Solidarity

Markus Kip

Considering its ubiquity, there have been relatively few attempts by radicals to arrive at a common understanding of “solidarity.” In addition to the confusion that prevails with respect to the term’s political commitments and practical implications for radical forces, invocations of “solidarity” can also be found among conservative trade unions, within Catholic social teaching, and in nationalist and racist politics. As a result of these tensions, invocations of “solidarity” have been marked by ambiguity; descriptive and prescriptive aspects blur together. Clearly, radical uses of the term carry strong normative commitments and appeals. However, these are difficult to reconcile with its concurrent use as an analytical tool. At the appellative level, “solidarity” is usually taken to be a self-evident concept that denotes the idea of supporting each other. Here the only problem arises from the question of how a moral insight is put into practice when it requires effort or renunciation. It is a different issue, however, to use solidarity analytically to understand social processes of collaboration and to analyze how current expressions and longings for solidarity could be strategically related for radical transformation.

In analytic treatments of “solidarity,” ambiguity arises from the concept’s implicit parceling of the world into zones of inclusion and exclusion. In view of the former, claims to solidarity are frequently made on the basis of asserted common objectives, values, or bonds. Simultaneously, in view of the latter, these assertions express shared opposition to a common, excluded enemy to whom solidarity cannot be extended. A related ambivalence concerns solidarity’s character as both goal and instrument. As an end in itself, a “solidarity economy,” for example, seeks to realize an alternative cooperative form of production inspired by experiments in places like Chiapas, Venezuela, or Argentina. In a similar vein, geographer and social theorist David Featherstone (2012, 186) has described the practices of the Counter-Globalization Movement as “prefigurative solidarities” motivated by commitment to the idea that “organizing spaces should bring into being the alternative worlds they seek to create.” In contrast to such end-based views, other activists have foregrounded the value of “solidarity” as a means that might be deployed against an outside enemy or threat. Anarchist activist and author Cindy Milstein (2015), for instance, has conceived it as a “weapon . . . versus killer cops,” while an Irish union vice-president declared that “the only effective weapon in our arsenal is worker and social solidarity” (Piaras Murphy 2002).

For its part, the scholarly literature on solidarity has tended to be less concerned with naming the enemy or establishing the concept’s strategic dimension than with elaborating its inclusionary and end-based dimensions. This orientation highlights the role of sameness and difference as constitutive factors. With sameness, a collective identity is invoked regardless of whether it is based on political goals, social categories, a common threat, or a shared humanity. In contrast, radical movement–based thought often emphasizes difference as being among solidarity’s distinctive features. Following poststructuralist critiques, many contemporary radicals find presuppositions of “human nature” or even of common interests based in shared identities to be untenable. Formalizing this perspective, philosopher Richard Rorty (1989) has argued that even seemingly objective commonalities like “humanity” are not sufficient to account for the ways that solidarities are—or are not—practically enacted. In Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “solidarity” bridges difference and allows oppressors to create liberatory relationships with the oppressed. According to Freire, “Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is in solidarity.” As such, “it is a radical posture” since “true solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality” (Freire 1970, 49).

For her part, Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003) has critiqued invocations of solidarity in labor and feminist movements, where claims to universal solidarity based on likeness among “women” or “workers” have papered over conflicts between male and female workers and between women from the Global North and the Global South. Rejecting the idea that any particular form of oppression can be privileged as the basis for establishing commonality, feminist theorist Diane Elam (1994, 67) has suggested that solidarity is in fact “groundless.” In his own work, Richard F. Day has elaborated this idea by noting how groundless solidarity means that “no particular form of inequality . . . can be postulated as the central axis of struggle” (Day 2005, 18). In this view, solidarity is not something for which a blueprint can exist. It requires open and honest communication between partners in solidarity. Describing “revolutionary solidarity” in a similar fashion, Milstein declares that “it looks like not jumping to conclusions about each other, especially based on perceived identity(ies)” (2015, 56). And for Mohanty “solidarity is always . . . the result of active struggle to construct the universal on the basis of particulars/differences” (Mohanty 2003, 6). Framing solidarity in this way implies the rejection of self-denial, which—according to the anonymous authors of “A Critique of Ally Politics”—“has repeatedly failed to equip would-be allies to do more than seek their own endlessly deferred salvation” (2015, 9). In opposition to ally politics, solidarity demands mutual aid, “the idea that we all have a stake in one another’s liberation” (5). As Lilla Watson put it: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting our time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Solidarity, Elam notes, “is a stability but not an absolute one; it can be the object of conflict and need not mean consensus” (1994, 109). This emphasis on conflict underwrites the association between solidarity and commitment, which—for bell hooks—is what distinguishes solidarity from mere support. “Support can be occasional. It can be given and just as easily withdrawn. Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment” (hooks 2000, 67). The question, then, is this: how can a radical commitment be fostered?

