and to scripture are offered in support of his argument, but that argument is in itself based on reason, and is presented as an invitation to all “people of good will” to consider based on its reasonableness.

And I do not see any reasonable reason for any person of good will to find his argument unreasonable.

As one of the non-Catholic readers “of good will” to whom the encyclical is addressed, I’m free to read it that way. Catholic readers, of course, are bound by a different set of rules. To regard oneself as a loyal Catholic is to submit oneself to the authority of popes and, despite his broader appeal beyond that authority, John Paul was also asserting that authority in this encyclical.

Part of the reason I am not a Catholic is that I do not believe in the authority of popes. That means I am free to consider John Paul’s argument solely on its merits — to evaluate it no differently than I would evaluate any other argument from any other source.

What’s curious, however, is the casual disregard for this idea of the priority of labor on the part of Republicans who also boast of their supposed fierce loyalty to Catholic teaching. Consider for example former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Santorum, like every other current Republican candidate for president, is an absolute believer in the priority of capital over labor. He loves to condemn the Democratic Party for embracing beliefs that contradict Catholic doctrine — whether it be a legal right to abortion, a legal right to contraception, or legal equality for homosexuals. But he steadfastly ignores the fact that his own Republican agenda with its central, fundamental tent of the priority of capital, is also irreconcilably contradictory to the tenets of the faith he constantly speaks of as the basis for his politics.

One does not need to be Catholic to note the extreme hypocrisy of Santorum’s position. One does not need to agree with his claim that being a devoted, uncompromising Catholic is the ideal position in order to notice that he is not, himself, the devoted, uncompromising Catholic he claims to be. Given the choice between fidelity to Catholic teaching on the priority of labor and fidelity to the Republican teaching of the priority of capital, he denies the former and reveres the latter on a daily basis.

But ultimately, I don’t really care whether or not Santorum’s political agenda is consistent with the teaching of the Catholic church. The fact that it is not makes him a hypocrite and thus reveals something deficient and unlovely in his personal character. That tells us something about him as a person, but it has nothing to do with why I disagree with his political agenda.

Ultimately, I do not want Rick Santorum to reject the Republican idea of the priority of capital over labor because the Vatican says he must. I want him to reject that idea because it is simply wrong. It is false — an unreasonable, indefensible idea. It’s bad economics and bad ethics and it produces bad policy. It doesn’t work. It isn’t true.

People are more important than things. To act as though the opposite were true doesn’t work because the opposite is not true. To treat things as more important than people harms people and doesn’t do things any favors either. To assert the priority of capital over labor harms labor and laborers and thus, also, erodes the basis for and foundation of capital.