445 LABOR BEFORE CAPITAL

YOUCAT Lesson 445

YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic youth

445  What is meant by the principle “labor before capital”?

The Church has always taught “the principle of the priority of labor over capital” (Pope St. John Paul II, Laborem Exercens).  Man owns money or capital as a thing.  Labor, in contrast is inseparable from the person who performs it.  That is why the basic needs of laborers have priority over the interests of capital.

Firefighters gathered in Madison to protest Wisconsin’s 2011 anti-union Act 10 legislation. …..445

The owners of capital and investors have legitimate interests, too, which must be protected.  It is a serious injustice, however, when entrepreneurs and investors try to increase their own profits at the expense of the basic rights of their laborers and employees.

“Everything contained in the concept of capital in the strict sense is only a collection of things.  Man as the subject of work, and independently of the work that he does—man alone is a person.” Pope St. John Paul II, (1920-2005), Laborem Exercens