Solidarity and the Personalism of Work: John Paul II’s Encyclical Laborem Excercens

By: Christopher Garbowski (professor emeritus, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University)

In this essay I will briefly introduce the development of Pope John Paul II’s understanding of Christian personalism, after which I will study the encyclical Laborem Excercens more closely, which introduces a significant social perspective of this philosophy. But first, in part by way of introduction I will provide the more general historical context that accompanied its publication, in part prompting a focused social perspective. The community, at its social and economic levels, among others, plays an essential role in who we are as persons and how we understand ourselves and the world. As Jonathan Sacks puts it, “Community plays an important role in the way our lives unfold, and is the living face of a shared moral order.”[1] And his own national community with its rich and dramatic history certainly had a substantial impact on John Paul II and his thought, not to mention his perception of work and the worker, crucial for the encyclical. I should add that where necessary I will also refer to Karol Wojtyła, for instance in the initial development of the Pope’s philosophical ideas before he was elected to the papacy in 1978.

Historical Introduction

In August 1980 the independent trade union Solidarity was formed in Poland after the agreement the striking workers in the Gdańsk shipyard signed with the communist authorities. Quite rapidly the trade union expanded to approximately ten million members which represented a third of the workers in the country. The union was the first of its kind in the Soviet Bloc. Although it was formally brought to an end by the imposition of martial law Solidarity is widely recognized as having played a central role in bringing communism to an end in Poland.

On September 15, 1981, the young historian Jan Pomorski was in Solidarity’ East Central Regional Office in Lublin finishing a document for the union’s nationwide conference on “Human Work” organized by its Social Research Center that the young scholar directed. Into the office came Rev. Tadeusz Styczeń, who had worked closely with Karoł Wojtyła (at the time Pope John Paul II) at the Catholic University of Lublin, and announced that Pope John Paul II had just published the encyclical Laborem Excercens on the dignity of human work. Since the Pope had been informed about their conference they thought at the time the date of the encyclical’s publication was more than a coincidence, and indeed the topic of their own document had important thematic parallels.

This anecdote is one more illustration of the impact the papacy of the Polish pope on the historical movement of the first independent labour union in a communist country. After all, it came into being just a year after the Pope’s first visit to his homeland, and the impact it had on Polish society is unquestionable. To what extent Solidarity influenced the Pope in his encyclical is a matter of conjecture. Moreover, it is necessary to get some idea of the broad scope of the movement, identified as a “self-limiting revolution.”[2] Quite early on French sociologist Alain Tourain and his co-workers who researched the movement while it was active—i.e. before the brutal imposition of Martial law December 13, 1981—perceptively remarked:

‘‘It is true that Solidarity tended more and more to become a movement for the liberation of society fighting for self-management, against censorship and ultimately for free election: but it is even more important to see these aims did not absorb all the movement’s energy, Solidarity was always more than these aims. It represented hope and resistance, [it appealed] to a collective will based on justice and whose strength lay in the responsibility and sense of sacrifice of each its members.’’[3]

During a sermon delivered shortly after the labour union was formed, Rev. Józef Tischner remarked: “History creates words in order that, in turn, they may create history. The word solidarność has joined other, very Polish words to form our days.”[4] He goes on to join solidarity to words like freedom and human dignity, which were so important at that time, and remain so.

These “earlier words” reflect the history that the future Pope John Paul II himself had lived, and which affected the development his philosophical thought in one way or another. In terms of the dignity of work, he himself as a young man was forced to do heavy physical labour during the Nazi occupation of Poland, and the history-making labour union likely influenced his thought on the dignity of work as pope. For one thing, at the base of its broad influence on Polish society which was undergoing a trial from a totalitarian regime, was the fact the union soon expanded beyond its roots in labour: it branched out in many directions, including such socially highly regarded ones as teachers and scholars at universities—as the young scholars in the introductory anecdote demonstrate. Unsurprisingly, in Laborem Excercens John Paul II likewise thought of work in very broad terms. Moreover, as a social encyclical, certainly written with a rich philosophical content, it was directed toward the entire church and beyond—thus its philosophy had an element of phronesis, i.e. practical wisdom, in harmony with Church social doctrine.

