Quadragesimo Anno - Capital and Labour

Capital and Labour

A related issue, says Pius, is the relation between capital and labour and the determination of fair wages. Pius develops the following ethical mandate: The Church considers it a perversion of industrial society, to have developed sharp opposite camps based on income. He welcomes all attempts to alleviate these cross differences. Three elements determine a fair wage: The worker's family responsibilities, the economic condition of the enterprise and the economy as a whole. The family has an innate right to development, but this is only possible within the framework of a functioning economy and sound enterprises. For this, Pope Pius concludes that solidarity not conflict is a necessary condition, given the mutual interdependence of the parties involved.

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