Classes

CLASSES. - The identity of social positions, professions and activities carried out within the community, when compared with the diversity of aptitudes, education and economic conditions, drives citizens to form distinct groups, creating among those of the same group closer bonds, both because of the innate tendency in every man to associate with those most similar to him, and because of the necessity of providing more effectively, through the union of forces, for individual needs. The phenomenon nevertheless presents different characteristics and names, according to whether the motive for which citizens are driven to unite responds to needs of a predominantly civil, military, religious, or economic order.

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and even today among certain less evolved peoples, society appears divided into "orders," "estates" or "castes," which originate from reasons of birth (patriciate, nobility, warrior castes) or of religion (priestly order, clergy), while economic considerations retain an entirely secondary importance. On the contrary, especially in the modern and contemporary periods, thanks to economic progress, the defense of individual interests definitely prevails over the other motives, giving rise to the guilds of arts and crafts and, after the industrial revolution, to the classes, in the specific sense in which the word is used today: classes, unlike the guilds, closely unite together not only the citizens who occupy economically privileged positions in society (capitalist bourgeoisie), but also those who find themselves in inferior positions (proletariat), causing a "class consciousness" to arise equally in both, that is, a profound awareness of one's own category interests and of the necessity of defending them through strongly solidary action. Moreover, classes tend to act no longer in the economic field alone, as the guilds did, but also in the political field, in order to seize public power, with the aim of imposing themselves decisively upon the opposing class.

I. SOCIALIST DOCTRINES

The concept of class, as the expression of a solidarity of purely homogeneous material interests, in conflict with the interests of other competing groups, is proper to the modern socialist doctrines, taken in a generic sense, which place in the economic factor the determining element of social relations and of their evolution over the course of the centuries. This concept was elaborated in different ways by the various currents of socialism, among which particular mention must be made of the Marxist theory, which understood it in an absolutely materialistic sense (historical materialism), carrying it to its extreme political and economic consequences. According to it, social relations are totally and exclusively dominated by the economic factor and evolve by reason of an irremediable and brutal conflict between the categories of the owners of the means of production and of the simple workers. The conflict would pass through different phases, assuming different manifestations in the various epochs of history, according to the structure of economic life, and passing from one to the other by force of an evolutionistic determinism immanent in social life, to be transformed in present-day capitalist society into "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 the private ownership of the means of production has been abolished and attributed to the State, classes will also be eliminated and with them the conflicts and social inequalities among citizens, who will all have become workers. Meanwhile, closely united among themselves on the national and international plane, the workers of the whole world must make use of violent and revolutionary action, directed at expropriating the class that holds wealth and at ensuring the victory of their own class, temporarily conquering political power (dictatorship of the proletariat), riat), with the aim of accelerating 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 talent, the same diligence; not health, not strength in equal degree; and from these inevitable differences there necessarily arises a difference of social conditions" (Leo XIII, in the encyclical Rerum novarum, n. 9). The rise and constitution of classes is therefore not a moment in social becoming, as the socialist thesis and in particular Marxism would have it, which claims to level the social positions of citizens, but in reality can only replace other inequalities and other classes for those abolished in capitalist society. Classes are, on the contrary, the effect of individual differences, which partly historical exigencies and partly, and more, natural aptitudes establish among men, also to the advantage of society, whose life indeed requires diverse capacities and services. The opposition between the Catholic conception and the socialist conception concerns not only the origin of classes, but also their end and the position that the individual occupies within the class. The end for which citizens organize themselves into classes is to promote through the union of forces their own personal development and to safeguard before the State and other classes every legitimate right of the person. It is therefore not a matter of asserting solely economic interests against other interests, but of effectively procuring all that leads to the perfection of man and that could not be conveniently attained by the isolated citizen. Nor can the individual be subordinated to the class, as to something having in itself its own reason for being, but the class must be subordinated to the individual, who in the social order possesses exclusively an absolute value. The opposition between the two conceptions extends also to the mutual relations among classes and between these and the collectivity and the State that juridically represents it. Classes are bound to one another by ties of complementarity and mutual dependence. Speaking specifically of the owners of the means of production and of the workers, Leo XIII observed that "the one has need of the other; neither capital without labor, nor can labor stand without capital" (ibid.). Consequently, not subordination, nor much less discord and struggle, must reign among classes, but coordination, harmony and collaboration, as among the members of the same social body, in respect for the rights of others and in the fulfillment of one's own duties. The Church therefore, in condemning the economic and political supremacy of the capitalist class to the detriment of the working class, rejects social revolution as a means in the hands of the latter for vindicating its own rights, establishing a supremacy of labor to the detriment of the possessors of productive goods. Both indeed are oppressive and contrary to the principles of social justice. Should all capital moreover be attributed to the State, there would be the complete annihilation of the dignity of the human person, under the weight of a dictatorship without comparison with any other supremacy of private citizens or of categories.

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" (Pius XII, in the address to workers on Peace in the world and collaboration of classes), which opens to the categories of labor the path to acquire honestly their share of responsibility in the economic and political direction of national life. The task of the State, according to Catholic doctrine, is to preserve in the collectivity a situation of social peace founded on justice. To this end the State will take care to uphold the rights of all classes, protecting particularly those that are inferior and economically weaker, so that the diversity of social positions and of professions may not lead to other unjustified inequalities, above all economic, among citizens. The diversity of social positions does not in fact imply an equal diversity in civil rights (democracy), for which in a well-ordered society all citizens without distinction must be permitted to enjoy the advantages of associated life and there must be offered to those of the inferior classes real possibilities of improving their economic and social conditions. Classes, finally, whatever they may be, are bound to provide stably for the common good of the collectivity, both by procuring their mutual collaboration and by overcoming their own particular interests, should these prove to be in conflict with the higher interests of the social organism, to which they belong and in which they act in the function of partial organs. To this end it is therefore required that the internal constitution itself, the mutual relations and the action of the classes be regulated by appropriate legislative measures. Classes organize themselves "on legitimate bases, when they tend to union with other classes. Their particular ends do not in fact stand in the supreme place of the natural hierarchy of social ends. With these reservations the Christian organization of the various social classes can tend to the legitimate ends of mutual aid, of collaboration, of assistance, of apostolate" (Social Code of Malines, Rome 1943, n. 169).

Therefore, while not being "classist," the social doctrine of the Church has a "pluralistic" conception of social life, in the sense that it admits the legitimacy and the opportuneness of heterogeneous groups having their own autonomy and their own activity within the social whole; such a conception is nevertheless at the same time "organic," inasmuch as it unites and associates the different groups in common subordination to the good of society, from whose vitality and well-being they will draw advantages all the greater the more solidary and harmonious the action they will carry out in contributing to it.

Alberto De Marco