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The fact is that the word Capitalism is commonly used to cover two entirely different things and consequently is responsible for an endless series of misunderstandings and confusions of thought.
In its strict sense it means the use of private wealth for the purpose of economic production, whether by the individual as in early times, or co-operatively, as in the joint stock company which is the characteristic form of capitalistic organization in modern times.
Both these forms of capitalism are accepted by Catholic moral theory as lawful and just, and in this sense alone it can be said that the Church approves of capitalism. In the current use of the word, however, Capitalism stands for much more than this.
Indeed it stands for so much that it is impossible to give an exact definition of it.
Broadly speaking [Capitalism] may be described as the economic aspect of that philosophy of liberal individualism which was the religion of the 19th century and which found its political expression in parliamentary democracy.
Now this creed — and the social and economic order which arose from it — is entirely inconsistent with Catholic principles and was in fact the most dangerous enemy and rival that the Catholic Church had to meet in modern times.
It is a philosophy of separation and irresponsibility which breaks up the moral organism of society into a chaos of competitive individualism.
It denies the sovereignty of the moral law in the economic world, the principle of authority in politics and the existence of an objective divine truth in religion.
It makes self-interest the supreme law in economics, the will of the majority the sovereign power in the State, and private opinion the only arbiter in religious matters.
This is the Capitalism we have all known & hated — the system which finds a fitting expression in the 19th century manufacturing town with its dark factories, its squalid slums, its mean public buildings & chapels, its gin palaces & music halls & its sprawling & hideous suburbs.
Who can blame the victims of such a system if they turn to the only alternative offered to them? And who can doubt Socialism owes its success not to its intrinsic merits but to the fact that it seems to offer the only way of escape from the dingy reality of the Capitalist order?
