## 1. The Nature of Solidarity



In social and political philosophy, the concept of solidarity is
primarily used to evaluate, guide, and describe activities within
groups and between individuals and groups. In unpacking different
accounts, it is useful to begin by listing some typical
practice-embedded expressions in which the concept is used. In a
conversation about our work environment, someone might say, "we
should show more solidarity with one another"; in a conversation
about the origins of the welfare state, someone might say, "the
welfare state is an expression of solidarity among citizens"; in
a conversation about the dynamics of social movements, someone might
say, "the neo-Nazi protesters acted in solidarity with one
another"; in a conversation about supporting the Movement for
Black Lives (M4BL), someone might say, "I stand in solidarity
with you in fighting oppression"; in a conversation about the
moral values animating European integration as a project, someone
might say, "solidarity is a foundational value of the European
Union"; in a conversation about the downsides of investment
banking, someone might say, "there is not much solidarity among
bankers"; in a conversation about the plight of earthquake
victims in Indonesia, someone might say, "solidarity requires
that we send some money as soon as possible"; in responding to
news that a teammate has cancer, someone might say: "we ought to
shave our heads in solidarity". What accounts of the concept can
aid us in evaluating and describing the phenomenon referred to in
these and similar circumstances?



At the broadest level, philosophers (such as O'Neill 1996: 201
and Miller 2017: 62) usually distinguish between two senses of
solidarity: solidarity *among* and solidarity *with*.
According to the former, solidarity describes a relation among members
of the same social group. As we will see in more detail below,
*solidarity among* usually requires a rough symmetry in the
attitudes and dispositions of its members. For example, we might both
identify as members of Danish nation, share a commitment to overthrow
the occupiers, and each be willing to come to each other's aid
in fighting them. On the other hand, *solidarity with*
describes a relation between an individual and another individual, or
between a set of individuals and the members of a social group of
which the former are not members (the "outgroup"). On this
reading, symmetry is not required: I might act in solidarity with you
as an earthquake victim when I wire money to an NGO that is operative
in your city. Here I act in solidarity with you without your acting in
solidarity with me (or even being disposed to act in solidarity with
me were the tables to be turned). A paradigmatic example of
*solidarity with* is the Catholic notion of solidarity
understood as a form of *caritas*, or charity (on an
alternative interpretation of solidarity in the Catholic tradition,
see below). As Jozef Tischner, who was influential in
Poland's solidarity movement, writes:



> 
> 
> With whom, therefore, is our solidarity? It is, above all, with those
> who have been wounded by other people, with those who suffer pain that
> could be avoided--accidental, needless pain. This does not
> preclude solidarity with others, with all who suffer. However, the
> solidarity with those who suffer at the hands of others is
> particularly vital, strong, spontaneous. (Tischner 1982 [1984]:
> 8-9)
> 
> 
> 



Philosophers divide on whether asymmetric, unilateral forms of aid and
support from individuals to other individuals, or from outgroup
members to ingroups counts as *genuine* solidarity. For some
(see, e.g., Sangiovanni forthcoming), they do not. We do better, he
argues, not to conceive of *solidarity with* as a form of
solidarity at all. The unilateral, asymmetric reading, he argues,
tends to vitiate the egalitarianism at the heart of solidarity, and
does not fit well with the practices in which the term was,
historically, most prevalent. He also argues that *solidarity
with* in this narrower sense is not distinguishable from other,
related terms, such as "humanitarian aid",
"charity", "benevolence", or "support
for a good cause". There is nothing gained in calling forms of
humanitarian aid or support for a good cause "solidarity",
and running the two ideas together under a single banner tends to
obscure the value of solidarity as a form of egalitarian collective
action.



For other philosophers (e.g., Kolers 2016), solidarity (whether
*with* or *among*) must *always* be unilateral
and asymmetric. Kolers argues that paradigmatic cases of solidarity
involve one group or individual (usually members of an outgroup),
*S*, *deferring* to an object group, *G*, but not
vice versa. According to Kolers,



> 
> 
> [solidary action] is not principally justified by appeal to goals, nor
> do we choose sides on the basis of shared goals. To the contrary, when
> *S* is in solidarity with *G*, it is *G*, not
> *G*'s ends, that *S* endorses or values. *S* is
> disposed to adopt *whatever* goal *G* sets for the action
> or as a political aim. For instance, insofar as they are in
> solidarity, heterosexual persons who support the right of same-sex
> couples to marry do so not because they individually want same-sex
> marriages to be possible, but because the LGBTQ community treats that
> as an important goal. (Kolers 2016: 58)
> 
> 
> 



Paradigmatic instances of solidarity involve members of (out)groups
(e.g., heterosexuals) committing themselves to do whatever members of
a disadvantaged (in)group (e.g., homosexuals) require to overcome
injustice. Importantly, on this picture outgroup members commit to the
*group*, rather than to any aim pursued by the group. As a
heterosexual, I do *not* act in solidarity by committing
directly to fighting heterosexism alongside members of the LGBTQ
community; rather, to act in solidarity, I must commit to the LGBTQ
community as such, and so to whatever members tell me I need to do to
promote their cause, whatever cause that is.



One advantage of this view is that it captures an important ethical
aspect of coalitional social movements in which more privileged
(out)groups act as allies of less privileged (in)groups in fighting
injustice. As has often been noted, the trouble with such coalitions
is that members of privileged groups often tend to be blind to the way
in which privilege colors and sometimes distorts their efforts to
support the aims of the
 movement.[1]
 Outgroup allies can sometimes reproduce, unconsciously, wider
structural patterns of power and exclusion as they fight alongside
ingroup members; they can perpetrate, for example, forms of epistemic
injustice in seeking to impose their own agenda or ideals onto the
wider movement (Deveaux 2021; Clark 2014; Medina 2013; Gould 2020;
Land 2015). Kolers' work reminds his readers that genuine
solidarity requires that members of outgroups put aside their
particular concerns, ideals, prejudices, and so on, and
*listen* (Kolers 2016: 115). They must be prepared, in turn, to
accept their relative epistemic limitations vis-a-vis members
of ingroups who not only have "skin in the game" but often
a vivid lived experience of the forms of injustice they are fighting.
And they must also be prepared to defer out of respect for the
disadvantaged: whether or not the disadvantaged have better epistemic
access to truths about the struggle, etc., the privileged ought to
defer out of respect for what is at stake for the
 disadvantaged.[2]



So far, we have discussed unilateral, asymmetric accounts of our
target concept. We now turn to accounts of the concept that treat the
idea of *solidarity among* as paradigmatic. Rather than naming
the set of attitudes and actions characteristic of an individual who
(unilaterally) offers support or aid, the idea of *solidarity
among* names a *relation* among members of the
*same* group. The relation is generally understood to make it
the case that the group exhibits a distinctive kind of *unity*
among its members (*solidus* in Latin means whole or
integrated). But what kind of unity? The unity in question is
composed, on all plausible views, by an interlocking set of attitudes,
dispositions, and characteristic actions displayed by members. It is
useful to compare relations of solidarity to the relations
constituting social groups *as such.* According to one
influential definition of a social group, a social group 



> 
> 
> is a collection of individuals who perceive themselves to be members
> of the same social category, share some emotional involvement in this
> common definition of themselves, and achieve some degree of social
> consensus about the evaluation of their group and their membership of
> it. (Tajfel & Turner 2001: 100). 
> 
> 
> 



People waiting at a bus stop, or boarding a train, are not, in normal
circumstances, a social group; employees of Google and members of the
Church of England are. We can then say: For an (in)group to display
solidarity, it must recognize itself as a social group: members must
identify themselves based on some characteristic that marks them out
as a social group. For example, members might identify as
*workers* (on the basis, that is, of a role), as *black*
(on the basis of racial
 categorization[3]),
 as *cancer survivors* (on the basis of a common set of
experiences), as *environmentalists* (on the basis of a shared
cause), and so
 on.[4]
 But what other conditions are necessary (or at least paradigmatic)?
Identifying as a social group is not sufficient: it seems clear that
we might identify as employees of Google, or as engineers, or as
investment bankers, but not be in solidarity with one another.



