Christian Democracy and Labour after World War II

Building Western Democracies: The Role of Labour. Some Examples of Christian Democrats’ Initiative after World War II

Cecilia Maria Bravi and Andrea Maria Locatelli

At the end of the Second World War, the different Christian realities in Western Europe had doctrinal and cultural references with which to participate in the reconstruction of the various countries. For instance, among the Christian Democrats’ experiences, an overcoming of a “classic” vision of 19th century liberalism gradually matured: democracy was accepted and considered as a political and social system capable to favour full employment of the human person. This idea of reconstruction and development had in some cases a cultural and political aspiration and concerned the various contexts of life but had its qualifying point in the dimension of work. Therefore, democratic participation and the qualification of work became an essential connection for a society open to the enhancement of the person¹.

Whilst proceeding with the reconstruction of Europe, the Social Doctrine of the Church had already considered the social question within the national models of the market economy. On the other hand, the comparison with the different waves of industrialization had indicated the inadequacy of the philanthropic experience and the various forms of corporatism. New instruments for social action in Western European economy were identified through the development of initiatives aimed at the improvement of working condition and, at the same time, a more active participation in civil life. Just the spread of workers’ organizations and cooperativism brought to light, from the most industrialized countries such as Great Britain and Belgium, France and Italy, the connection between the demand for social justice, “work culture” and the question of equity. The various experiences, both in the Catholic and in the Protestant areas, gradually interpreted the pattern of collective bargaining as an opportunity to build new spaces of freedom and autonomy in the production world².

During the Roaring Twenties and the Black Thirties, the cultural reflection but also the planning developed in the wide field of social sciences led many exponents of the Catholic and Protestant world to understand the complexity of the industrial society and to advance socio-cultural analysis and political projects to outline a Christian inspired presence in the Western European economy³.

In the immediate post-WWII period on the Western European scene there were numerous experiences and proposals to link the democratic “revival” to the reform of industrial capitalism. The anxiety of social renewal had as its founding basis the idea of building a balanced order of society where the labor factor was essential. The spectrum of explanations was from a defence of working conditions to a collective action to enhance work. It became an essential factor in the new concept of economic and social development based on the interconnection between free economic and social initiative and the action of institutions. The protection of dignity and at the same time the promotion of professional work became one of the tools for the full realization of a person. The growth of the labor factor was always interpreted as an essential aim for the “peoples progress”⁴. In Italy, for example, the same anxiety for social renewal of Catholics found an ideal and cultural synthesis in the Codice di Camaldoli (“Code of Camaldoli”)⁵ in which labour, considered both as individual and collective contribution, was placed as the lintel of society. Work, realised in a dignified way, allowed every man not only to contribute to his and his family’s living conditions, but also to realise himself. Hence the prospect of a role for civil society within capitalism to reform it in view of greater equity. The scenario of organised labour in society required a programme and action that had to be constructed and realised. Various historical analyses have already discussed the achievements, the complexity of the challenges as well as the multiple contradictions. However, much remains to be verified and understood in its most articulated and profound dimensions.

As a whole, this set of ideals and projects found it increasingly difficult to achieve and resist both socially and politically. The tumultuous affirmation of American-style capitalism and the profound transformations induced by the society of mass consumption exacerbated the uncertainties. For this reason, it has been difficult to construct a virtuous and effective relationship between social aggregations with their potential and the reforming action of Christian Democrats⁶.

The different research presented at the Conference Christian Democracy and Labour after World War II (Milan, 26th – 27th October 2017) and collected partially in this volume focus on various issues. In particular, some scholars discuss the different paths and experiences tried by Christians in their attempt to play a role within the transformations of work in Western and capitalist society. Furthermore, the essays pay attention to experiences in both the ecclesiastical, trade unions and politics. They point out a set of values as the themes and then consider the projects and finally all the influences of other cultures. The main focus of the reflection is the relationship between political and social participation in democratic life and work as a constitutive factor for the realisation of human being. The various experiences considered are national cases and offer a number of hints.

Firstly, the volume presents an introduction by Lorenzo Ornaghi that discusses the parable of Western European democratic regimes and issues of labour market, within the social and economic dimension and their mutual relation in the post-World War II.

The Western European model of democracy was founded on the party system which is an organisation representing the political and economic interests of citizens. The process had been modelled and channelled on the role of ideologies and rules of behaviour in the democratic game.

