A History of Economic Doctrines / from the time of the physiocrats to the present day

by Charles Gide; Charles Rist

During the period of the Second Empire most of the Social Catholics seem to have fallen asleep, but they were aroused from their slumbers by the disaster of 1870. The Comte Albert de Mun proved the inspirer this time, and his noble eloquence, which led to the formation of unions of Catholic working men, was instrumental in giving the movement a vigorous start. The same period witnessed the appearance of L’Association catholique, a review which took as its programme the study of economic facts in a Catholic spirit—an object that has always been kept steadily in view.

Organisation in the form of corporations was given first place in the Social Catholic programme.[1058] Le Play’s corner-stone—the family organisation—was not rejected, but they considered that though the family was to remain the basis for moral reform a wider association of an economic character must serve as a basis for economic reform.

At first sight this may seem somewhat surprising. The connection between these professional associations and the teaching of the Gospel is not very evident, nor is it very clear how such organisations could ever hope to Christianise society. But although the Gospels know nothing of a corporative or any other régime we must not forget their prominence during the Middle Ages—when the authority of the Church was in the ascendant. As long as this régime lasted what we understand as the social question—the vexed problem as to whether we possess sufficient moral strength to keep the peace between capital and labour—never presented itself. The problem is, of course, somewhat different to-day, but its solution may possibly require the exercise of similar virtues, namely, obedience to a detailed system of organisation coupled with a feeling of brotherhood—the chastening of the whole complexity of social relations by the spirit of Christianity.

Some of their opponents have not hesitated to charge these Catholics with a desire to return to the feudalism of the Middle Ages, which is of course utterly false. What the Social Catholics wished to do was to build up the new social structure upon the basis of the modern trade union, or upon syndicalism; and the proof that the foundation is not at any rate too narrow lies in the fact that the new schools of socialists can conceive of none better. With this as the foundation they looked forward not merely to the development of a new society, but also to the rise of a new ethic. The fact that they forestalled the socialists in this respect shows that the Social Catholics were at least not hopelessly antiquated.

Early in the history of the movement they tried to organise a kind of mixed syndicat consisting both of masters and men, because this seemed to them to offer the best guarantee for social peace. But the results proved disappointing, and they were soon forced to relinquish that idea and to content themselves with a separate organisation of masters and men co-operating only in matters relating to the regulation of work or the settling of differences.[1059] Such collateral unions, it was at first thought, would gradually become the organs of labour legislation, and the State would entrust them with the discharge of that function because of their greater freedom in the making of experiments. All questions affecting the interests of a trade, the hours of labour, Sunday observance, apprenticeship, the sanitary condition of the workshops, the labour of women and children, and even the rate of wages paid, instead of being regulated as they are at present by brutal, inflexible laws which are seldom suited to meet every individual case, would henceforth be settled by the union, and the rules of the union would be incumbent upon all the members of the trade or profession, both masters and men. Everyone would be free to enter the union or to decline membership just as he chose, but no member would be allowed to violate the rules of the union or to lower the conditions of labour in any way. “Free association within an organised profession,” such is the formula.[1060]

To those Liberals who feign indignation at seeing purely private institutions thus invested with legislative authority it may be answered that the “labour union” so constituted forms an association which is as natural and as necessary—understanding by this that it is independent of the voluntary conventions of the parties interested—as one based upon community of residence. Everybody admits that the inhabitants of the commune ought to submit to the rule of the organised majority. What difference would it make if the majority thus organised constituted a corporation rather than a commune?[1061]

Some go so far as to regard these professional associations as possessed of an important political rôle, and would even go the length of making this new corporative unit the basis of a new franchise for the election of at least one of the two Chambers.

It is not very easy, perhaps, to get a clear idea of what a society built upon a plan of this kind would really be like, but the difficulty is no greater in this case than in some others.