Christian Personalism and Phenomenology

John Paul II’s interest in “the mystery of human person” was also part of his struggle with an inhuman system of communism. Already as Karoł Wojtyła he expressed his concern in a letter from 1968 to his friend Henri de Lubac: “The evil of our times consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person. The evil is even more of the metaphysical than of the moral order.”[5] This commitment, essential to “a correct view of the person”—as he expressed it in Centissimus Annus—was one of the cornerstones of both Wojtyła’s philosophical personalism. After he became pope this focus on the person became to a somewhat greater extent theological and less philosophical, yet his conclusions on the human person remained constant.

To put it in relatively simple terms, in Wojtyła’s early philosophical education, with his interest in philosophical anthropology and ethics, he searched for means of an appropriate understanding of the human person. He felt it was currently misconstrued in philosophy. There even existed what Wojtyła considered harmful approaches that stressed relativistic emotivism and formalism. Nevertheless, among newer approaches, as Edward Barrett points out, at this stage Wojtyła considered “a turn to toward the subject and interiority to be a potentially positive development, one that could fruitfully supplement the older, cosmologically based, and objective philosophical approach.” For instance, regarding traditional virtue and natural law theories, “he was convinced that there were alternate methods capable of confirming both these aspects of experience and arriving at others.”[6] This led him to investigate phenomenology as a philosophical alternative.

In particular, Wojtyła explored Max Scheler’s phenomenological approach in his habilitation thesis in the early post-war years. Among other things, Scheler paid serious attention to the human capacity for apprehending and responding to other persons through sympathy, empathy and love. In the process of studying the philosopher Wojtyła developed his own notions of phenomenology and had criticisms of Scheler’s approach, which were expressed in his new insights to the philosophy. As Barrett summarizes the insights he gained from the philosophical encounter: “First, phenomenology could provide a theoretical bridge between consciousness and being. (. . .) Second, descriptions of experience (and thus things) must nevertheless be complete and accurate. Third, phenomenologists had failed to adequately explore the existence, implications, and effects of human action.”[7]

From this point of departure Wojtyła developed his own personalist philosophy. One of the landmarks of this thought is his book Person and Act (1969). Among other matters, through the action of a person we discover him or her as a subject of the activity as well as the human person’s nature. A good summary of this thought is provided Richard Spinello:

‘‘Wojtyła was focused on human subjectivity but never lost sight of the person’s substantiality or “in-itselfness.” (. . .) Instead of empty individuality, Wojtyła’s personalism underscores the social and interpersonal dimensions of human personality. Persons thrive only in community dedicated to the common good, which cultivates respect for the other as another “I” and creates the conditions for freely shared goodness through participation.’’[8]

It has been further noted by Spinello that the pre-papal writings constitute a witness to the continuity of the author’s thought. John Paul’s papal writings bring up issues of freedom, truth and human dignity, and his papal teachings draw inspiration from a metaphysical realism augmented by phenomenology.

Solidarity and the Deeper Historical Context of Laborem Excercens

During Solidarity’s first congress a year after its creation, September 5, 1981, when history was already in the making, Rev. Tischner gave a memorable sermon at its opening, in which he stated: “Our concern is with the independence of Polish work. (. . .) Work creates a communion. (. . .) We are living history. A living history means one that bears fruit. Christ has said, ‘Let the dead bury their dead’ (Matthew 8.22). Thus, let us do the same. Let us bear fruit.”[9] According to the Pope’s biographer George Weigel, Tischner can be considered John Paul’s voice at the congress. A few days later, while history was indeed being made in Poland, the Pope published his encyclical, and it was passed around to members of Solidarity at their national congress in Gdańsk, held on September 26 to October 7.