Throughout Western Europe, 20th century democracy functioned in the ability of ideologies to represent interests within a system of “projects” and, at the same time, compromises. Labour as the primary interest of the citizen, as well as the capitalist economic system, was included in this system with different levels of representation.

According to Ornaghi, after the terrible years of fear and uncertainty during the Second World War, the primacy of politics appeared as the precondition for establishing the interdependence and mutual correlation between the stability of democracy and the expectations of economic development. The parties emerged as the cornerstone of the new Western democracy and the Christian Democrats also made this perspective their own. The Catholic Church’s magisterium in the social field until the Second World War had not particularly considered the relationship between the political system and the social question. With post-war Reconstruction, the Catholic component saw liberal, Western democracy as an indispensable instrument for building fair and solidarity-based economic development.

Until the 1990s, the primacy of politics consisted in the centrality of parties in representing citizens’ interests. Subsequently, under the growing pressure of populism, the Western democratic model went into crisis, and undoubtedly the most feature of the dysfunctionality was the growing gap between governability and representation. The latter, from the French Revolution to Neo-corporatism, has been attributed only to parties. On the other hand, governability has become the basic requirement for the representativeness of the entire socio-economic system but, at the same time, the representation of interests has been weakened. On the same level, the representativeness of organised interests has been effective when independent from the “logic” of the party system. The author considers the crisis of the Welfare State as one of the historical factors that aggravated the imbalance in favour of parties. The political entities interpreted the implementation of Welfare as a tool to gain the electorate. The quality of Welfare, then, was an essential point of national policies for many citizens. Since the 1980s, global as well as cultural and social transformations have led to a difficult sustainability of the Welfare State, which has correlated with the crisis of the Western democracies.

Subsequently, the book is articulated in four sections: Christian Democrats and Social Changes; Christian Workers and Trade Unions; Enterprise and Human Resources; Politics and Labour.

The essay written by Marta Busani investigates some aspects concerning the evolution of the Catholic youth laity conception in Italy from the Fifties until 1969, the year of the maximum mobilization of the “labor movement” in Italy. Busani links the Italian case to the dissemination of the ideas of Joseph Cardijn, founder of JOC (Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne – Young Christian Workers). Cardijn affirmed that it was necessary to create laity particularly attentive to the workers’ request. Even in Italy, Catholic Action began to take an interest in the Belgian experience and from 1945 founded an associative experience on the Belgian model. The project was interrupted after a few years but remained as the first attempt to make the laity stand out. Subsequently, the Italian Catholic world tried again to start a similar experience with the birth of a workers’ movement within the Italian Youth of Catholic Action but which found much resistance in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Busani also analyses the relationships between the Italian society, the international JOC and the realities of the South American Catholic laity. The Italian Catholic Youth Workers Movement has experienced a parabola that reflects the transformation of various realities of the Catholic youth laity. In Italy, a movement like JOC was not fully realized. On the other hand, groups of workers were formed in various dioceses and a lively group of national leaders was formed who later joined the CISL (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori – Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions). On the contrary, the relationship between Christian worker groups and the Italian CD was limited and sporadic. During the Sixties, on a political and cultural level, in Italy, the workers’ movement of the GIOC – in particular the Milanese section known as Giovani Lavoratori (GL – Youth Workers) – developed the conviction that the democratic participation of workers could not be solved by a political proposal. In particular, the late Fifties saw an overcoming of the dialectical opposition between communism and anti-communism, typical of the Cold War and the maturing of a new sensibility that saw the role of associations and movements, the transformation of the social order and an attitude to reform liberalism and capitalism. With the end of the Sixties, the criticism of the mass consumption society was accentuated, and this prospective led in a short time to a sharing of the instances of the workers’ movement and of the student movement.

Guido Panvini focuses on the relationship between religion, politics and democratic participation in the countries of Mediterranean Europe, giving particular attention to Italy, France and Spain. He discusses the influence of religious radicalization on political radicalization, through cases of the participation of Christian workers’ associations in the social conflict within the three nations considered. The Second Vatican Council impelled decides to take on a commitment in society, inviting them at the same time to support and strengthen democratic institutions. This resulted in a thrust towards a demand for greater social justice, widespread especially among the young. At the European level this unrest met with the aspirations towards change of the working class, within which Christian associations, linked at a transnational level, were extremely active. A renewed religious identity stimulated new forms of political participation as well as radical projects for social transformation. Panvini’s analysis is addressing the study of the Young Christian Workers Movement, both regarding the interactions among the different national experiences and the transnational reality represented by the coordinating authority of the JOCI (Jeunesse Ouvrière Catholique Internationale – International Young Catholic Workers). The research also considers the network constitued by the Mouvement Mondial des Travailleurs Chrétiens to which the specialized branches of the adult working class Catholic Action organizations referred.

