Quadragesimo Anno - Social Order

Social Order

Industrialization, says Pius XI, resulted in less freedom at the individual and communal level, because numerous free social entities got absorbed by larger ones. A society of individuals became a mass and class society. People are much less interdependent than in ancient times and become egoistic or class-conscious in order to save some freedom for themselves. The pope demands more solidarity, especially between employers and employees through new forms of cooperation and communication. Pius draws a negative view of Capitalism, especially of the anonymous international finance markets. He identifies here problems: dangers for small and medium-size enterprises who have insufficient access to capital markets and are squeezed or destroyed by the larger ones. He warns that capital interests can become a danger for states, who would be reduced to be "chained slaves of individual interests".

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