It should be pointed out that the encyclical was intended to celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, the Catholic Church’s first major social encyclical which was issued on May 15, 1891. John Paul intended to publish it on May 15th, but history intervened with an assassination attempt on the Pope two day earlier, and it was only published after his convalescence: at a time when Solidarity was in full blossom. Weigel notes that in the encyclical John Paul took “the social question” in a far more humanistic direction, “focusing on the nature of work and the dignity of the worker.” This, in turn, resulted in the work being “the most tightly focused social encyclical in the history of Catholic social doctrine.”[10]

The Personalism of the Encyclical

In the beginning of the encyclical John Paul draws heavily on the Book of Genesis for his penetrating study of the nature of work. Through work, men and women are involved “in the very action of the Creator of the universe.” In work, human beings are called upon to “imitate God.” Thus work is a vocation that human beings have been called “from the beginning”: that is, even before the fall. As Spinello puts it, “The Pope assumes that we cannot understand the nature of work unless we adopt a theocentric view of reality and take seriously God’s supremacy as our Creator.” He continues, “By answering the call to ‘subdue’ the earth and exercise dominion over it, man reflects God’s creative activity and manifests in another way he is made in God’s image.”[11]

Consequentially, work is about who we are as well as what we produce. From the Pope’s analysis, in accordance with his perspective on personalism man is a “subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding of deciding about himself and with a tendency toward self-realization” (LE 5). Thus it is understood that the sources of work’s dignity “are to be sought primarily in the subjective dimension, not in the objective one” (LE 6). The objective sense is concerned with the external aspects of work, the actual task the worker is engaged in along with the necessary tools or machines, among other things. When the subjective perspective is emphasized what one does or produces is not of primary importance. As Spinello points out, “There is no difference between the simple work of the hotel maid or the complex work of the nuclear physicist, since through their work each of these persons can achieve dignity and self-fulfilment as long as they make good choices in service of others and grow in virtue.”[12] As the Pope succinctly expressed the primacy of working persons: “Work is ‘for man’ and not man ‘for work’” (LE 6).

Upon bringing forward the notion of the person as the subject of work, John Paul moves on to different aspects of work along with the social question. He is critical of nineteenth century theories and notions of work. On the one hand there was Marxism, which regarded history as the struggle between labour and capital, which could only be resolved by state intervention, on the other hand there were avaricious employers, for whom work was understood as a manner of merchandise the worker essentially sells to the employer, who was the possessor of capital, that is the tools and means of production. This largely reduces workers to material factors of production, that the Pope argues is rooted in materialism, which he calls economism. This is merely to look at work from its objective aspect, which the subjective question reacts against and corrects. For instance, whereas from such a perspective it might appear that the work is worth very little, which includes, for instance, even necessary and fruitful forms of work such as parenting or caring for the sick, but this is not the case when we look at who is doing the work. As Thomas Storck sums up John Paul’s point on the relationship of objects to the person: “These things are placed at man’s disposal. However, these resources can serve man only through work.”[13]

Conversely, John Paul warned against another extreme: the error of “materialism,” which extols the superiority of the material over the personal and the spiritual. And so in Marxist materialism the person is essentially no more than a product of his work. Despite their differences, both in economism and materialism there is an opposition to or perversion of personalism and a distortion of God’s created order. The Pope stresses that the importance of work is through the human person—“not the principle of maximum profit or the differentiation of people into classes according to the kinds of work done.”[14] 

What must also be understood is the ethical nature of work, since it is carried out by a person. John Paul II insists a conscious and free subject is “a subject that decides about himself” (LE 6). And so among other matters a conscious and free activity has an ethical character, it can be good or bad. This moral character of work affects the person, enabling workers to develop virtues when it is good. Spinello notes, “Through work the person grows in moral responsibility, goodness, and freedom, as long as his or her choices are grounded in moral truth.”[15]

Work furthermore engenders the social growth of the person. The first dimension the human being encounters outside the self also “shapes the ethical order of human work.” John Paul II states “the family is simultaneously a community made possible by work and the first school of work, within the home, for every person” (LE 9). The culminating sphere of this social context “concerns the great society to which man belongs on the basis of particular cultural and historical links.” This includes the work of generations within a national community. The Pope concludes this line of ethical thought: “man combines his deepest human identity with membership of a nation, and intends his work also to increase the common good developed together with his compatriots, thus realizing that in this way work serves to add to the heritage of the whole human family, of all the people living in the world” (LE 9). 