An obvious candidate is the condition that members of the social group
be disposed to put aside narrow self-interest in coming to each
other's aid when required. We might imagine, for example, that
the employees of Google or investment bankers are not prepared to set
aside narrow self-interest except in special circumstances (where,
say, employees know one another independently). If this were true,
then it seems clear that, in their normal everyday interactions, they
wouldn't be in solidarity with one another (despite their
cooperation). Some philosophers believe that these two
conditions--identifying as a member of a social group and a
willingness, on that basis, to set aside narrow self-interest in
coming to a fellow's aid--are necessary *and
sufficient* for solidarity. Philippe Van Parijs, for example,
writes:



> 
> 
> When I help you out of solidarity, I do so because you are "one
> of us", because "I could have been you", because, in
> this sense, I "identify" with you. (Van Parijs
> forthcoming; see also Mason 2000: 27)
> 
> 
> 



To illustrate, Van Parijs gives the example of a fellow traveler
returning a lost wallet, or a cyclist helping another to board a
train. In both cases, someone identifies as a traveler (or as a
cyclist) and, in virtue of that identification, is disposed to come to
another traveler or cyclist's aid.



An advantage of the view is that it can encompass a wide variety of
different contexts. It can, for example, account for
*unilateral* senses of solidarity, such as the Good Samaritan.
As long as the Good Samaritan is motivated by a relevant
self-categorization that includes the stranger, then his coming to his
aid counts as solidarity. The Good Samaritan might feel disposed to
aid because he has shared the experience of being a victim of
injustice, or because of their shared vulnerability, say, as human
beings. But its encompassing nature may also make it hard to
distinguish from related notions. The account seems to collapse into
the view that solidarity is another name for all responsibilities that
flow (or that are perceived to flow) from membership in a social
group.



Tommie Shelby offers a view that is broadly similar in structure, but
strengthens the requirements for mutual identification and group
cohesion. For Shelby,



> 
> 
> I believe there are five core normative requirements that are jointly
> sufficient for a robust form of solidarity [identification with the
> group, special concern, shared values or goals, loyalty, and mutual
> trust]. By "robust" I mean a solidarity that is strong
> enough to move people to collective action, not just mutual sympathy
> born of recognition of communality or a mere sense of group belonging.
> (Shelby 2005: 68; see also May 1996: 44; cf. Feinberg 1973: 677)
> 
> 
> 



Returning a lost wallet and the Good Samaritan, on this view, are
ruled out since they are products of a weak sense of group belonging.
One may object, however, that the view is still not restrictive
enough. For example, a reading group might exhibit all five features,
and move its participants to do things together, and yet it seems
strained to say that a reading group is in solidarity with one
another. (It is strained not so much because it doesn't capture
the ordinary English meaning, but because it seems to jar with the
value and history of the practices in which the term has predominantly
figured, and which make sense of the role we might want an account of
solidarity to play.) It is also unclear, on this view, whether
collective action is a necessary condition of solidarity, or whether
two or more people can be in solidarity by holding the attitudes
mentioned without ever acting together in some relevant sense. Might
brothers be in solidarity by possessing all five of the listed
attitudes, though they never act together in the pursuit of any goals,
or come to each other's aid in any way?



Sally Scholz offers a view of solidarity that is explicitly political
and oppositional. For Scholz,



> 
> 
> Political solidarity arises in opposition to something; it is a
> movement for social change that may occur at many levels of social
> existence. ... Natural disasters may inspire strong sentiments
> and even bonds of connection, but they do not inspire political
> solidarity. Political solidarity as I present it has a social justice
> content or aim; it opposes injustice, oppression, tyranny, and social
> vulnerabilities. (Scholz 2008: 54; see also Mohanty 2003:
>  7)[5]
> 
> 
> 



Solidarity, on this view, is always geared toward overcoming
injustice; it is essentially political. The reading group would be
excluded, and so would be the Good Samaritan and sending money to
earthquake victims. Scholz also argues that the concept entails the
existence of positive moral obligations among participants. If
participants (for example, a white supremacist group) lack positive
obligations to aid each other in protesting racial integration
(because such a protest would be in the service of unjust ends), then
they cannot act in solidarity when they protest, come to each
other's aid, and are committed to their cause.



Andrea Sangiovanni offers a view that is less restrictive (but more
restrictive than Shelby's). In contrast to Scholz, he argues
that solidarity must always be aimed at overcoming adversity, but the
adversity need not be political. For example, suppose a village burns
down in a fire and residents band together to rebuild it. They are
committed to the endeavor and are ready to come to each other's
aid. Because their endeavor is oriented toward overcoming shared
adversity it counts as solidarity. Furthermore, for Sangiovanni, the
concept solidarity is not moralized: even mafiosi can be in solidarity
with one another (despite the fact, that is, that their solidarity
will promote bad ends). Finally, solidarity, he claims, neither merely
*precedes* collective action (or, as Shelby argues, makes it
more likely) nor is it merely a *by-product* of collective
action, but *is itself* a form of collective action. As a kind
of action, it does not therefore name only a set of desires and
beliefs, a virtue, or a sense of fellowship with others. Rather,
solidarity is any instance of collective action that has the following
core features:


1. Participants identify with one another on the basis of a role,
condition, cause, set of experiences, or way of life on the basis of
which ...
2. ... they each ...


	1. ...intend to do their part in overcoming some significant
	adversity, *X*, by pursuing, together, some more proximate shared
	goal, *Y*;
	2. ... are individually committed (i) to *X* and *Y*
	and (ii) to not bypassing each other's will in the achievement
	of *X* and *Y*;
	3. ... are committed to sharing one another's fates in
	ways relevant to *X* and *Y*.
	4. ... trust one another to play their part in *X* and
	*Y*, trust each other's commitment, trust that each will
	not bypass the other's will, and trust each to share the
	other's fate.



This view faces a number of challenges as well. First, like Shelby and
Scholz, it doesn't allow for unilateral cases of
solidarity--such as the Good Samaritan and sending money to
earthquake victims--to count as instances of solidarity since
there is no collective action in the required sense. Second, and
relatedly, it doesn't allow for cases of "silent" or
"private" solidarity (Bommarito 2016; Zhao 2019). As a
young girl, Simone Weil gave up eating sugar because sugar had become
unavailable to soldiers at the front. It seems plausible to say that
she acted *in solidarity* with the soldiers. What reasons do we
have to rule such cases out? And, finally, it seems to rule out
protest movements that are organized *on behalf of* victims of
injustice but not *with* them. Imagine we organize a protest
against the French government's closure of the refugee camps in
Calais, and suppose that the refugees there do not know of, or
otherwise take part in, our protest. Sangiovanni's account seems
to force us to say that we, on the outside, act in solidarity with one
another *but not with the refugees*.


## 2. Solidarity in Practice



So far, we have discussed the nature of solidarity in general. In this
section, we review the social and political practices in which the
term has primarily figured. Whatever account of the general concept we
think is best should aid us in illuminating each of these contexts (by
successfully describing, evaluating, and guiding them). In the
following, however, we remain neutral between different accounts of
the general concept. Furthermore, we only cover a sample of such
contexts. There are many more practices in which solidarity has found
a place. We focus on what strike us as the historically most important
and influential ones.


