PATRONATO. – The concept of p. is the typical expression of a Catholic social position of the late nineteenth century, reflecting a static view of wealth and a paternalistic view of the entrepreneur’s function and of social relations.
In the concept of p., ownership and the entrepreneur’s function have something of a divine investiture about them: the entrepreneur is the father, conserver and distributor of wealth, minister Dei in bonum; the company community is the workers’ family. The normative principles governing labor relations are sought in the concept of the family.
I. HISTORICAL FUNCTION OF P
When social legislation and trade unionism had not yet regulated labor relations, and in a climate of absolute laissez-faire (v.) the law was constituted solely by entrepreneur (v.), in Catholic practice and spirituality there emerged the ideal of a kind-hearted Christian employer who, for reasons of faith and an enlightened sense of justice and charity, knew how to accept all the responsibilities accompanying his social authority, making himself an instrument of Divine Providence for the ordering and governance of society. In this ideal, the employer protects, directs, and assists his employees with loving moral and material care, concerning himself with their natural and supernatural life. Just as in the biologically understood family, so too in the family constituted by the productive unit, the employer makes use of all natural and supernatural means to help and educate those entrusted to him. The enterprise is a field of apostolate, like the family.II. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN EMPLOYER AND WORKER IN THE PATERNALISTIC CONCEPTION
A typical document expressing this sociological position is the Harmel (v.). “Between the employer and the worker there exist relations analogous to those existing between fathers and sons.” “The association between employer and worker is called the workers’ family.” “The employer is head of the workers’ family.” “The workers’ family derives from a material fact... from a contract... from a principle of natural law... from the duty incumbent upon the employer to exercise the authority granted to him by the contract of obligations....” “The workers’ family has the purpose of protecting the natural and supernatural rights of the natural family; of ensuring respect for the foundations of civil society; and of safeguarding the material and spiritual interests of its members” (cf. L. Harmel, Catechismo del padrone, Siena 1895, §§ 3, 17, 22). This concept of the workers’ family, and the resulting view of the social question as a “question of the heart,” aptly express the situation of labor relations before the rise of modern trade unionism and the juridical regulation of those relations.III. TOWARD NEW FORMS OF WORKERS’ PROTECTION
As, through the work of trade-union associations, a structure capable of regulating labor relations on a juridical rather than an affective basis was gradually developed, both the concept of patronage and that of the working-class family were superseded; in parallel, scholarship clarified the concept of the entrepreneur as the technical factor coordinating the various elements of production, and of his function, necessarily founded on personal capacities for initiative and responsibility, rather than solely on factors of tradition and environment. The progressive rise of the working class within the complex economy of modern social relations and structures, the clarification and definition of the worker’s rights as a person, the progressive intervention of the State in the economy, and the transition from a regime of free competition to one of mixed economy have rendered this concept entirely alien to the modern spirit.The need, instead, for personal and group entrepreneurial action aimed at perfecting structures and relations alongside the action of legislative institutions became widespread above all in the Christian world after the war, and is documented by the simultaneous emergence of entrepreneurial associations established in many European countries and in the New World, recently brought together in an international Christian entrepreneurial organization (Union Internationale des Associations Patronales Catholiques - UNIAPAC). The existence of such associations, which operate within the living substance of the social order of production, is intended to demonstrate that no legislative structure is sufficient to guarantee social order unless the structures are accompanied by the action of individual conscience.
The codifier of paternalism, Leone Harmel, who in theory is the codifier of industrial paternalism, was in practice an avant-garde figure who had moved beyond his doctrinal positions. Honest historical research will have to revise the commonplaces that still distort the profile and value of this man, who remains a precursor even for our own times, notwithstanding the limitations of his social doctrine. His concept of social justice and of entrepreneurial authority, and his pedagogy of the working-class world, are extraordinarily alive and, by their modernity, would make the boldest theorists of enterprise and the moralists of the entrepreneurial function shudder.