Section 5: Man’s Right to the Necessities of Life

1. THE RIGHT TO EXISTENCE.—The goods of the earth are destined for the support and maintenance of the whole human race, and hence every man has a right, based upon the law of nature, to lead an existence worthy of a human being. But since in matter of fact some members of society are deprived of the necessaries of life by misfortune, by unjust social conditions, by insufficient earnings, by unemployment, by disease, by weakness, or by old age, Moral Theology teaches that these persons possess a right or claim to receive from others the necessary means of sustenance.

This undeniable right is circumscribed by certain definite limits, which shall now be briefly explained.

a) The right to be aided by others belongs only to those who are poor and needy because unable to make a living, not to those who are in want simply because they will not work, for St. Paul says, “if any man will not work, neither let him eat.”¹ Consequently only he who is unable to make a living has a claim to the aid of his fellowmen, individually as well as collectively.

¹ 2 Thess. III, 10 sqq.—On the duty of labor see Vol. III of this Handbook, pp. 124 sqq.

b) This right extends only to what is absolutely necessary for a man to live like a human being, and does not entitle him to an equal share in the goods and luxuries of this world.²

² Acts IV, 35; 2 Cor. VIII, 14.

c) The duty of supplying the necessaries of life to the needy does not directly bind every individual, but society as a whole, in particular those of its organs designated for this purpose. Only in case of extreme necessity may the claim be enforced against individuals, under two conditions, viz.: (1) That only so much is taken as is necessary to preserve life, etc., (2) that the one from whom it is taken be not reduced to the same extreme necessity. The proposition: “It is allowable to steal not only in extreme, but likewise in grave necessity,” has been condemned by Innocent XI.³

³ Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 204: “1. In extreme necessity one’s neighbor must be assisted even from goods simply necessary for one’s state. For thus the right order of charity requires, since the life of one’s neighbor must prevail over our far inferior good; 2. In grave necessity one’s neighbor must be assisted from goods in some way necessary for one’s state, or with a slight detriment to one’s state, for the same reason; 3. In common necessity one’s neighbor must be assisted from goods superfluous to one’s state, even with some deprivation of pleasures, because if the obligation of the rich were removed, the poor would no longer be able to live.”—Ibid., n. 600: “1. A man may in extreme necessity use another’s goods, as much as is sufficient to free himself from such necessity. The reason is that the division of goods, however it was made, cannot derogate from the natural right belonging to each person to provide for himself while he labors under extreme necessity; 2. For someone to be able to take another’s goods, grave necessity, and a fortiori common necessity, is not sufficient, because otherwise owners would reasonably be unwilling and an easy avenue to plunder would lie open. Hence the following proposition was condemned by Innocent XI under n. 36: It is permissible to steal not only in extreme necessity but also in grave necessity.” (Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1186).

d) The right of which we are speaking is lost by him who grievously violates his duties to society, be it in a negative way by extravagance, criminal carelessness, habitual drunkenness, sloth, etc., or positively by the commission of some gross crime. Of course, the absolute necessities of life may not be denied even to the evil-doer, so long as he has not forfeited life itself.

For the rest, it is incredible on how little a man can support himself and how happy he can be if he seeks contentment within himself, or, better still, in God.

2. THE RIGHT TO WORK.—Lately it has been contended that all men have a claim to an equal share in the goods of this world. This demand has been clothed in the formula: Every man has a right to work. Experience teaches that there are always unemployed persons who would gladly work if they were given an opportunity and who could answer the question: “Why stand you here idle?” by truthfully saying: “Because no man hired us.”⁴ Unemployment, which has been particularly wide-spread and serious since the World War, is a frequently recurring social symptom and has its principal causes in the multiplication of machinery, the drift of population from country to city, the undue increase of female laborers, and certain defects inherent in the capitalistic system under which we live. The “right to labor” was acknowledged in the Catholic Middle Ages when the guilds limited the number of manufacturers and merchants and protected them against competition.

⁴ Matt. XX, 1–7.—Cfr. F. Meffert, Arbeiterfrage und Sozialismus, Mayence 1901, pp. 11 sqq.

