Folia Theologica 11. (2000)

Eugene Csocsan de Váralja: The Just Income Distribution

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E. CSOCSAN de Váralja

Ist chapter. The National Income

The national income is the sum of the national economy's total product during a financial period (usually in a year). Namely the individuals join the economic activity through the monetary system of each nation, and as a consequence the share of the participants depends on the amount of the proceeds brought forward by the nation and on time involved.

Among the components of the national income the Quadragesimo anno names the national resources,2 and the Rerum novarum states that the wealth of states originates from the labour of the workers.3 The amount of labour's proceeds are increased by division of labour and by the ambition or love of work as well. We have to include however into the human labour the activity of the mothers and of those who are engaged in the households, just as the intellectual work, as we can gain more by good devices, than by force. The plans of the engineers might be sold valuably abroad and the international commerce could become every important component of the national income, as it has been pointed out by the Ubi arcano, when it deplored, that languent populorum inter se commercia.4 a Finally the Quadragesimo anno stressed, that if intelligence, capital and labour do not cooperate, the human work can not be fruitful.5

2 “..sed non minus patet summos illos conatus irritos futuros fuisse vanosque, immo vero ne tentari quidem potuisse, nisi Creator omnium Deus pro sua bonitate divitias et supellectilem naturalem, opusque ac vires naturae, prius fuisset largitus” Quadragesimo anno, Acta Apostolicae Sedis (henceforth AAS) 1931 (annus XXIII) page 195.

3 “non aliunde quam ex opificum labore gigni divitias civitatum” Rerum novarum, LEONIS XIII Pontificis Maximi Acta, Volume XL, Rome 1892 (henceforth Acta Leonis), page 123; Quadragesimo anno, AAS 1931 (a. XXIII), page 194.

4 Ubi arcano, AAS 1922 (a XIV), page 679.

5 “....nisi enim corpus vere sociale et organicum constet, nisi socialis et iuridicus ordo operae exercitium tueantur, nisi variae artes, quarum aliae ab aliis dependent, inter se conspirent ac mutuo compleant, nisi quod maius est, consociantur ac quasi in unum conveniant intellectus, res, opera, nequit fructus suos gignere efficientia hominum.” Quadragesimo anno, AAS 1931 (a. XXIII), page 200.

Already Pope Leo XIIIth stressed “Non res sine opera, nec sine re potest opera consistere” Rerum novarum, Acta Leonis , page 109... Quadragesimo anno, AAS 1931 (a. XXIII), page 195