CLASSES. - The identity of social positions, professions, and activities carried on within the community, in contrast with differences in aptitudes, education, and economic conditions, leads citizens to form distinct groups, creating closer bonds among those belonging to the same group, both because of the innate tendency in every man to associate with those most like himself and because of the need to provide more effectively, through the union of forces, for individual needs. The phenomenon nevertheless presents different characteristics and names, according as the reason impelling citizens to unite answers to needs of a predominantly civil, military, religious, or economic order.
In antiquity and the Middle Ages, and even today among some less developed peoples, society appears divided into “orders,” “estates,” or “castes,” originating from considerations of birth (patriciate, nobility, warrior castes) or religion (priestly order, clergy), while economic considerations retain an altogether secondary importance. On the contrary, especially in modern and contemporary periods, owing to economic progress, the defence of individual interests unquestionably gains the upper hand over other motives, giving rise to the guilds of arts and crafts and, after the industrial revolution, to classes, in the specific sense in which the word is used today: classes, unlike guilds, closely unite not only citizens who occupy economically privileged positions in society (the capitalist bourgeoisie), but also those who occupy inferior positions (the proletariat), giving rise in both alike to a “class consciousness,” that is, a profound awareness of their own group interests and of the need to defend them through strongly solidaristic action. Moreover, classes tend to act no longer solely in the economic field, as guilds did, but also in the political field, in order to seize public power, with the aim of decisively imposing themselves upon the opposing class.
I. SOCIALIST DOCTRINES. - The concept of class, as the expression of a solidarity based on purely homogeneous material interests, in conflict with the interests of other competing groups, is characteristic of modern socialist doctrines, understood in a generic sense, which regard the economic factor as the determining element of social relations and of their evolution over the centuries. This concept was elaborated differently by the various currents of socialism, among which the Marxist theory deserves particular mention; it understood it in an absolutely materialistic sense (historical materialism), carrying it to its most extreme political and economic consequences. According to it, social relations are wholly and exclusively dominated by the economic factor and develop as a result of an irreconcilable and brutal conflict between the categories of owners of the means of production and mere workers. The conflict would pass through different phases, assuming different manifestations in the various periods of history, according to the structure of economic life, and passing from one to another by virtue of an evolutionary determinism immanent in social life, to become, in present-day capitalist society, the “class struggle.” This struggle, however, is destined to end in a new society which, according to Marx, must inevitably succeed capitalist society. In the society of the future, once private ownership of the means of production has been abolished and these assigned to the State, classes too will be eliminated, together with conflicts and social inequalities among citizens, all of whom will have become workers. Meanwhile, closely united with one another on the national and international level, the workers of the whole world must employ violent and revolutionary action, directed toward expropriating the class that holds wealth and ensuring the victory of their own class, temporarily conquering political power (the dictatorship of the proletariat),
riat), in order to accelerate humanity’s dynamic process toward a society without classes.
II. CATHOLIC DOCTRINE. - Catholic doctrine recognizes social inequalities as natural and necessary, since “not all possess the same intelligence, the same diligence; nor health, nor strength in equal measure; and from these inevitable differences there necessarily arises a difference in social conditions” (Leone XIII, in the encyclical Rerum novorum, no. 9). The emergence and formation of c. is therefore not a phase in social development, as the socialist thesis—and Marxism in particular—would have it, which claims to level the social positions of citizens but in reality can only replace the inequalities and c. suppressed in capitalist society with others. On the contrary, c. are the effect of individual differences, established among men partly by historical requirements and partly, and to a greater extent, by natural aptitudes, also for the benefit of society, whose life precisely requires different capacities and services. The opposition between the Catholic conception and the socialist conception concerns not only the origin of c., but also their end and the position occupied by the individual within the c. The end for which citizens organize themselves into c. is to promote, through the union of their forces, their own personal development and to safeguard before the State and the other c. every legitimate right of the person. It is therefore not a matter of asserting economic interests alone against other interests, but of effectively securing everything that leads to the perfection of man and that could not suitably be attained by the isolated citizen. Nor can the individual be subordinated to the c., as though it were something possessing within itself its own reason for being; rather, the c. must be subordinated to the individual, who alone possesses absolute value in the social order. The opposition between the two conceptions also extends to the mutual relations among c. and between these and the community and the State, which juridically represents II. The c. are bound together by ties of complementarity and mutual dependence. Speaking specifically of the owners of the means of production and workers, Leone XIII observed that “each needs the other; neither can capital exist without labour, nor labour without capital” (ibid.). Consequently, not subordination, still less discord and conflict, must prevail among the c., but coordination, harmony, and collaboration, as among the members of the same social body, with respect for the rights of others and fulfilment of one’s own duties. The Church therefore, while condemning the economic and political supremacy of the capitalist c. to the detriment of the working c., rejects social revolution as a means in the hands of the latter to vindicate its own rights by establishing a supremacy of labour to the detriment of the possessors of productive goods. Both, in fact, are oppressive and contrary to the principles of social justice. If all capital were attributed to the State, there would result the complete annihilation of the dignity of the human person, beneath the weight of a dictatorship incomparable with any other supremacy of private citizens or groups.
In place of a revolution destructive of material and moral values, the Church advocates a “progressive and prudent evolution, courageous and consonant with nature, enlightened and guided by the holy Christian norms of justice and equity” (Pio XII, in his address to workers on Pace nel mondo e collaborazione delle c.), which may open to the categories of labour the way to acquire honestly their share of responsibility in the economic and political direction of national life. According to Catholic doctrine, the task of the State is to preserve within the community a condition of social peace founded upon justice. To this end the State must take care to uphold the rights of all c., particularly protecting those that are lower and economically weaker, so that the diversity of social positions and professions may not lead to further unjustified inequalities, especially economic ones, among citizens. Diversity of social positions does not, in fact, imply a corresponding diversity in civil rights (democracy); thus, in a well-ordered society, all citizens without distinction must be permitted to enjoy the benefits of associated life, and those belonging to the lower c. must be afforded real opportunities to improve their economic and social conditions. Finally, whatever they may be, the c. are bound to provide steadily for the common good of the community, both by securing their mutual collaboration and by overcoming their own particular interests, should these prove to conflict with the higher interests of the social organism to which they belong and within which they act as partial organs. To this end, it is therefore required that the internal constitution itself, the reciprocal relations, and the action of the c. be regulated by appropriate legislative measures. The c. are organized “on legitimate bases when they tend toward union with the other c. Their particular ends do not in fact occupy the supreme place in the natural hierarchy of social ends. Subject to these reservations, the Christian organization of the various social c. may tend toward the legitimate ends of mutual aid, collaboration, assistance, and apostolate” (Codice sociale di Malines, Roma 1943, no. 169).
Therefore, while not being “class-based,” the Church’s social doctrine has a “pluralistic” conception of social life, in the sense that it admits the legitimacy and expediency of heterogeneous groups possessing their own autonomy and activity within the social whole; this conception, however, is at the same time “organic,” insofar as it brings together and associates the various groups in their common subordination to the good of society, from whose vitality and well-being they will derive benefits all the greater the more united and harmonious the action they exert in contributing to II.