“Every man,” says a recent Catholic writer, “has a right as well as a duty to some sort of useful employment: it is a condition of an honorable human existence. But in the case of the worker whose only honorable means of subsistence depends upon marketable labor, the rightful claim to employment and security against unemployment has a specific significance. But his ethical right in this matter of security is further derived from the fact that without a reasonable certainty of being able to maintain himself and those dependent on him, the anxiety about merely material things must take away his due liberty in the cultivation of his mental and spiritual interests. A normal healthy cultivation of mind and soul can with difficulty be achieved without a reasonable security against material want.

“Indeed, there can be hardly any question as to the moral right underlying the worker’s claim to security against unemployment. Less clear, perhaps, is the determination as to the incidence of the obligation to provide such security. There are those who would put the entire obligation upon the State; others would share the obligation between the State and the employer. But to put the entire obligation on the State is to assume a sphere of activity and responsibility on the part of the State towards the individual, which logically leads to Paternalism. The wider the responsibility taken over by the State in the ordering of the individual’s life, the less individual liberty there will be. In a free community ethical responsibilities must fall in the first place upon the individuals concerned, and only secondarily upon the State as the protector of the rights of the community and of the freedom of individuals. Doubtless in a matter which affects the general well-being of the community so vitally as does the labor problem, the State must necessarily intervene very largely, especially during a transitional period. That necessity of State intervention, however, will be less in proportion as employers of labor regard security against unemployment not merely as a matter of national expediency, but as a principle of inherent justice in the status of the worker which directly enters into the moral character of the contract between employer and worker.

“The worker, dependent as he is upon his work, has a moral claim to security against unemployment, and that claim must enter into the contract between himself and his employer. . . . Arbitrary dismissal, which takes into consideration merely the convenience or advantage of the employer without consideration for the well-being of the worker, is thus a real injustice. We are, of course, assuming that the worker is fulfilling his part of the ‘national bargain’ by honestly discharging the duties he has undertaken; as otherwise he himself has broken his contract and has forfeited his claim upon the employer. Cases may indeed arise in which, through no fault of his own, the worker may be incapable of continuing in the service of the employer through a change of conditions which are of general advantage, as well as to the employer’s interest: as, for instance, when new machinery or methods of higher scientific value are introduced into a manufactory. Yet in such cases there can be no doubt that the employer is under an obligation to do what he can to secure new employment to the honest worker; he cannot, without a violation of justice, dismiss him with no regard for the future: just because in the worker he is dealing with a human life and not with a mere tool.

“But if this is true, then the worker has surely a right to take due measures that his just claim shall be safeguarded against the employer’s arbitrary decision and, if need be, to invoke the intervention of the State. . . . At the same time the duty of safeguarding the worker against unemployment does not rest with the employer alone. The worker himself has his coördinate share in the responsibility. Everyone will admit that no employer is obliged to keep in employment an idle or dishonest worker: nor can any individual employer be justly forced to employ or to retain in employment the inefficient who is incapable of earning his wage, at least when the incapability is not brought about by the employer’s own act. These limitations of the employer’s responsibility point to a corresponding duty on the part of the worker and of those upon whom the worker is naturally dependent. It is at once clear that if the worker has an ethical right to employment, he has a duty to fit himself for employment and to do what in him lies to justify his claim to be employed. Not only must he be honest and willing to work: he must also do his part in fitting himself for the work demanded of him by the needs of the community. This is a duty he owes at once to himself and to the community at large: he owes it to himself since work is an essential necessity in his life; he owes it to the com- munity, since otherwise he runs the risk of becoming a mere burden upon his fellow-men, and of fulfilling no useful part in the life of the community upon which he must ultimately fall back for his maintenance.”⁵

⁵ Fr. Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., The Ethics of Labor, N. Y. 1922, pp. 11–14.

The right to work is not treated by St. Thomas and the older moralists, because it was purely hypothetical in their time. Even for St. Alphonsus de' Liguori it was not a practical question. Father Noldin deals with the subject in his usual clear and trenchant fashion.

“Every man,” he says, “has a right to work, that is, he has a right by just means to seek labor which is lawful for him and to perform that labor, and hence he has a right to demand that others shall not hinder him in the exercise of this right. This right is founded in another right, namely, that of preserving and perfecting life, to which economic labor is ordinarily necessary.”⁶ His qualification: “No one has a right to work, that is, to demand that some one else (whether a private individual or the State) should offer or procure him work, even though he be in need of the necessaries of life,” really means nothing more, as Fr. Ross shows, than that the laborer has not a strict right in commutative justice.

