Paul Weber, president of the Detroit ACTU

Courtesy of ACUA

April 10, 1942

Dec. 11, 1942

Feb. 19, 1943

Paul Weber, the Detroit ACTU president, began discussing what he first called "The Christian Revolution" just a few weeks after the first issue of the chapter's newspaper, Michigan Labor Leader (changed to The Wage Earner in 1943),  appeared. After laying out what the "vocational group system" might look like in the United States, he then discussed the building blocks of "corporatism": the common good, the living wage, the just price, private property, and competition. After that came a discussion of the fascist state, class war, profits, a new world order, and the redistribution of wealth from the perspective of "corporatism." By December 1940, Weber had worked out to his and his chapter's satisfaction what finally came to be called "economic democracy." In his heroic effort to find a middle ground between naked capitalism and state socialism, Weber went far beyond the Papal encyclicals.

Questions

As you read these documents, reflect on the following questions:

1. Is the tone of these columns optimistic or pessimistic?

2. What is the connection of these economic reforms to the political system?

3. Who was responsible for the implementation of economic democracy?