Anonymous ID: cc7c2a Sept. 1, 2025, 2:50 p.m. No.23536857   🗄️.is 🔗kun

Rerum novarum critiques both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. Regarding socialism, while Pope Leo XIII had previously given a strong condemnation of socialism, communism, and nihilism in Quod apostolici muneris (1878), Rerum novarum ultimately sees socialism as fundamentally flawed. Leo argues that socialists sought to replace rights and Catholic moral teaching with the ideology of state power, which he argues would lead to the destruction of justice, where instead of working to better himself, the worker "is made the victim of force and injustice."

 

Regarding capitalism, Rerum novarum equally opposes laissez-faire capitalism and individualism. Leo writes of "the cruelty of grasping speculators who use human beings as mere instruments for making money" and called for the government to ensure that the poor are "housed, clothed and enabled to support life".