### 2.1 Socialism



As mentioned above, the idea becomes prevalent in the early-nineteenth
century in France. The soil in which the concept first takes root is
socialism. The early socialist writers--Robert Owen
(1771-1858), Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), and Charles
Fourier (1772-1837) (who Marx and Engels would later dismiss as
"utopian") were especially influential--decried the
individualism and egoism fostered by market society (Claeys 2011). The
untethering of markets from constraints of traditional law, social
structures, and morality inevitably led, they argued, to social
conflict and the moral, economic, and cultural degradation of the
working classes. They believed that new forms of mutual aid,
cooperation, and association were needed to bring each functional unit
of the modern industrial economy together in a mutually supportive
web, and prevent the worst effects of the competitive division of
labor and the poverty it produces. In 1826, Robert Owen wrote:



> 
> 
> There is but one mode ... by which man can possess in perpetuity
> all the happiness which his nature is capable of enjoying,--that
> is by the union and co-operation of *all* for the benefit of
> *each*. While mankind remain congregated in large cities and
> towns, or live in single families apart from their species, each
> having distinct and opposite interests, no substantial improvement can
> be effected in the condition of society. To obtain the full advantages
> of cooperation, men must be associated in small communities, or large
> families, all the members of which shall be united by the bond of one
> common interest; the same bond of union connecting each community with
> every other established on similar principles. (Owen 1826-27
> [2016: 69]; see also Leopold 2015)
> 
> 
> 



Hippolyte Renaud gave this unified, mutually supportive social
cooperation in the service of each and all a name that formed the
title of his immensely popular summary of Fourier's works,
namely *Solidarite*
 (1842).[6]



In "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" (1876), Engels
rejected the utopians' for failing to explain how their proposed
societies could ever be realized (1876 [1978: 685ff]). There was no
basis for their doctrines or their faith in the empirically verifiable
laws of society. Given its association with the
"utopians", it is revealing that neither Marx nor Engels
ever used "solidarity" as a term in any of their
systematic writings. Where they did use the term was in their speeches
and letters regarding the workingmen's associations that were
springing up everywhere in defense of socialism. In 1872, in a speech
given in Amsterdam after a congress of the First International, Marx
says:



> 
> 
> Citizens, let us think of the basic principle of the International:
> Solidarity. Only when we have established this life-giving principle
> on a sound basis among the numerous workers of all countries will we
> attain the great final goal which we have set ourselves. The
> revolution must be carried out with solidarity; this is the great
> lesson of the French Commune, which fell because none of the other
> centers--Berlin, Madrid, etc.--developed great revolutionary
> movements comparable to the mighty uprising of the Paris proletariat.
> (Marx 1872 [1978: 522])
> 
> 
> 



And, as Karl Kautsky, one of the most influential Marxists in the late
nineteenth century, writes in the *Class Struggle,* which was
the German Social Democratic Party's official commentary on the
proposed Erfurt program of 1891:



> 
> 
> But as soon as the workers discover that their interests are common,
> that they are all opposed to the exploiter, it takes the form of great
> organizations and open battles against the exploiting class....
> And when [these elevating tendencies] have once wakened full
> class-consciousness in any group of workers, the consciousness of
> solidarity with all the members of the working-class, the
> consciousness of the strength that is born of union; as soon as any
> group has recognized that it is essential to society and that it dare
> hope for better things in the future,--then it is well nigh
> impossible to shove that group back into the degenerate mass of beings
> whose opposition to the system under which they suffer takes no other
> form than that of unreasoned hate. (Kautsky 1892: Ch. 5,
> Secs. 5-6; see also Wildt 1999)
> 
> 
> 



From its early socialist origins, "solidarity" found its
natural home as a term describing the unity of workers'
associations--a term describing, that is, their mutual
identification with one another as exploited, their mutual commitment
to overthrowing capitalism through organized cooperation, and their
willingness to sacrifice for one another in the name of the cause.


### 2.2 Civic Solidarity



Civic solidarity refers to solidarity among citizens of modern states,
and is often associated with the emergence and development of welfare
states. The term as used in this way first became popular in the
late-nineteenth century in France. The late-nineteenth century usages
are outgrowths of earlier forms of socialism, but they develop the
idea in directions that are less oppositional than the socialism that
emerges as a political force in the wake of 1848. Two figures are
associated with its popularization during this period: Leon
Bourgeois and Emile Durkheim. We start with Leon Bourgeois
since his account was, at the time, more influential than
Durkheim's.



In 1896, Leon Bourgeois--prime minister of France from
1895-6--published what would become the programmatic
manifesto of the Solidarist movement, namely a pamphlet entitled
*Solidarite* (Bourgeois 1902). The pamphlet begins by
noting that all complex organisms reproduce themselves through an
internal division of labor. Each organ has a different function; their
interdependence is organized in such a way as to ensure the
being's self-preservation. Bourgeois calls this internal unity
*natural* solidarity. He then goes on to note that societies
are organized in much the same way: the more complex a society is, the
more diverse and interdependent its internal division of labor. There
are two differences. The first difference is that societies are made
up of individuals possessed of reason and will, and so the laws of
nature are not sufficient to ensure that the parts will coordinate to
sustain and reproduce the life of the whole. The second difference
follows directly from the first. Because the coordination necessary to
maintain and reproduce a society depends on the reason and will of
individuals, the laws that govern that reproduction must also work via
those very same faculties. The laws governing *social*
solidarity are, therefore, necessarily *moral*.



What *mores* ought to govern the division of labor and so,
ultimately, the distribution of the benefits and burdens of joint
production (*la repartition des profits et des
charges*)? Bourgeois writes that we must look for an answer at the
moral implications of the very reciprocal dependence that constitutes
society in the first place. Once we do so, we will see that every
individual within the societal division of labor owes the vast
preponderance of what they are able to obtain from that
society--for example, through their talents and abilities, or
through the knowledge they acquire from that society--to two
sources. First, they owe a debt to past generations and, second, to
contemporaries who, in the present, reproduce and advance the
institutions, knowledge, resources, and societal conventions from
which they gain (almost) all that is theirs.



> 
> 
> [Because of man's dependence on the societal division of labor]
> a necessary exchange of services exists between each and all. The free
> development of his faculties, of his activities, in short, of his very
> *being*, can only be realized, for each individual, as a result
> of the concurrent contributions of other men's faculties and
> activities. This free development can, furthermore, only reach its
> full extent as a result of the accumulated contributions of the
> past.
> 
> 
> 
> There is therefore a debt owed by each to all the rest, in virtue of
> the contributions and services rendered by all to each. (Bourgeois
> 1902: 137, translation by Sangiovanni)
> 
> 
> 



*Moral* solidarity requires, then, citizens to identify with
one another as jointly responsible for the social product, and to be
prepared to discharge the social debt through common institutions
designed to insure people against unemployment, sickness, and old age,
to maintain jobs open to talents, and to support a public system of
education. Lack of moral solidarity, Bourgeois implies, will lead
inevitably to lack of coordination among the parts, and so to a
breakdown in *natural* solidarity.



Published a few years earlier than Bourgeois' pamphlet,
Durkheim's doctoral thesis--*The Division of Labor in
Society* (1893)--distinguished between the
*mechanical* solidarity typical of premodern, less complex
societies and the *organic* solidarity of modern industrialized
societies. Societies whose social cohesion is founded on mechanical
solidarity are integrated through a "collective
consciousness" that defines a common way of life. Where
mechanical solidarity is characterized by *similarity* among
members of a society, organic solidarity is characterized by
*difference*. At the heart of organic solidarity is, as it was
for Bourgeois, the division of labor. Modern societies must be
integrated via the coordinated interdependence of an extensive
division of labor. But Durkheim is adamant that the coordinated
functioning of the different parts is not self-regulating. He
emphasizes the need for a diffuse *moral* solidarity to
reinforce and stabilize the functioning of the division of labor.
(Top-down regulation via the state--which is "too
remote" and "general"--is also not enough
[Durkheim 1893 [1984: 27]].) This solidarity can no longer come from
the "collective consciousness" (as it did in premodern
societies): the differentiation of modern society increases
individualism and diversity, undoing the bonds of similarity that tie
together premodern societies. What sources are left to support the
mutual "attraction", disposition to come to other's
aid, and trust required for the cohesion of a society?



His proposed solution is clearest in the Second Preface to the
*Division of Labor*, added in 1902. He suggests that the state
alone cannot guarantee the conditions necessary for maintaining
solidarity against the three predominant causes of social unrest in
modern, differentiated societies. The first cause is *anomie*,
the loss of direction and orientation that can accompany
specialization. Anomie is the primary social danger accompanying the
growing depth and extent of the division of labor, and threatens the
sense in which we each are essential contributors to the success of
society as a whole (Durkheim 1893/1902 [1984: 289-90]). The
second cause is *force*, the sense of injustice that arises
from a feeling that one's work is not valued according to its
worth and one's own merits--the sense, in short, that one
is exploited. Such grievances are especially strong when premodern
elements of caste persist in modern conditions. The third cause is
*disuse*, or the aimlessness, resentment, and lack of focus
that comes from not having enough work. In each case, Durkheim argues,
the citizen comes to lose a grip on his larger place in reproducing
the whole; as he turns inwards, his grievances seem to him larger and
his duties to others less pressing; he is less fulfilled by his labor,
seeing it no longer as a reflection of his nature; mistrust takes
root; he no longer sees his potential employers as cooperative
partners, but begins to see them as enemies.