Guido Panvini points out that there were different theatres of social confrontation where the Christian Workers’ associations decided to intervene: inside factories, in the support and organization of internal migrants who arrived in industrial cities due to the request for additional workforce; in the suburbs of large urban areas, to tackle new forms of poverty. Christian workers also met the Christian grass-roots communities that were the groups and movements of the so-called “dissent”, the vast area of criticism to the Catholic Church, accused of forcing the course of action decided by the Second Vatican Council which was regarded as too moderate.

Since the end of Fifties, the enormous changes that the working environment and social fabric were undergoing had been the focus in the Christian world for a long time. The Second Vatican Council re-opened the possibility for worker-priests to return to factories. It was in this environment that the revolutionary idea from Latin America took hold from the Sixties onwards. In continuity with these experiences, during the Sixties and Seventies, a Catholic Workerism developed and provided a crucial contribution to the radicalization of the social conflict. The reflections inside the Young Christian Workers Movement were similar in many ways to the theology of the Latin American Liberation. At the outbreak of the student protest in 1967–68, the Young Christian Workers Movements already had a great deal of experience in mobilization, as well as a solid theoretical structure that made it the most receptive environment to the demands of the protest movement.

The encyclical Populorum Progressio denounced the widening of the gap of inequality among the standards of living nations. This was a decisive passage, after which many Third Worldism Catholic circles felt authorised to radicalise their positions. Moreover, the problem of relationship with modernity remained unsolved, despite the indications contained in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes. In some environments, these upheavals led to a radical criticism of the present. The more extremist groups accused the ecclesiastical hierarchies of betraying the real message of the Vatican II. This was the step that prompted them to approach the revolutionary currents of Marxism.

Ecumenical meetings were fundamental for the radicalization of the Young Christian Workers Movement. The movement felt that Southern Europe was the weak link in the chain of capitalistic countries. For this reason, a revolutionary rupture in this area would have caused a chain reaction of repercussions on all the other capitalistic nations. The deterioration of public order and radicalization of social conflict marked the process of transition and consolidation of democracy in France, Spain, and Italy. The struggle for housing rights became one of the biggest clashes of social unrest, and one within which the Christian workers associations played an important role.

Aldo Carera’s essay discusses the strong resistance of the Italian system to the great transformation of the Western Golden Age after World War II. This resistance is both on the cultural side and on the side of operational strategies. One of the main issues of this failure to adapt concerns the role of labour as a productive and social resource in the creation and consolidation of the republican system in Italy. Carera points out that to counter the strong resistance to the change, the Italian system had to place itself in the evolutionary line followed by democratic and pluralistic societies and in a liberal culture oriented by Christian values.

At the beginning of the Fifties, this perspective contrasted with the refusal of the Catholicism for the processes of modernization. Modernization was the progressive extension of people’s freedom and, at the same time, the realistic framework for the achievement of the mutual interest. Secondly, the transformation of the Golden Age posed the question of the relationship between the autonomy of social organizations, specifically trade union movements, and a political action inclined to move in full autonomy in a very backward country. In terms of method, it was necessary to recognize the concrete problems of labour market as only historical research can do.

In order to make synthesis between the values of Christian personalism and the openness to path of modernization, a new thinking was needed. First of all, it could be an interpretation that should have gone beyond the opposition to a strong communist movement among the workers.

Secondly the thinking should have been a perspective of autonomy for individual workers and their collective action. Additionally, this perspective should have allowed to face the Italian problems referring to the knowledge and experience assets of the Western world.

A young professor of Economic History at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart), Mario Romani, attempted to contribute to this perspective. He was a scholar who was more attentive than anyone else in Italy to the international literature on trade unions. His choice for the “free world” led him to re-elaborate Anglo-Saxon theories and experiences in cultural support of a new trade union organization, the CISL, founded by Giulio Pastore in 1950.