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THE CATHOLIC ATTITUDE
TO

MACHINERY

D. MARSHALL

THE SOWER PRESS
R.F.D. 1, SCOTCH PLAINS, NJ.

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MACHINERY
THE BASIS OF THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL ORDER IS THE
FAMILY. AND CORRELATIVE TO THE INSTITUTION OF THE

FAMILY IS THE INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY, WHICH MAY
BE TERMED THE KEYSTONE OF THE SOCIAL ORDER.

Property is natural to man. From Man's free will it follows
that he can possess private property in order to be inde­
pendent as far as possible from the domination of other

wills. From man’s rational nature it follows that he must
establish a lien over goods for future use, and not live
from day to day on chance findings, like beasts. The
family requires the institution of property for its existence.
Moreover, the most convenient method of production is
that method by which every man looks after those goods
which he is to use for his own maintenance. Such is the
Catholic scheme in brief.

Now we come up against what may be called the
Marxian dilemma. How can private property be reconciled

with modern methods of production. Marx said no recon­

ciliation was possible; that large-scale production was
incompatible with private property; and that the only just

way of dealing with it was ownership in common. Now

on the surface this argument seems to have much to be
said for it. For there are four ways of dealing with the
problem of large-scale factory production and ownership:
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1. First, one man can own the factory, while the workers

in it are propertyless. Such was the method of early
capitalism.

2. Secondly, there may be many owners in common, but

they are distinct from the actual workers in the factory.
That is the modern method of the limited company, in
which ownership is divorced from both responsibility
and control; and from one aspect it may be defined as
a perverted form of Communism, for the shareholders
all own the means of production in common.
3. Thirdly, we may have State Socialism, in which the
means of production are owned by the State, as in
theory representing the community.
4.

Fourthly, we may have various forms of Syndicalism,
in which the actual workers in the factory own it col­

lectively. Co-partnership is a compromise between this

form and the second form, of modern Capitalism.
But it will be noticed that none of these forms fulfils
the Thomistic criterion: that a man looks after his own
better than that which is common to all or many, for in
all these forms the actual workers either have no part at

all in the ownership of the means of production, or else
own it in common. Neither do the personality arguments
apply, for the individual worker cannot dispose of the

property of another, or that which he owns in common
with others, by the exercise of his individual reason; and

also his will is correspondingly hampered. Whence we

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judge that large-scale machine-production is incompat­

ible with private property, in the sense that the worker
can possess no individual ownership of the instrument he

uses.

It is too big. If he has any property in the thing at

all, it must be in common with others. He can never own

the thing itself. He can only share in it. Whence the in­
strument is "common to many".
To take the problem of machinery from another angle.

Man is made up of both body and soul. The chief pow­

er of man's soul is his intellect. Large-scale machine pro­

duction means the separation of the intelligence used in
the productive process from the actual manual work. The

actual worker has no responsibility for the machine he
tends, or for the stuff he turns out. He does not make the

stuff. The machine makes it. He has not designed the
machine. Somebody else has done that. He has only
the minimum opportunity of putting any intelligence into
his work. While he is working he is subhuman. For him
the art of making things is no longer the "recta ratio factibilium," the right application of reason to the things to
be made, of St. Thomas (Summa, I. 2. q. 57. art. 4). The

right of using his reason has been taken away from him
during the most important part of his life - his working
hours. He who was once a craftsman is reduced to the
state in which he performs only a series of repetitive acts.
Whence we deduce that large-scale machine production
is derogatory to human dignity.

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Moreover, this deprivation of the workman's intelligence
from his work destroys all pleasure in work. "And I have
found that nothing is better for a man to rejoice in his
work, and that is his portion."- (Eccles.3.22.) If happiness

consists in life according to reason, this method of prod­
uction has destroyed happiness for the normal man
during his working hours, which are, after all, the main
portion of his lifetime.
So the primary objection to machinery is that it deprives
man of his creative power. Industrialism has cut off the
connection between a working man’s intellect and the
labour.

Formerly, it was the craftsman who handed down the

essential knowledge that forms the basis of civilization.
Now the whole basis of culture rests in the hands of two
small classes — technicians and artists —the elite of the
industrial world. They are the engineers who design the
machines, and those who design the products of the ma­
chines. Work has changed, for it is no longer human.

Man no longer puts his whole self into work, his mind &

body, so work is no longer a reflection of the creative
power of God - who according to St. Thomas is the great
"Artifex", the craftsman who fashioned all things accord­
ing to right reason.

The second great objection against machinery is that
machines create unemployment. It is the problem of the
breakdown of distribution. The introduction of machines

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was meant to bring in more profit, less wages, & speedier
production. But here is the problem -- machines create
unemployment and diminish the demand for goods. You
cannot throw the producer into the street & then expect
him to pay for the goods made by the machine which has
displaced him. Production is increased — buying power
is decreased.