In the Preface, he argues that only the "professional grouping
is a moral force capable of curbing individual egoism" (Durkheim
1893/1902 [1984: 11]). By "professional grouping",
Durkheim meant that the various industrial branches of an economy
would be grouped into *corporations* (modelled on the feudal
corporation). Unlike unions, corporations would constituted by both
employers and employees, and would have the power to regulate wages,
conditions of work, appointments and promotions; they would also have
the authority to coordinate with other branches and with government.
The effect of such groupings would be to recreate solidarity where it
was most under pressure:



> 
> 
> Within a political society [e.g., a corporation], as soon as a certain
> number of individuals find they hold in common ideas, interests,
> sentiments and occupations which the rest of the population does not
> share in, it is inevitable that, under the influence of these
> similarities, they should be attracted to one another. ... It is
> impossible for men to live together and be in regular contact with one
> another without their acquiring some feeling for the totality which
> they constitute through having united together, without their becoming
> attached to it, concerning themselves with its interests and taking it
> into account in their behaviour. (Durkheim 1893/1902 [1984:
> 17-8])
> 
> 
> 



The idea was that, in grouping together in smaller, functionally
organized units individuals would regain their sense of contributing
to society while, at the same time, giving everyone a felt stake in
the justice and fairness required to reproduce it. In sum, organic
solidarity refers to the bonds of mutual sacrifice and attraction that
develop when each citizen realizes how the contribution they make to
the overall functioning of the society as a whole, via their economic
and social role, depends on a tightly knit, interdependent web of more
particular associations.


### 2.3 National Solidarity



The nineteenth-century nationalist takes over the term from the
socialists to describe the unity of a nation in its struggle about
external forces. For the nationalist, solidarity is anchored in shared
identification with an "imagined community" where
membership is defined not in terms of class or social position, but in
terms of an underlying way of life characterized by common folkways,
mores, and a shared history of struggle. In 1882, Ernest Renan claimed
that the nation is an expression of a 



> 
> 
> great solidarity (*une grande solidarite*), constituted
> by a sense of the common sacrifices that have been made and that one
> is disposed to make again. (Renan 1882: 29)
> 
> 
> 
> 



And Giuseppe Mazzini, whose version of liberal-republican nationalism
was to have such a great influence on nationalist movements across the
world, writes in 1871:



> 
> 
> The individual's means and his thirty or forty years of adult
> life are but a tiny drop in the vast Ocean of existence. As soon as he
> becomes aware of this, he ends up discouraged and abandons the entire
> undertaking. If he is a good man, he will now and again engage in
> simple charity. If he is evil, he will isolate himself in complete
> selfishness. But give this man a Country [*patria*] and
> establish a link of solidarity [*solidarieta*] between
> his individual efforts and the efforts of all subsequent generations;
> place him in association with the labors of 25 to 30 million men who
> speak the same language, have similar habits and beliefs, profess
> faith in the same *goal*, and have developed specific tools for
> their work as required by the general conditions of their land, and
> the problem will change for him at once: his strengths will be greatly
> multiplied, allowing him to feel up to the task. ("Nazionalismo
> e Nazionalita" 1871 [2009: 63])
> 
> 
> 



On this understanding, the nation is understood primarily as a project
in which each participates over time and across generations. This same
understanding has carried over to contemporary nationalists. For
them,



a common history, territory, and shared bonds of belonging give rise
to a commitment to a common project, namely to reproduce and defend
the *patria*. As in workers' movements, the struggle,
furthermore, requires a preparedness to come to each other's aid
in realizing the project.


### 2.4 Christian Solidarity



Solidarity becomes increasingly important in Christian, especially
Catholic, thought and practice beginning at the end of the nineteenth
century and takes flight with the papacy of John Paul
 II.[7]
 In response to the rising importance of socialism and class conflict
in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Church realizes the need
to address the situation of the worker. In the Church's
response, Pope Leo XIII's *Rerum Novarum* (1891)--a
staple of Catholic social thought--tries to steal a march on the
socialists by incorporating and reworking one of the socialist's
main rallying points, namely the idea of mutualism within
worker's associations. In those passages, Leo cites Ecclesiastes
approvingly on the importance of fraternity: 



> 
> 
> "It is better that two should be together than one; for they
> have the advantage of their society. If one fall he shall be supported
> by the other. Woe to him that is alone, for when he falleth he hath
> none to lift him up". And further: "A brother that is
> helped by his brother is like a strong city". It is this natural
> impulse which binds men together in civil society; and it is likewise
> this which leads them to join together in associations. (Leo XIII
> 1891: SS50)
> 
> 
> 



But it was not until much later that the term gets used explicitly. In
the 1967 encyclical *Populorum Progressio*, on global
development and the inequality between rich and poor nations, Pope
Paul VI invokes the unmistakably Solidarist notion that
interdependence creates social obligations:



> 
> 
> We are the heirs of earlier generations, and we reap benefits from the
> efforts of our contemporaries; we are under obligation to all men.
> Therefore we cannot disregard the welfare of those who will come after
> us to increase the human family. The reality of human solidarity
> brings us not only benefits but also obligations. (SS17)
> 
> 
> 



The origin of the Church's union of interdependence and
solidarity lies in an earlier nineteenth-century current of thought
often referred to as Christian Solidarism. In *Ethics and the
National Economy* (1918), its founder and most prominent advocate,
Heinrich Pesch (1854-1926), writes:



> 
> 
> Christianity teaches us that people, despite all individual and also
> social differences in occupation and ownership, are nevertheless
> *socii,* i.e., comrades, precisely by virtue of those
> differences. They are dependent on each other and bound together by a
> *solidaristic community of interests* in all of their
> industrial relationships as masters and journeymen, as employers and
> workers, and in the human race overall, which is the great universal
> family of nations. (Pesch 1918 [2004: 104])
> 
> 
> 



On this corporatist understanding, it is not just the shared
experience of human suffering, or the understanding of the human being
as *imago dei*, but a recognition of the interdependence of
human beings in society that grounds a demand to share one
another's fate. On this picture, we are meant to recognize how
both our flourishing and our suffering is a result of mutual influence
and mutual reliance in and through the multiple associations to which
we belong; in response, we have obligations to share others'
fates by coming to others' aid and by limiting the harm we
do.



As is widely recognized, John Paul II was also deeply influenced by
this strand of Catholic Social Thought (and its realization in Leo
XIII's *Rerum
 Novarum*).[8]
 In *Sollicitudo rei socialis*, he writes:



> 
> 
> When interdependence becomes recognized [...], the correlative
> response as a moral and social attitude, as a "virtue", is
> solidarity. This then is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow
> distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On
> the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit
> oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of
> each individual, because we are all really responsible for all. (John
> Paul II 1987: SSV)
> 
> 
> 



On this reading, the ground of solidarity is, as in Bourgeois and
Durkheim, an identification based on our *role in the division of
labor*, which includes a recognition that participation in an
unjust social order perpetuates suffering, and makes us accomplices.
The doctrine goes hand in hand with the Church's teaching on
subsidiarity, in which local associations--including perhaps most
importantly the family--have ethical priority to more general,
encompassing associations, such as the state. More general and
encompassing organizing units should intervene in the affairs of the
lower only to help or aid them in the accomplishment of their tasks.
On this understanding, the response to individual suffering must be
collective; it cannot be done by individuals acting alone, but by each
body, at each level of generality, working together as a unit to
preserve the common good. As Pope Francis noted in a follow-up
catechism to his COVID19 encyclical *Fratelli Tutti*, 



> 
> 
> there is no true solidarity without social participation, without the
> contribution of intermediary bodies: families, associations,
> cooperatives, small businesses, and other expressions of society.
> Everyone needs to contribute, everyone. (Francis
>  2020)[9]
> 
> 
> 


### 2.5 Solidarity in social movements



In the late twentieth century, the predominant context in which
solidarity has had a place are modern social movements, such as
anticolonial, black, feminist, LGBTQ, and disabled struggles. It would
take us too far afield to review how solidarity is deployed in each
one of these movements. But it useful to give a sense of the kind of
questions that have motivated those engaged in them. One of the
central questions is the following: What should the *basis* of
the black, anticolonial, women's movements, and so on, be?
Should, for example, the women's movement be grounded in an idea
of sisterhood--on what unites women *as* women--or on
a commitment to the (feminist) cause (or both, or neither)? Should
black solidarity (for example in the US) be based in a shared
ethnocultural identity as a nation, or in common subjection to
oppression (or both, or neither)? Should Indigenous anti-colonial
movements in Canada be grounded in particular territorially-based
shared ways of life, or in broader commitments to overthrowing
European colonialism wherever it exists (or both, or neither)? (see,
e.g., Coulthard 2014; Simpson 2017). To give a sense of the debates,
we will focus on black solidarity and the idea of sisterhood.