One can see this in that Solidarity which was active in Poland at the time was so much more than a labour union, as important as the workers were. The context of the “first Solidarity,” as it came to be known to Poles, was the totalitarian state—something we have with us to this day in various places around the world. In opposition to this, as political philosopher Zbigniew Stawrowski put it, the true solidarity that was created was the ethical community formed through virtue. And in the political context in which this positive virtue flourished we witness the creation of the common good. And in this context it is all the more remarkable that the ethical community came to the fore: “The special character of the solidarity community is primarily the fact that it was founded on the highest values, on absolute values.”[16] Moreover, in the context of the ethical community work and the worker gain an exceptional value.

The personalist principle demands respect for workers rights, which John Paul stresses, which includes, among other things to earn decent wages, so that families can be supported by them, as well as to have unions—obviously a right that was not ordinarily given under the communist system. As he puts it: “It is always to be hoped that, thanks to the work of their unions, workers will not only have more, but above all be more: in other words, that they will realize their humanity more fully in every respect” (LE 20). The Pope also forwarded a philosophy of participation which was a foundation for social morality. As Spinello emphasises, the Pope understood this was necessary to counter a sense of alienation in the work place. This requires a decentralized workplace “that respects and rewards initiative, that empowers workers and allows them to preserve the personalistic value of their actions, will cultivate a humane environment in which the person is aware that she is working ‘for herself.’”[17]

All this together with his stress on the subjective nature of work: that work is always for man, not man for work, seemed fairly obvious. Yet as Spinello stresses: “This message may seem benign, but it’s really quite radical. Can corporations and states come to regard their workers not as commodities but as independent persons working for themselves? Can they recognize in the face of each worker a human subject who deserves a respected place of privilege at the great workbench of human history?”[18] It would be a different world if we could treat these questions as other than primarily rhetorical.

Concluding remarks

It is obvious in the encyclical that history means a good deal for the Pope. And as we have seen history was being made in his homeland when he published it. Weigel summarizes the importance of the encyclical in this respect: “When it was issued, Laborem Excercens was taken to be the Pope’s philosophical defence of the Solidarity movement. It was that, and more. Its enduring value lies in adding a richly textured analysis of the dignity of work to John Paul II’s comprehensive project of revitalizing humanism for the twenty-first century.”[19] Weigel has also indicated personalism is one of the foundational elements of the Catholic social doctrine, so in the encyclical it may be difficult to separate the philosophical from the doctrinal.[20]

Of course subsequently John Paul also published two other social encyclicals that built upon Laborem Excercens. In  Sollicitudo Rei Socialis of 1987, the Pope looks at liberation theology among others from a personalist perspective, claiming humanity must commit itself to authentic liberation, or its efforts regarding social and economic development will be shallow. Among more fundamental matters raised in Centesimus Annus of 1991, marking the centenary of Rerum Novarum, the Pope dealt more directly with both socialism and capitalism. He placed considerable stress on the anthropological error of communism, which subordinated the individual’s interests and aspirations to the good of the state. Under capitalism the emergence of the consumer society likewise engendered a limited anthropology, reducing the person to an economic being who is fulfilled by the satisfaction of his or her material needs.

