CSDC 277

The Church's social doctrine has not failed to insist on the relationship between labour and capital, placing in evidence both the priority of the first over the second as well as their complementarities. Labour has an intrinsic priority over capital. “This principle directly concerns the process of production: in this process labour is always a primary efficient cause, while capital, the whole collection of means of production, remains a mere instrument or instrumental cause. This principle is an evident truth that emerges from the whole of man's historical experience”⁵⁹³ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 12: AAS 73AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 73 (1981) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1981), 606.. This “is part of the abiding heritage of the Church's teaching”⁵⁹⁴ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 12: AAS 73AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 73 (1981) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1981), 608.. There must exist between work and capital a relationship of complementarities: the very logic inherent within the process of production shows that the two must mutually permeate one another and that there is an urgent need to create economic systems in which the opposition between capital and labour is overcome⁵⁹⁵ Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, 13: AAS 73AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 73 (1981) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1981), 608-612.. In times when “capital” and “hired labour”, within a less complicated economic system, used to identify with a certain precision not only two elements of production but also and above all two concrete social classes, the Church affirmed that both were in themselves legitimate⁵⁹⁶ Cf. Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno: AAS 23AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 23 (1931) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1931), 194-198.: “Capital cannot stand without labour, nor labour without capital”⁵⁹⁷ Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum: Acta Leonis XIII, 11 (1892), 109.. This is a truth that applies also today, because “it is altogether false to ascribe either to capital alone or to labour alone what is achieved by the joint work of both; and it is utterly unjust that the one should arrogate unto itself what is being done, denying the effectiveness of the other”⁵⁹⁸ Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno: AAS 23AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 23 (1931) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1931), 195..