Should solidarity among women *as* women be grounded in some
kind of shared experience of womanhood? It has become a staple of the
feminist literature that there is *no* shared experience of
simply being a woman. The attempt to identify a canonical list of
experiences that characterizes "being a woman" is likely
to lead to subtle forms of exclusion. Previous such attempts, it is
often argued, have reproduced the cis-gendered experiences of white,
middle-class women, and have marginalized the experiences of women
whose experiences do not fit on the list (Lorde 1984; Hill Collins
1990 [2000]; hooks 2000 [2015]; Combahee River Collective 1977/1983;
Spelman 1988). See also entry on
 feminist perspectives on sex and gender.



The alternative to grounding sisterhood in shared experience or shared
oppression is to ground it in commitment to a *cause* or
*coalition* against patriarchy. The trouble with this view is
that it leaves open the question of how this defines a distinctive
form of *sisterhood*, rather than a form of *feminist*
solidarity. But is there anything distinctive about solidarity among
women *as* women? If so, what are its grounds?



One response is to ground sisterhood not in a shared
*experience* but in a shared *condition* of
oppression--where that condition is experienced in different ways
according to one's overall structural position (which may be
further influenced by intersecting factors, such as race, class,
sexuality, and religion) (see, e.g., Young 1994).



This possible response to the challenge from exclusion invites a
further objection: if sisterhood is supposed to be grounded in a
shared condition defined by relations to a given set of socially
conditioned material objects (primarily the socially sexed body and
its reproductive functions), then doesn't this also exclude? If
this is supposed to ground an identification among women as women,
then doesn't sisterhood required constructing a shared narrative
regarding what these relations are how they condition the sexed body?
(Shrage 2009) But then doesn't this just reinvite the challenge
from exclusion, since different women--depending on their
structural position--will find themselves subordinated and
oppressed by a different conglomeration of socially salient relations
and practices? Think, for example, of transgender women, or the
variety of ways in which race, sexuality, class, gender, and religion
 intersect.[10]




Similar questions arise when considering the nature of Black
(American) solidarity. Should such solidarity be grounded in a shared
ethnocultural identity, in a shared condition as oppressed, in an
anti-racist cause as such, or in something else again (such as a
shared fate)? (These grounds are not, of course, exclusive: one might
believe that black solidarity should be grounded in *both*
ethnocultural identity and in the sense of sharing a distinct
condition of oppression.) An important strand of black
nationalism--one that was especially prominent in the1960s and
70s--holds that high-sounding appeals to the possibility of
integration in the name of a universal fight against injustice cannot
ground a robust solidarity among blacks. A deeper, widespread
engagement with a distinct culture is needed. According to this form
of nationalism, Black Americans (as descendants of slaves violently
abducted from Africa and elsewhere) constitute a distinct, and
distinctly cultural, nation-within-a-nation (Robinson 2001; Moses
1978). Nationalists argue that, though at the moment marginalized and
divided within itself, black culture calls for development and
expression (for example, in the arts, music, literature, and theatre)
(Cruse 1967); without it, and the sense of collective identity and
pride it secures, blacks cannot securely win their freedom in a
fundamentally hostile American society (see, e.g., Malcolm X 1970
[1992]; cf. Rivers 1995).



Many black liberals demur: while black cultural, economic, social,
cultural and political autonomy can be, in certain circumstances,
strategically useful in the fight against anti-black racism, it is
wrong-headed to insist on cultural unity as the basis of black
solidarity. Insisting on cultural unity is divisive and unnecessarily
exclusionary given the broad diversity of ethnic and social
backgrounds in the black community. Black solidarity should be
grounded, instead, on "thin" blackness, namely on shared
experiences of anti-black racism (see, e.g., Shelby 2005: 245; Hill
Collins 1990 [2000]; cf. Gooding-Williams 2009).


### 2.6 Conclusion



In this section, we have reviewed some of the salient histories in
which use of the term "solidarity" has figured. The survey
has had two functions. First, it has served to provide an overview of
the political and social uses for which solidarity has been enlisted.
Doing so enables us to frame the descriptive and normative challenges
that any theory of solidarity faces: Does solidarity have a single
nature that is repeated across different paradigmatic instances? Or is
it a malleable, vague term with no fixed content? What, if anything,
makes solidarity valuable? What should the grounds of solidarity be
in, for example, different social movements, in the welfare state, or
in political and social associations more broadly? Second, the survey
provides a testing ground for new theories of solidarity, which, we
have argued, should be responsive to the concept's history.
Theories should be adopted and rejected according to whether they
successfully serve to describe, evaluate, and guide the various
practices in which the term figures, and has figured. While a theory
might recommend conceptual change, of course, it needs to be clear why
and how such a change is worth making. Either way, being aware of the
concept's history is crucial since solidarity names not just an
ideal but a concrete set of practices.


## 3. The Value of Solidarity



It should be fairly uncontroversial that solidarity can have
*instrumental* value: when members of a marginalized group
develop bonds of solidarity by committing to each other and, as a
result of being in (or acting from) solidarity, they manage to
overcome their oppression, then solidarity has value because of its
causal/instrumental role. Similarly, it should not be controversial
that solidarity can have instrumental disvalue: even well-meaning,
morally justified acts undertaken in the spirit of solidarity can lead
to unforeseen and regrettable consequences. The more interesting and
challenging question is whether solidarity, as a social practice, also
has non-instrumental value (or disvalue). But before we move on to
this issue, let's briefly list some of the instrumental values
that solidarity in different forms *typically* facilitates:



Most notably, solidarity improves a collective's ability to
pursue projects. By committing to each other and experiencing unity,
fellows in solidarity establish a robust basis of mutual
identification that allows them to solve coordination issues and
pursue joint action that is more likely to succeed than if each acted
on their own (Shelby 2005). Groups that display solidarity also tend
to care for each other in beneficial ways, e.g., by protecting
vulnerable members or limiting social inequality amongst themselves
(Banting & Kymlicka 2017; Miller 2017). Beyond this, solidarity
has certain epistemic and relational benefits: whether as a result of
shared goals, shared experience, or shared oppression (see above),
fellows in solidarity consider each other trustworthy participants in
the pursuit of the common good, and they share information, jointly
deliberate and learn from each other about how to understand adversity
and oppression and pursue strategies to overcome it (Harvey 2007 on
epistemic solidarity; Goodin & Spiekermann 2015; Wiland 2017).




