Lietuvių katalikų intelektualų kooperacijos samprata XIX–XX a. sandūroje

Abstract

Adjusting cooperative movement and actively participating in it, Catholics destroyed the myth of local Bolsheviks that the Catholic Church does not take care of workpeople. On Catholics initiative cooperatives, consumer and credit units were created and despite all difficulties and failures it helped to protect the interest of consumers, for farmers to get rid of foreign economic dependence and to look for new farming forms. Cooperatives developed curiosity, diligence, economical thinking, and made assumptions for political democracy. Reasonably one may state that they were the medium where a Lithuanian person was raised as an independent economical subject that was ready to work and to be responsible for his/her actions: he/she developed a new attitude towards property and work ethic, so it is small wonder that when Lithuania gained its independence and despite all dramatic consequences of World War I, during a relatively short time it was able to restore and develop its economy during interwar. In the article one shows that catholic intellectuals of the beginning of XX century (S. Sulte, J. Staugaitis, M. Krupavicius, F. Kemesis, J. Dabusis, etc. receptived the new social ideals, but they evaluated them critically and didn’t consider any social economic system to be absolute, the best and unique. Neither liberal capitalism, amp hasizig the importanc of private ownership and personal freedom and in fact refuting the Christian notin of obligation to society and individual, nor socialism, sacrificing the society for realization of its own fictitious mesianistic ideas, won a particular sympathy with them. They thought that in the making of social, economic and political life Lithuania should rest on the ideas of Christian democracy. They did not related Lithuanian economical and social rebirth with one social class (estate) as Bolsheviks did. Their attitude was that all estates are equally important and necessary for the society. Hence they looked for such an economic mechanism that would combine the relationship of producers and consumers and would include their social and economical operation. According to them, the most reliable way to economic democracy, which can assure economical wealth, unity and social security to the society and an individual, is through cooperation. Cooperation for Catholics first of all was the means to decrease exhaustion, to slow down egoistic individualism caused by economic liberalism and established in interrelationship, because this inevitably increased social tension in the society and Bolsheviks tried to use it. On the other hand, they saw a means to “adjust” society to property, people who had never had it (peasant, worker) and create conditions for him/her to freely become a co-owner (a shareholder of a cooperative or company) and to justify this control of property from the Christian viewpoint.