This is the bare problem. There are in practice other
elements which enter in and obscure this basic contradic­
tion. The logical working-out of the principle that machin­

ery displaces men has to a greater or less extent been
hidden by two things.
First, the starting of new industries; such as mechanical
transport, electrical industries, etc. However, even in these,
more intense mechanization comes into play, and men
are once again replaced by the machines, to be absorbed
into other and newer industries. Obviously this cannot

go on ad infinitum. There must be a limit somewhere,
and there are signs that it is being reached. From this

aspect the problem of machinery is prevented from work­
ing itself out to its logical conclusion by a constant stim­

ulation of new wants. A fresh issue rises here — the fund­

amental contradiction between industrial and Christian
Ethics. Maximum production and maximum satisfaction
are phrases which denote the essence of industrialism.
Asceticm is poison to the industrial system. It would be

almost true to say that every act of mortification causes
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a machine to stop somewhere. So J. H. Randall, in “Religion
and the Modern World," writes:
"The long centuries that preached renunciation and

spirituality have been forgotten. With a golden flood

pouring from the machine & trickling down to all who
traffic with it, asceticism in any form, either medieval

other-worldliness or this-worldly abstinence from pleas­

ure and far-seeing thrift of the puritan, seems both
futile and wrong."

The second cause making for the contradiction inherent
in the uncontrolled use of machinery is the constant open­

ing up of new markets. It becomes a matter of life and
death for the Industrial State to increase production in

order to reabsorb the unemployed created by previous

mechanization. To consume this increased production new

markets must be constantly opened up. But soon after
they are opened up they are closed again; for the still

unindustrialised countries are not content to remain in the
position of suppliers of food & raw materials. They join
in the race themselves after obtaining their own machine
industries.
In order to solve the problem it is proposed to establish
the "Leisure State," in which, relieved from the necessity

of work by the labour of machines, men may enjoy lives
of almost uninterrupted leisure. The essential goodness

of human nature is the fundamental basis of this theory.
So we are taken into the realms of theology. It was the
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Calvinist and Jansenist heresy which maintained that

human nature was essentially corrupt. This was condemned
by the Council of Trent. To hold, on the contrary, that
human nature is perfectly and gloriously good is (besides
being contrary to common sense) the Pelagian heresy.

Orthodoxy, as usual, steers a middle course, and teaches
that human nature remains essentially good, but grievous­
ly weak, and liable to fall oft and suddenly. The point is
that all men are not capable of using leisure, and yet live
moral lives. To do this demands a devoting of oneself to
the contemplation of truth. All are not capable of the
contemplative life. "Those who on accountof their passions
are driven to action are naturally more apt to the active
life because of their inquietude of spirit." (St. Thomas,
"Summa" II. Il, Q. 182. art. 4, ad 3). Here Christian econ­
omics is in touch with the world as it is, knowing the fact

of original sin, and its results. Besides, it would probably
be a deadly bore, and further, according to Stuart Chase,
could only work under the autocratic government of a
co-opted oligarchy of technicians. Eric Gill has the situ­
ation in a nutshell, "we aim at arranging things so that
we shall do all necessary bodily labour by mechanical,
that is to say non-spiritual means, and having reduced

that labour to the smallest possible amount, we then hope
to enjoy spiritual things in our leisure hours . . . the sep­

aration of matter & mind is man's death, & industrialism
leads so clearly towards that separation that we may
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say: death is the actual aim of industrialism -- its diabolic­
al direction."

The solution of the Leisure State is opposed to Christi­
anity. How would men occupy their leisure? In intellectual
work? St. Thomas gives us the arguments against this.
Nor is it any better to say men would occupy their leisure
in pursuit of craftsmanship as a hobby. One of the main
elements of pleasure in work — that one is doing something
useful —would be absent. To quote an 'orthodox' English
economist, "the truth seems to be that as human nature

is constituted, man rapidly degenerates unless he has
some hard work to do, some difficulties to overcome; and

that some strenuous exertion is necessary for physical &
moral health." (Marshall, "Principles of Economics", 3.6.)