Does solidarity have value beyond these good consequences? Perhaps
some quick terminology is helpful. Non-instrumental value is value
that does not derive from making a contribution to something else.
Non-instrumental value is *intrinsic* if the value stems from
some (necessary?) internal property of the object (see: *Intrinsic
vs. Extrinsic Value*). Implicitly relying on such a notion of
intrinsic non-instrumental value, several authors have claimed that
solidarity's value could only ever be instrumental. Rainer
Forst, for example, argues that solidarity could not be
"something *intrinsically good*, since a Mafia family
very much depends on the solidarity of its members"
(forthcoming) and he concludes that, therefore, solidarity is
"normatively dependent". Other authors concur with this
judgment: solidarity is *aimed* at realizing justice or
overcoming oppression, and it is valuable when and because it realizes
this aim (Kohn forthcoming). The structure of the negative argument
here is clear enough:


1. If solidarity has non-instrumental value, then each
instance of it has value
2. Unity amongst mafia members is an instance of
solidarity
3. Unity amongst mafia members has no value
4. Therefore, solidarity has no non-instrumental
value.
5. Therefore, no internal property of solidarity
practices that is valuable as such, independent of the consequences
that it produces



There is, however, an interesting overlap here with an issue we
mentioned in
 section 2,
 namely whether or not solidarity ought to be moralized: according to
some authors that analyze such "pernicious solidarities"
as the one that prevails amongst mafia clans and white supremacists,
the correct response to Forst's case is *not* to reject
that the idea that solidarity has non-instrumental value, but to deny
 premise (2):
 it is precisely for the reason that solidarity necessarily has some
good-making internal properties that we should not consider unity
amongst mafia members an instance of it.



It is not obvious how to resolve this potential disagreement. Is there
perhaps some other way to proceed? A better approach, we think, is
available if we scrutinize
 premise (1):
 Intrinsic value is just one way in which a practice could have
non-instrumental value. Whilst it may be true that a practice only has
intrinsic value if each instance of it has value, this is compatible
with its being non-instrumentally valuable in non-intrinsic ways. Here
are some important considerations: Only attributing instrumental value
to solidarity does, intuitively, seem to run up against at least two
kinds of cases. First, defenders of the non-instrumental value of
solidarity may point to the intuitive force of "futile
solidarity": when the exploited workers come together to fight
for their rights in solidarity, we are likely to consider this
valuable *even if* their effort is ultimately thwarted. Second,
there is the very plausible thought that, somehow, a special kind of
value is realized when bad or unjust aspects of the world are brought
to an end through acts of solidarity: when the workers' combined
agency causes the end of their oppression rather than, say, the
unexpected change of mind of their exploitative bosses, something
especially valuable has occurred.



Now of course there are things that defenders of the
"instrumental only" thesis can say in response: for
example, they may point out that there still are good consequences in
each of these examples, even if the overall goal has not been
realized. For example, there may be a sense of shared destiny or
reciprocal commitment amongst workers to each other that is
*caused* by solidarity. It is this reciprocal commitment (and
what it can lead to) that has value, not solidarity as such. The
problem with this response is that it seems to misdescribe the
relation between solidarity and whatever good has occurred in the
world. The reciprocal commitment that workers have towards each other,
for example, is not "caused" by solidarity: rather,
solidarity is partly or wholly *constituted* by it. One
suggestion, then, is that solidarity has non-instrumental value of a
non-intrinsic kind. What does this mean? The idea is that solidarity
is part-constitutive of something that is non-instrumentally valuable.
This allows for there to be some practice *x* that satisfies our
criteria for being solidaristic, and yet, it does not have value. But
it preserves the idea that solidarity is not only good for what it
causes but, if the right circumstances obtain, it is an integral
element in something that is intrinsically good.



There are at least two ways in which we might flesh out
solidarity's non-instrumental value, one more individualistic
and one more collective. The more individualistic approach suggests
that we can understand solidarity's non-instrumental value as
analogous to the value of other good dispositions and attitudes that
an agent can have. Specifically, philosophers thinking about the
goodness of virtue have argued that appropriately responding to
something that has value is itself something of (intrinsic) value, as
is negatively responding to something that has disvalue (Hurka 2001).
The connection to virtue works as follows: when an agent responds to
the adversity that they or others face by developing solidaristic
attitudes and dispositions--say by committing to ending
oppression with others picked out by the cause--then their having
these solidarist attitudes is non-instrumentally valuable because they
are negatively reacting to something that is of disvalue (oppression,
adversity etc.). But, and here is the rub, the agent's response
is *only* valuable when it constitutes the *correct*
response to the relevant feature of the world. The white
supremacist's solidarity is not valuable because the thing
against which his solidarity is directed, namely racial equality, is a
valuable state of affairs. But negatively responding to something that
has value clearly lacks non-instrumental value. This individualist
account of solidarity's non-instrumental value is attractive
because it can account equally well for cases of "solidarity
amongst" and "solidarity with". Moreover, it equally
applies to cases where agents privately develop the relevant
solidaristic attitudes without actually acting on them (e.g.,
discussed in Bommarito 2016; Zhao 2019; and Viehoff forthcoming).
Insofar as we think that their attitudes are valuable, some account
along these lines seems necessary to account for it.



But perhaps there is something missing from this individualistic
picture: one of the objections to those suggesting that solidarity
only has instrumental value relied on the idea that there is value in
people realizing a goal *together*. Shouldn't our account
of solidarity's non-instrumental value also be able to capture
this aspect? Recent literature has accounted for this in broadly two
ways (though these are not necessarily exclusive): Avery Kolers
maintains that, quite independently of pursuing justified aims,
solidarity groups constitute just (in his words
"equitable") relations amongst participants. For Kolers,
in following the demands of solidarity and acting together, 



> 
> 
> we are not only working to (teleologically) bring about the end of
> oppression; rather, *we constitutively embody a non-oppressive
> alternative world*--even if, as is likely, our joint efforts
> ultimately fail, in part or in whole. (Kolers 2016: 123-4) 
> 
> 
> 



So one way of highlighting non-instrumental collective value ensues
from focusing on the kind of community that relations of solidarity
give rise to: in acting together in the specific way required by the
ideal of solidarity, fellows already conform to norms of equity or
justice that they seek to bring about more widely.



Another line of argument is developed by Sangiovanni, who argues that,
when successfully pursuing valuable goals together, we create
non-instrumentally valuable *joint agency*: 



> 
> 
> We take pleasure in the exercise of those reciprocal, mutually
> adjusted, and mutually reinforcing capabilities that have enabled us
> to overcome forms of adversity that would have been impossible to
> overcome alone. The collective activity of overcoming [...] comes
> to have non-instrumental value. (Sangiovanni forthcoming) 
> 
> 
> 



However, and similar to the more individualistic argument, the value
of jointly exercised agency is *conditional*: acting
successfully to overcome some obstacle is non-instrumentally valuable
only if the overcoming constitutes an achievement that is
worthwhile.


## 4. Challenges to Solidarity



Turning to criticisms of solidarity in this section, we start by
distinguishing different kinds of criticism along different
dimensions. Perhaps most importantly, one must distinguish between, on
the one hand, challenges to solidarity as a social practice (or a
range of social practices), and, on the other hand, criticism of
theories of solidarity. We will call criticisms of the former kind
"practical challenges" to solidarity and will address
those of the latter kind as "theoretical challenges".
Practical and theoretical challenges are clearly independent of each
other. For example, one can think that we need a clear account of what
solidarity is, even if one holds that solidarity practices have, on
the whole, negative consequences for political life.



*Theoretical* challenges to solidarity can conceivably take
many forms, but we will focus here on the related charges of
*conceptual incoherence* and *theoretical redundancy.*
The former challenge is that uses of solidarity, both common sense and
philosophical, are simply too diffuse and incoherent to allow for any
adequate and theoretically productive definition. If those using the
concept of solidarity in political or philosophical debate are more
likely than not to misunderstand or speak past each other, then we
should not use the concept. The latter challenge is that, from a
theoretical standpoint, we don't need to add solidarity to the
fundamental philosophical concepts in the discipline because we can
have everything we want by reflecting on alternative concepts and
theories that have already been more thoroughly developed, for example
justice, community, or equality.



