A Question and an Answer on Catholic Labor Guilds

[A reader in Bellingham, Wash., wrote to Peter Maurin urging the Organization of Catholic Labor Guilds throughout the country. Members would be assessed a dollar a year, and the money so raised would be used to start Houses of Hospitality. Peter’s reply follows. (February, 1934.)]

Most organizations exist,
not for the benefit of the organized,
but for the benefit of the organizers.
When the organizers try to organize the unorganized
they do not organize themselves.
If everybody organized himself,
everybody would be organized.
There is no better way to be
than to be
what we want the other fellow to be.
The money that comes from assessments
is not worth getting.
The money that is worth getting
is the money that is given for charity’s sake.
Parish Houses of Hospitality
must be built on Christian charity.
But Parish Houses of Hospitality
are only half-way houses.
Parish Subsistence Camps
are the most efficient way
to make an impression
on the depression.
The basis for a Christian economy
Is genuine charity and voluntary poverty.
To give money to the poor
is to increase the buying power of the poor.

Money is by definition a means of exchange
and not a means to make money.
When money is used as a means of exchange,
it helps to consume the goods that have been produced.
When money is used as an investment,
it does not help to consume
the goods that have been produced,
it helps to produce more goods,
to bring over-production
and therefore increase unemployment.
So much money has been put into business
that it has put business out of business.

Money given to the poor is functional money.
money that fulfills its function.
Money used as an investment
is prostituted money,
money that does not fulfill its function.
Poverty and charity are no longer looked
up to,
they are looked down upon.
The poor have ceased to accept poverty
and the rich have ceased to practice charity.
When the poor are satisfied to be poor,
the rich become charitable toward the poor.

Because Christianity presents poverty as an
ideal
Bolshevik Communists try to make us believe
that religion is the opium of the people.
Karl Marx says that the worker is exploited
at the point of production.
But the worker would not be exploited
at the point of production
if the worker did not sell his labor
to the exploiter of his labor.

When the worker sells his labor
to a capitalist or accumulator of labor
he allows the capitalist or accumulator of
labor
to accumulate his labor.
And when the capitalist or accumulator of
the worker’s labor
has accumulated so much of the worker’s
labor
that he no longer finds it profitab1e
to buy the worker’s labor
then the worker can no longer sell his labor
to the capitalist or accumulator of labor.
And when the worker can no longer sell his
labor
to the capitalist or accumulator of labor
he can no longer buy the products of his
labor.
And that is what the worker gets for selling
his labor
to the capitalist or accumu1ator of labor.
He just gets left
and he gets what is coming to him.
Labor is not a commodity
to be bought and sold–
Labor is a means of self-expression,
the worker’s gift to the common good.

There is so much depression
because there is so little expression.
I am fostering Parish Subsistence Camps
or Agronomic Universities
as a means to bring about a state of society
where scholars are workers
and where workers are scholars.
In a Parish Subsistence Camp
or Agronomic University
the worker does not work for wages,
he leaves that to the University.
In a Parish Subsistence Camp
or Agronomic University
the worker does not look for a bank account
he leaves that to the University.
In a Parish Subsistence Camp
or Agronomic University
the worker does not look for an insurance
policy,
he leaves that to the University.
In a Parish Subsistence Camp
or Agronomic University
the worker does not look for an old-age
pension,
he leaves that to the University.
In a Parish Subsistence Camp
or Agronomic University
the worker does not look for a rainy day,
he leaves that to the University.
Modern industry has no work for everybody
but work can be found for everybody
in Parish Subsistence Camps
or Agronomic Universities.

I may later on publish a magazine entitled
The Agronomist
for the fostering of the idea
of Parish Subsistence Camps
or Agronomic Universities.
Edward Koch, of Germantown, Illinois,
publishes a magazine entitled
The Guildsman;
you ought to get in touch with him.

Your co-worker in Christ’s Kingdom.

PETER MAURIN