In other words, the devil finds work for idle hands to do,
or "man is born to labour as the bird to fly-" (Pope Pius

XI in Quadragesimo Anno.)
To look at the other side of the question. Before the
advent of the machines not all labour was human labour;

there existed a vast amount of monotonous toil. The toil
of the miner would be a case in point. Nevertheless,

although the introducers of machinery had not thought of
lightening man’s labour, we can if we wish yet bring good
out of evil, and, by using machines to do the necessarily
monotonous work more quickly, have men to spend more
time on labour most fitted to their nature-that of the
hand directed by the brain.
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It seems, therefore, that in the society where means
were most perfectly adapted to the proper end, small scale
methods of production would predominate. That is to say,
workmen in general would use tools and small machines
over which they had personal control. Machinery should

not be allowed to compete with the work of the crafts­
man, but should be restricted to its proper sphere, the
performance of monotonous and non-human work.
The second & complementary rule is that the machine
should be subordinated to the artisan; that the large-scale
organization of modern industry should give way to the
vastly more important principle of the just distribution of
property.
Machinery must not be allowed to rule man, but must
be subject to man & controlled by him. To use the ma­

chine or not must be a choice to be made by man. His will
must be asserted against all non-human forces. In such

circumstances there will be no over-production or under­
consumption, no breakdown of distribution.

In coming to this conclusion are we within the main
stream of Catholic social tradition ? Has the common tra­
dition of Catholic Social Philosophers been that largescale machine industry is the best possible and must be
retained at all costs ? It must be admitted that some have
appeared to hold this position. That others decidedly

have not is evident from the following quotations:
“Bodily labor, which was decreed by Providence for the

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good of man's body and soul, even after original sin, has

everywhere been changed into an instrument of strange
perversion: for dead matter leaves the factory ennobled
and transformed; where men are corrupted & degraded".
(Pope Pius XI in "Quadragesimo Anno".)
Adam Muller: "The spirit reacts unceasingly against the
division and mechanization of labor which Adam Smith

prized so highly; the spirit desires to preserve man’s per­
sonality". (Elements der Staatskunst, 1.57.)
The Franciscan, Belliot, in his "Manuel de Sociologie Cath­
olique" (p.225.) writes: "From the point of view of social
life, mechanization seems to lead to great inconveniences:
"Relatively to society in general, by the excessive vulgar­
ization of the luxurious, the comfortable, the superfluous.
Above all for the working class, for whom the machines

have the following great inconveniences:
(1) They lower the intellectual standards of the workmen.

In effect, work being accomplished automatically by the
machine, the workman ordinarily finds himself reduced to
a secondary role — monotonous, routine-like, unintelligent.
He is the servant of the machine: he is its accessory. It
follows that he becomes himself a mere cog, an imperson­
al and relatively insignificant "hand", who can nearly

always be replaced. The preponderance of the machine
causes, for the workman, a certain loss of professional
status. He is relegated to the second place. He loses his
individuality and becomes a mere machine tender . . .
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(2) The machines over fatigue the workman by the exces­
sive attention which they exact from him.
(3) They render it impossible for the workman to become
his own master.
(4) Mechanization imposes unemployment on a great num­

ber of workmen ... That is why the question of machinery
constitutes at present one of the gravest and most dis­
quieting elements in the social problem."
Devas in his "Groundwork of Economics," groups the
disadvantages of this form of production under three

headings - aesthetic, psychical, and physical. Under the
first heading he places that deprivation of production of
its intellectual character which causes beauty. Under the
second the injury to the mental state of the workman.
"I doubt", he says, "whether any efforts in the hours of lei­

sure can make up for the loss of a man's trade as a means
of mental cultivation." Under the third heading he places
the injurious effects on the body. "What is wearisome is

not so much great muscular effort, which machinery has
in fact rendered less needful, but rather the ceaseless
strain, the uninterrupted continuance of effort."
Amintore Fanfani in "Catholicism, Protestantism and
Capitalism ', p. 159, has: "Both during the predominance
of the medieval guild system & during that of capitalism,
the Church, and those Catholics who listened to her voice,
set or sought to set bounds not lawfully to be overstept,
to the course of economic life--even at the cost of a sac­

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rifice of mechanical and technical progress, which in the
Catholic conception of society, has never been identical
with civilization."

There remains one other great name- Eric Gill, who is
described as "one of the best commentators on the social
elements in the Summa". Speaking of the Industrial Sys­
tem in "Work and Property" he says: "the workman is be­

coming simply a minder or tender of machinery, & less &
less is he responsible for the form & quality of what the
machine turns out . . . For the majority of workers today it
is as near as possible true to say that the work they do
has no spiritual quality whatever. Under industrialism a
system has been evolved in which man, the workman, is
purely material (that is to say, as nearly as possible, for
we cannot completely eradicate his nature), & his spiritual

nature must find occupation and assuagement when he is
not working." We cannot do better than conclude in Mr.
Gill's words: "Either private ownership, for the sake of

the work to be done, must be re-established, or, deliber­
ately surrendering men’s immanent & proprietary right to
imprint on matter the mark of rational being (turning
away, in consequence, from the Christian society in which
there shall be private ownership for the sake of public
use), we must accept communistic industrialism and look
forward to the Leisure State."
D. Marshall

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Printed in U. S. A.
by The Sower Press
September 1938