John Paul II

Issued in 1981, On Human Work, also titled Laborem Exercens, the first two Latin words of the text, was John Paul II's memorial to a previous encyclical, Rerum Novarum, written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. On Human Work was issued at a time when the world was undergoing change. In early 1981 the American hostages who had been held in Iran were being released and that in the years that followed the cleavages between the industrial West and the Third World would become even stronger. Emerging economic globalization was complicated in the West by a precarious employment picture; the high-tech revolution had not yet taken hold. The whole picture was further complicated by the rising of Islamic identity politics and universalism, notably as being established by Iran's moral leadership but soon to spread beyond that. This was a time, too, of Cold War (hence nuclear-war) politics, the USSR still being nine years away from undergoing its historic social and political transformation. On the other hand, the trade union Solidarity in Poland was also playing havoc with Soviet-bloc economics and labor relations, and in the process (although nobody knew it at the time) becoming a precursor of the breakup of that bloc.

These various dynamics are in the background of reference to "the eve of new developments in technological, economic and political conditions which . . . will influence the world of work . . . no less than the industrial revolution of the last century" (John Paul 7). The purpos

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Category: History - J