As has been stressed by scholars, the Pope’s personalism emphasizes the person as imago Dei and places emphasis on metaphysics that is so important in his trio of social encyclicals. A morally developed, theistic culture empowers the bonds of solidarity, which sensitizes the conscience and cultivates communal responsibility. As Spinello stresses, both later encyclicals, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis and Centesimus Annus, “can be fully understood only in the light of Laborem Excercens. Both encyclicals explain the political and economic conditions most conducive for the flourishing of the free acting person who realizes himself or herself through work.”[21] As John Paul puts it in a manner that emphasizes this potential in a complex divided world:

‘‘Again, it is well known that it is possible to use work in various ways against man, that it is possible to punish man with the system of forced labour in concentration camps, that work can be made into a means for oppressing man, and that in various ways it is possible to exploit human labour, that is to say the worker. All this pleads in favour of the moral obligation to link industriousness as a virtue with the social order of work, which will enable man to become, in work, "more a human being" and not be degraded by it not only because of the wearing out of his physical strength (which, at least up to a certain point, is inevitable), but especially through damage to the dignity and subjectivity that are proper to him.’’ (LE 9)

Literature

Barrett, Edward. Persons and Liberal Democracy: The Ethical and Political Thought of Karoł Wojtyła/John Paul II. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010.

Garbowski, Christopher. The Problem of Moral Rearmament: Poland, the European Union, and the War in Ukraine. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024.

Krasnodębski, Zdzisław. “Solidarity: Contested Memory,” in Politics, History and Collective Memory in East central Europe, edited by Zdzisław Krasnodębski, Stefan Garsztecki, Rudiger Ritter, 21-41. Hamburg: Kramer, 2012.

Sacks, Jonathan. Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times. New York: Basic Books, 2020.

Spinello, Richard. The Encyclicals of John Paul II: An Introduction and Commentary. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.

Storck, Thomas. “Catholic Social Teaching: John Paul II, Laborem Excercens,” Catholic Education Resource Center, 1998.  https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/catholic-social-teaching-john-paul-ii-laborem-exercens.html.

Tischner, Józef. The Spirit of Solidarity, translated by Marek Zaleski and Benjamin Fiore. San Franscisco: Harper & Row, 1984.

Weigel, George. The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. New York: Basic Books, 2019.

Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II, 1920-2005. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.

[1] Jonathan Sacks, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (New York: Basic Books, 2020), 32.

[2] The term was coined by sociologist Barbara Staniszkis, one of the advisor’s of Solidarity; see Zdzisław Krasnodębski,  “Solidarity: Contested Memory,” in Politics, History and Collective Memory in East central Europe, eds. Zdzisław Krasnodębski, Stefan Garsztecki, Rudiger Ritter (Hamburg: Kramer, 2012), 24.

[3] Quoted in  Krasnodębski, “Solidarity: Contested Memory,” 24.

[4] Józef Tischner, The Spirit of Solidarity, trans. Marek Zaleski and Benjamin Fiore (San Franscisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 1.

[5] Edward Barrett, Persons and Liberal Democracy: The Ethical and Political Thought of Karoł Wojtyła/John Paul II (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 19.

[6] Barrett, Persons and Liberal Democracy, 21.

[7] Barrett, Persons and Liberal Democracy, 24.

[8] Richard Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II: An Introduction and Commentary (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 51, 52.

[9] Tischner, The Spirit of Solidarity, 98, 99-100.

[10] George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II, 1920-2005 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005), 419-20.

[11] Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 113.

[12] Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 115.

[13] Thomas Storck, “Catholic Social Teaching: John Paul II, Laborem Excercens,” Catholic Education Resource Center, 1998.  https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/catholic-social-teaching-john-paul-ii-laborem-exercens.html.

[14] Patricia Lamonreux quoted from Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 117.

[15] Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 115.

[16] Quoted in Christopher Garbowski, The Problem of Moral Rearmament: Poland, the European Union, and the War in Ukraine (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024), 82.

[17] Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 118.

[18] Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 131.

[19] Weigel, Witness to Hope, 421.

[20] See George Weigel, The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 2014.

[21] Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 133.