When it comes to *practical* challenges to solidarity, critics
argue that solidarity tends to have negative consequences and that,
therefore, we should not promote it. We can further differentiate
these practical challenges in terms of, first, the kind of negative
consequences that are attributed to solidarity and, second, the kind
of solidarity practices that are judged to be vulnerable to this
challenge. In relation to the former, the most prominent criticisms
concern solidarity's impact on the realization of other
important social and political values. One historically important line
of criticism to solidarity argues that solidarity threatens
*liberty* (Arendt, Shklar, Kateb). Others worry that solidarity
creates unfair forms of inequality between those within a solidary
group and those who are excluded (Scheffler 2001). Whilst the
criticism focus on negative effects on outsiders, critics have also
argued that solidarity may have negative effects on participants.
Perhaps most notably, some have claimed that solidarity stymies
*pluralism* and *diversity*. A related but distinct
worry is that solidarity promotes--or perhaps even
requires--false beliefs and self-conceptions amongst participants
(Margalit 2017; Shelby forthcoming).



Before we move on to specific arguments, a point about generality: We
maintain that, for a criticism to amount to a "challenge"
to solidarity, it must rise to a certain level of generality, i.e., it
must apply to a range of accounts of solidarity.


### 4.1 Theoretical criticism of solidarity



Since we are here interested in theoretical challenges to
*solidarity* (and not just objections to particular accounts),
we focus on challenges that, if true, would undermine the very
endeavor of elevating solidarity's place amongst significant
theoretical concepts in the discipline.


#### 4.1.1 Conceptual incoherence



A first theoretical worry about solidarity is that, given the
diversity of linguistic usage, the range of contexts of application,
and the breadth of phenomena addressed in the philosophical literature
under the label, solidarity is conceptually incoherent. How might this
be the case? To use a somewhat far-fetched example, imagine that we
were charged with developing an account of the descriptive features,
goodness or permissibility of all human activities that start with the
letter "L". Because the actions picked out by our category
are simply too heterogeneous (there is nothing interesting that
laughing and lying, let alone loving and lynching have in common), any
theorizing would be pointless. Could it be the case that
"solidarity" picks out a set of actions and practices that
are simply too heterogeneous to lead to anything theoretically
insightful? Niklas Luhmann, for example, suggested that solidarity is
obsolete, a mere "formula of ideology" without determinate
content (Luhmann [1984] quoted in Thome 1999: 101).



Despite the initial plausibility of this objection to theorizing
solidarity, we think that solidarity theorists have powerful responses
available. First, they can point to similarities that unify the
descriptive, normative and evaluative features of instantiations of
solidarity, even those as diverse as those mentioned above. For
example, different authors have sought to show that despite their
initial heterogeneity, solidarity in all these contexts descriptively
entails a form of identification, or a sentiment of unity, or some
orientation towards overcoming an obstacle or adversity, or some
combination of these elements (Scholz 2008; Taylor 2015; Prainsack
& Buyx 2017). Moreover, authors have subcategorized solidarity
along social contexts--political solidarity, civic
solidarity--(Bayertz 1999a; Scholz 2008), thereby organizing our
heterogeneous linguistic use to allow for useful theoretical
approaches to more determinate social practices of
solidarity. Finally, theorists of solidarity can respond that, in
providing a theoretical/philosophical account of solidarity, there is
some freedom to make revisionary proposals about what *should*
count as solidarity. Our (descriptive, normative, evaluative)
understanding of solidarity is advanced if we "sharpen"
our account of solidarity by excluding some peripheral uses, then that
may well be legitimate and will limit the charge of
incoherence. Theorists of solidarity may also point to other social
and political concepts to claim that heterogeneous use both in
everyday discourse and among philosophers is rarely considered a
convincing reason to abstain from theorizing concepts like freedom,
equality, justice, and the like. Why treat solidarity differently?


#### 4.1.2 Theoretical redundancy



Faced with this appeal to other political concepts, critics may
retreat to a related but distinct criticism: They may accept that
concepts like freedom and equality too are beset with complexity and
conceptual disagreements that need to be resolved. But they can then
insist that there is no need to take up this difficult endeavor for
solidarity because--contrary to liberty, equality
etc.--there is no need for a theory of solidarity. This is the
charge of *theoretical redundancy*: we can gain exactly the
same explanatory mileage by using existing concepts and categories
without theorizing solidarity. *Descriptively*, existing work
on altruism, community and relations of loyalty might serve us just as
well as accounts of solidarity: all of the relations that were
described as solidaristic above are also (more or less intimate)
communal relations amongst people. *Normatively*, the critic
might suggest that we can reduce the claims generated by solidarity to
requirements of justice, fairness, equality, and the like. And
*evaluatively*, we can appeal to the general goodness of
special bonds and relationships for the realization of a flourishing
life, whether they are bonds of friendship, family, religion, or
political community. If this were the case, then theorizing solidarity
would be redundant, and ultimately, pointless. Why not, in a spirit of
parsimony, simply rely on the concepts and theories we already
have?



Again, we think that defenders of solidarity have good replies
available: Perhaps the strongest response to the challenge of
redundancy is to provide a substantive account of solidarity in terms
of its distinctive descriptive, normative and evaluative features. If
such an account is illuminating, then the charge of redundancy seems
beside the point. More specifically, theorists of solidarity can
appeal to distinctive *descriptive* or positive features of
solidarity practices that make it inappropriate to subsume solidarity
under a generic account of community and loyalty (see discussion in
Kolers 2016: chapter 2). Unlike those bonds of friendship and family,
for example, solidarity is purposive (goal-oriented), both in the
sense that solidarity aims for the achievement of overcoming some
obstacle or adversity and in the sense that fellows are picked *de
dicto* in terms of the cause that is pursued rather than in some
goal-independent manner (Arnsperger & Varoufakis 2003; Kolers
2016). In terms of normative distinctiveness, theorists of solidarity
may also object to the critic's implied assumption that a
theoretical account of *x*'s normative properties loses its
usefulness when we discover that these properties supervene on or are
explained by a more general moral consideration.


### 4.2 Practical challenges to Solidarity



We now move on to the practical challenges of solidarity. Should we be
critical of real-world solidarity practices because they lead to bad
consequences? Or may there perhaps even be something constitutively
problematic about solidarity movements? Three prominent objections
relate to solidarity's impact on liberty, fairness, and
truth.


#### 4.2.1 Does solidarity threaten liberty?



Does solidarity muffle liberty? In her celebrated essay the
"Liberalism of Fear", Judith Shklar claims it does. She
writes:



> 
> 
> We must therefore be suspicious of ideologies of solidarity, precisely
> because they are so attractive to those who find liberalism
> emotionally unsatisfying, and who have gone on in our century to
> create oppressive and cruel regimes of unparalleled horror. [...]
> To seek emotional and personal development in the bosom of a community
> or in romantic self-expression is a choice open to citizens in liberal
> societies. Both, however, are apolitical impulses and wholly
> self-oriented, which at best distract us from the main task of
> politics when they are presented as political doctrines, and at worst
> can, under unfortunate circumstances, seriously damage liberal
> practices. For although both appear only to be redrawing the
> boundaries between the personal and the public [...] it cannot be
> said that either one has a serious sense of the implications of the
> proposed shifts in either direction. (Shklar 1989: 36)
> 
> 
> 



There is, one might think, an element of truth here: theorists of
solidarity tend to emphasize that solidarity becomes important when
and because we sense the need for collective resistance and unity of
purpose in the face of adversity. They also stress the
non-instrumental value in setting aside self-interest in a horizontal
identification with others on behalf of a shared goal, where part of
what is valued is our seeing, together, our collective agency
reflected in the ends we pursue (see previous section).



The element of identification may seem particularly problematic.
Identification requires, among other things, coming to see others as
"like oneself", and taking that similarity as a basis for
joint concern, empathy, and normative orientation. So, for example,
when I identify with you *as a worker*, I see our common role
as providing an important orientation in my life. In this sense,
solidarity demands that one set aside the personal for the political
(thus "redrawing the boundaries" between them). The worry
is that, at least in politics, solidarity's demand for
similarity, commitment, and loyalty leads to unfreedom and
 tyranny.[11]




Faced with this fundamental challenge, theorists of solidarity have at
least two arguments: First, they may insist that it is false to treat
a commitment to solidarity as incompatible with a commitment to
liberalism. To be sure, solidarities organized to promote illiberal
ends by illiberal means are, well, illiberal by definition. But their
disregard for individual rights or freedom or equality is not entailed
or required by their solidarity. Indeed, if, as Shklar and others
emphasize, liberalism demands vigilance, hatred of injustice, and a
readiness to resist power when necessary, then liberalism requires
solidarity. Resistance is most effective when it is conducted by
*groups* whose grievances are shared and known to be shared.
These grievances provide a spring for joint action, and a powerful
source of identification. Such identification is necessary to overcome
fear, and it allows people to act pro-socially by looking beyond their
immediate self-interest to the larger task at hand.



