The Social Organism

1. The medieval view of the relation between grace and nature in the economic sphere is that grace builds on nature, lifting it up and ordering it towards the final end. Thus, the necessary realm of economics is meant to be transformed in order to help society work towards eternal life.
2. Inequality between the different classes of individuals in medieval thought was necessary in order to protect the rights of these classes, but also to make sure that each executed the activities proper to it alone.
3. Guilds were theoretically meant to do such things as “check economic egotism…resist the encroachments of a conscienceless money-power…preserve professional standards of training and craftsmanship and…repress by a strict corporate discipline the natural appetite of each to snatch special advantages for himself to the injury of all.” Basically they were meant to help preserve the integrity of craftsmen both against injurious economic incentives. The ethical principles concerning economics in medieval times stressed that man’s real work in this life reaching Heaven, and while economic matters can help man in obtaining this goal, they can never be seen as prior to or separate from it in any way (economics without morality turns into sin, in other words).
4. Private property, in the medieval view, helps in that it offers an incentive to individuals to work harder and keeps men from arguing so much over ownership and utility; however this is only the case because of Original Sin. In a perfect world, men would own things in common, according to Tawney’s interpretation.
5. The medieval view of social mobility was that this was not to be one’s goal in life. One should earn enough to support oneself, but all within the class one belonged to, in order that society as a whole should function well, for the sake of the common good. Profit for mere gain was looked down upon as evil.