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Catholic Social Doctrine in Portuguese Corporativism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2024
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The fundamental moral principle governing the relations between men as producers and consumers, employers and employees, is admittedly that of social justice. The purpose of this article is to show, in a brief synthesis of papal teaching, that this principle implies the social theory of Christian corporativism, and to study the application of both in the leading articles of the Portuguese Statute of National Labour.
The Statute of National Labour was published on the 23rd September, 1933, six months after the plebiscite on the part of the Portuguese nation of the new Constitution establishing a “unitary and corporative Republic.” It is not itself technically a law, it is rather a preamble to all future social and economic legislation, in which has been elaborated the norms of the new social and economic order which in accepting the Constitution the nation had solemnly pledged itself to bring about. (Constitution: Part I, chapters IV and VIII.) Now that the constitution of the late Austrian Federal Republic is a dead letter, it stands unique among political documents for its fidelity to Christian social and economic principles and for the care with which it applies the precepts of papal teaching in the construction of a professional and economic code specially adapted to the needs of a particular nation.
The nature of social justice is clearly expressed by Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris: “it is impossible to care for the social organism and the good of society as a whole unless each single part and each individual member—that is to say, each individual man in the dignity of his human personality—is supplied with all that is necessary for the exercise of his social functions.”
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- Copyright © 1938 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 This, as well as other important corporative, legislation, is published in A Nocao Corporativa by Augusto da Costa, Imprensa, Nacional, Lisbon, It is also obtainable, together with the Political Constitution of The Portuguese Republic, in French translation, from the Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional. Lisbon.
2 The right to own and to make use of property may of course be deduced from the right to live and maintain existence; but the latter is the right of a rational being, and entails moral duties to one’s neighbour as well as to oneself.
3 The correction of disporportions in the ownership of wealth, in accordance with the principles of a just distribution, though equally part of Catholic social doctrine, is not an end which corporative reform as such is directly concerned to bring about. It is, however, directly concerned to secure a just distribution of the product of industry; and in Portugal, this is recognised to include for the labouring classes the provision of certain social services in addition to the just wage.
4 cf. A. Salazar: Discursos 1928-1934, Coimbra Editora Lda, “Problems of Corporative Organisation,” pp. 288-289.
5 cf. A Doutrina Corporative em Portugal; J. P. da Costa Leite, Ch. III, pp. 87-89; O Sistema Corporativo; Marcello Gaetano; Ch. II, pp. 43-44; Liçöes de Direito corporativo, J. J. T. Ribeiro; Ch. III. pp. 138-143.
6 cf. Salazar op. Cit . “Economic Concepts of the Nen Constitution,” pp. 199-200.
7 The Gremio, as Professor Marcello Gaetano points out (O Sistema Corporativa, pp. 85-87) is not primarily a class-association of employers, but an association of business enterprises or economic units.
It should be noted that the professional interests of the agricultural worker and small farmer are entrusted to special foundations called Casas do Povo or People’s Lodges, of which one is intended to be established in every rural parish: similarly those of the fishing population are to be protected by Fisherman’s Lodges, one in each fishing port. The organisation of these differs in an interesting way from that of the Syndicates.
8 For a further discussion of the elements of the system in English reference should be made to Ch. III of Michael Derrick's The Portugal of Salazar as well as to Mr. George West's lecture on The New Corporative State of Portugal, and to Mr. Freppel Cottas’ Economic Planning in Corporative Portugal.
9 The fact that the wording and content of some of the articles of the Statute have been influenced by the Italian Carta del Lavoro is in no way inconsistent with this.
10 A translation into English of selections from Ur. Salazar’s Discursos as well as of A. Ferris’s Salazar, O Homen e a Sua Obra is to be published by Messrs. Faber and Faber in February, 1939.
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