A second reason why these challenges are not fully convincing is this:
In Shklar the target is what we might call *state-level*
solidarity. Though they do not name it, their target is national or
patriotic solidarity--solidarity as invoked by those who have
political power and who aim to rally the people against an enemy, or
solidarity as it is invoked by those who believe that active, partisan
political participation is essential for a flourishing life. The first
response is simply to point out (as this entry does) that solidarity
can be at the heart of social movements and bottom-up political
action. It need not be solely focused on or through the state. The
second response is that even state-level solidarity need not be so
pernicious. Civic solidarity need not enforce blind conformity,
disrespect difference or disagreement, or raze
 plurality.[12]
 There is a rich tradition in the history of political
ideas--stretching from Leon
 Bourgeois'[13]
 solidarism to present writings--that grounds civic solidarity
not in some "totalizing" pre-political identity, but in
the mutual interdependence of citizens and their democratic
co-authorship of justice-preserving
 institutions.[14]



#### 4.2.2 Does solidarity promote false beliefs?



Solidarity, it was said, imposes not only demands on what to do but
also on what fellows should believe. With regard to such beliefs,
solidarity requires fellows to see each other as united by some common
feature, or condition or experience. Does solidarity systematically
lead to false beliefs amongst members of solidarity groups, for
example about what unites them?



Perhaps most prominently, the question of the relationship
between--in this case, *historical*--truth and the
kind of collective group identification necessary for solidarity has
come up in debates about (liberal) nationalism. Here, the charge
against nationalist solidarity is that, for essentially instrumental
purposes, national identity both relies on and promotes false beliefs
amongst members about some glorified national past (Abizadeh 2004).
Other forms of solidarity need not, of course, rely on some shared
historical origins amongst participants. But the challenge can be
generalized: insofar as solidarity requires some ground for mutual
identification, whether shared experience, shared oppression, or
shared goals, there is a danger that the practice systematically
guides participants to overestimate those identification-grounding
features at the expense of other, perhaps more salient, elements that
are not shared amongst them. To go back to two earlier examples,
sisterhood may require participants to see some feature of their
identity ("being a woman") as particularly important when,
in fact, their de facto situation of social disadvantage is (also)
fundamentally structured by other categories like race or class.
Similarly, black solidarity asks participants to focus on whatever
grounds commonality amongst blacks, even if their actual social
position is shaped by matters of class, gender, migration status, and
so on (Shelby forthcoming). 



Confronted with the fact that much of what is promulgated as part of
shared national history does not hold up against the historical
record, liberal nationalists like David Miller (1995) have responded
that "myths" about a national collective's past need
not be true so long as they serve the purpose of supporting those
attitudes that underpin valuable national solidarity. But irrespective
of whether or not they are *useful*, they are *untrue*,
and, to the extent that the group identification necessary for
national solidarity depends on it, it depends on having false
beliefs.



Does this worry generalize to all forms of solidarity? One important
difference between national solidarity and other forms is that most
other solidarities do not typically depend on beliefs in something
that is manifestly untrue. Rather, they emphasize the relevance of
some genuine aspect of a person's practical
identity--whether it is shared experience, shared oppression,
shared goals etc.--over others. We might add that whether or not
some feature *is* salient for one's practical identity
is, at least to a degree, up to the relevant agent. So one
conciliatory response that defenders of (non-national) solidarity
might offer is that solidarity does not depend on belief in
falsehoods, but rather that it expresses which aspects of their
identity participants take to be important. They might add that,
insofar as there is free deliberation both about what unites and,
importantly, what divides participants to solidarity movements, the
charge of promoting false beliefs is beside the point. In a more
combative vein, they may also add that, at least in some cases,
solidarity is actually a necessary element for the formation of
correct beliefs about one's own and others' predicament.
Wiland describes this as *epistemic* solidarity (Wiland 2017:
69). Thus, standing in solidarity with others that have suffered from
similar instances of adversity and oppression can be a necessary
condition for enabling each other to make sense of our predicament: We
form true beliefs about our shared predicament and improve our ability
to define and fight oppressive conditions by being able to trust each
other's oppression-related testimony (Goodin & Spiekermann
2015).


#### 4.2.3 Is solidarity exclusionary / unfair towards outsiders?



Whatever else solidarity entails descriptively; it entails a special
commitment to one's solidarity fellows that one does not hold
towards everybody else. And whatever normative consequences solidarity
has for those in solidarity, it will ground *some* special
claims that these fellows have on us and we on them. In this sense,
solidarity, like friendship, family, and nationality, constitutes a
special relationship with special obligations. Over recent decades, a
number of philosophers have raised challenges to the very idea that
special obligations can be justified towards those who are not part of
them. Perhaps most prominently, Samuel Scheffler has raised a
fairness-based "distributive objection" to all special
relationships (Scheffler 2001). If fellows in solidarity form special
relationships with special obligations, then, does Scheffler's
criticism apply here too?



The distributive objection builds on the idea that participants to
special relationships receive special benefits from each other: qua
membership, we are owed not just more from fellow participants than we
are from outsiders, but we are also owed priority, in at least some
instances. What the distributive objection observes is that members
already benefit from the relationship goods that are constitutively
tied to being in a meaningful relationship. The problem is that, then,
fellows also owe less to outsiders then they did beforehand: Special
relationships--including solidarity relations--thus
function, to use Scheffler's memorable phrase, like "moral
tax shelters" to those who already benefit.



Whilst several authors have rejected the general thrust of the
distributive objection (Kolodny 2002; Lazar 2009), we want to point to
some features of solidarity that should provide specific cover against
this challenge. Crucially, friends of solidarity may stress that
unlike friendship or love relations, solidarity obligations are not
necessarily grounded in the value of the relationship, but in
relationship-independent value that comes from having these duties.
Special duties of solidarity would then be justified more like role
obligations--lawyers, for example, have fiduciary duties to
represent their client's interests not because of the
non-instrumental value of lawyer-client relationships, but because of
the advantages that vesting them with such duties has for the
system's overall ability to optimally realize impartial moral
demands (such as protecting innocent defendants). On this strategy,
duties of solidarity would ultimately be grounded in non-partial
values like fairness and natural justice. How might this justification
run? Many of our positive general duties are imperfect, so that even
well-meaning people are likely to face significant obstacles in
discharging them: it requires the ability to coordinate our actions in
complex ways with others; and we must also be motivated to make
contributions in light of other important projects and relationships.
If the special obligations that flow from solidarity commitments can
provide us with a robust way of solving issues of coordination and
motivation (because, following a solidarity-commitment, discharging
our general duties through solidarity somehow better aligns with our
personal projects) then those obligations could be justified by an
appeal to impartial moral considerations (Kolers 2016; Viehoff
forthcoming).



But even for those who think that *some* duties of solidarity
are grounded in the non-instrumental value of solidaristic fellowship,
there are important responses available: First, solidarity (at least
in its most paradigmatic forms) establishes unity amongst those
suffering from injustice or oppression, so it rather far from
providing some kind of indirect protection from more extensive duties
towards the more vulnerable. Second, special responsibilities towards
our fellows, like other special duties, are not absolute: very
plausibly, they are constrained by general demands of justice. So even
if special obligations among fellows in solidarity could ground some
partiality, these duties would be limited by more weighty
considerations of justice.



Do these responses answer all the possible objections of fairness and
exclusion? Probably not; questions of permissible solidaristic
partiality, especially amongst large-scale collectives like the state,
clearly depend on questions of social and global justice that cannot
be addressed here. So questions of the kinds of obligations that
solidarity practices can ground blend into issues of justice. But that
should not be surprising, nor should it prevent us from reflection on
solidarity in its own right.