⁶ Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. II, 13th ed., pp. 83 sq.

“In the same way,” says the last-mentioned author, “the right of property is opposed to the obligation of actually giving one’s possessions to another; yet all theologians agree that a person in extremest need has a right to take what he needs, and that the possessor has a duty in charity to give. To prevent the disorders that would result from asserting these rights, however, there is a duty of legal justice incumbent upon the State to furnish work to such as cannot otherwise find it.⁷ When a government allows such a private appropriation of property as to close all opportunity of employment to any large class, it becomes responsible for affording to each man some reasonable return for the opportunities that would otherwise be his.”⁸

⁷ Noldin admits this when the number of unemployed is so great as to endanger the good of the community. (Ibid., p. 84).

⁸ J. E. Ross, C.S.P., The Right to Work, N. Y. 1917, pp. 32 sqq.

The State’s duties with regard to the employable, according to Fr. Ross, are briefly these: (a) It should aim at co-ordinating industries so that the workers can move from one to another without unnecessary loss of time; (b) It should establish employment bureaus and co-ordinate them; (c) It should provide vocational education and vocational guidance and co-ordinate seasonal occupations; (d) It should provide unemployment insurance.⁹

⁹ On vocational training see J. A. Ryan, Social Reconstruction, N. Y. 1920, pp. 111 sqq.

The unemployable Fr. Ross divides into two classes: the capable and the incapable. For the self-respecting, capable unemployed, work should be created. Just what that work should be—constructing roads, draining swamps, dredging rivers—is a question of detail. The municipality, the State, and the national government should each share in the responsibility. The incapable, i. e., mentally or morally defective, who cannot be employed in the industrial world, should be taken care of in public institutions that make for character building. The State should provide special institutions where such persons can be employed up to their full capacity, whatever that may be. Most of them could be made at least partially self-supporting. The others will be a charge on public charity. Here the aid of religion and religious should be enlisted, for the problem is one that requires all the forces available for its solution.

So much for the duties of the State. The individual has no direct duty to furnish work for the unemployed. But is he therefore entirely absolved from all obligation?

Fr. Ross thinks not. “Perhaps in a rigid autocracy,” he says, “the individual citizen may salve his conscience by throwing all the odium upon the government. But in a republic matters are different. No such Pilate-washing of the hands will absolve the voters. For the State will act as the voters dictate, and each one can say, ‘I am the State.’ He is not the whole State, but he is a part of it, and to that extent becomes responsible for the State’s action. Of course, each citizen is not the equal of every other. While no one has more than one direct vote, some have more influence and power than others. In proportion to this power will he be judged. In private conversation, with tongue or pen, or in any other way possible to him, he must endeavor to bring about the fulfilment of this duty to the unemployed. A perpetual passing of the duty will get us nowhere. Each man is his brother’s keeper, and the duty of the keeping cannot be shifted to the world at large. Unemployment is sapping the strength and undermining the efficiency of several millions of our citizens. Mere individual efforts at finding employment or dispensing charity are futile. . . . Even State activity in the form of insurance and employment bureaus will never really get down to the root of the matter. There must be national provision of the opportunity to work. And in this action of the nation we must share. Each in his own measure must help on the formation of the public opinion necessary for such action, so that some day there will be no men standing here all the day idle because no man hath hired them.”¹⁰

¹⁰ Ross, The Right to Work, 103 sqq.—On different systems of insurance against unemployment, see J. A. Ryan, Social Reconstruction, pp. 99 sqq.

READINGS.—H. Pesch, S.J., Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie, Vol. I, 2nd ed., Freiburg i. B. 1914, pp. 9 sqq., 313 sqq.—G. von Hertling, Kleine Schriften, pp. 313 sqq., 328 sqq.—F. X. Linsenmann, Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, pp. 482 sqq.—Fr. Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., The Ethics of Labor, N. Y. 1922.—J. E. Ross, C.S.P., The Right to Work, N. Y. 1917.—H. Noldin, S.J., Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. II, pp. 83 sq.—J. E. Ross, C.S.P., Christian Ethics, pp. 328 sqq.—H. Parkinson, A Primer of Social Science, pp. 92, 250 sqq. London 1913.