Earlier historical discussions reflect the tensions between exclusion and inclusion, ends and means, sameness and difference, and conflict and commitment that continue to inform debates about solidarity today. Solidarity’s etymological roots can be traced back all the way to the Roman legal concept of “obligatio in solidum,” which described shared liability for a financial debt. The significant historical advancement expressed by this juridical concept arises from the fact that it did not rely upon existing kinship ties; instead, it established shared liability among people who may have been strangers with heterogeneous interests.

As an explicitly political concept, however, “solidarity” only emerged during the French Revolution. Counterrevolutionaries were among the first to adopt the term when they linked the Roman legal formulation to a Christology of the sacrifice (Hoelzl 2004). In the early nineteenth century, ultraconservative Joseph de Maistre concluded that, since the crown was the divine representative, the people held collective liability for the maintenance of the Christian monarchy. In this view, “solidarity” became an individual’s duty and involved the faithful preservation of order. Rejecting such authoritarian interpretations, socialist philosopher Pierre Leroux devised a horizontalist conception of “solidarité.” In his treatise “On Humanity” first published in 1840, Leroux proposed solidarity as a humanistic alternative to Christian duty that simultaneously challenged the idea that Christ’s sacrifice was the necessary precondition for love. For Leroux, solidarity was an ethical virtue. A follower of Leroux, Louis Blanc later coined the phrase “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” which has widely been regarded as a foundation of radical solidarity—though one often falsely accredited to Marx.

It was within the revolutionary context of the mid-nineteenth century that “solidarité” became a competitor to “fraternité” and, at least within radical contexts, began to gain significant traction. Solidarité rejected the feudal connotations of fraternité and replaced them with a new form of bonding based on reason and fellowship rather than on kinship. After the failed revolutions of 1848, “solidarity” gained a Romantic inflection, which emphasized antagonism. The resulting splits within the radical socialist movements of France and Germany also helped to reveal differences between anarchist and communist uses of the term. Main points of contention concerned the relationship between movement and state, individual and collective, and duty and affect. Radical socialists approached the state as a terrain of struggle upon which concessions capable of fostering working-class solidarity could be won and institutionalized. In contrast, anarchists championed solidarity for its ability to prefigure alternative social possibilities in spaces liberated from the grip of the state. For Errico Malatesta and Peter Kropotkin, human evolution itself pointed toward solidarity’s flourishing. For Malatesta, affect and feeling played a constitutive role in this development: “Solidarity, that is the harmony of interests and of feelings, the coming together of individuals for the wellbeing of all, and of all for the wellbeing of each, is the only environment in which man can express his personality and achieve his optimum development and enjoy the greatest possible wellbeing” (quoted in Wilde 2013, 30).

In contrast, communist thinkers emphasized solidarity’s procedural and strategic character. Vladimir Lenin (1920), for example, posited solidarity as the discipline of the individual within the revolutionary party: “Without this solidarity, without this conscious discipline of the workers and peasants, our cause is hopeless. Without this, we shall be unable to vanquish the capitalists and landowners of the whole world. We shall not even consolidate the foundation, let alone build a new, communist society on that foundation.”

In their endeavor to establish a science of socialism, German Marxists at the beginning of the twentieth century sought to rid solidarity of its Romantic character by eschewing references to affect. Socialist journalist and statesman Kurt Eisner, for example, insisted that there be “no more talk of love, pity, and compassion. The cold, steely word solidarity has been welded in the furnace of scientific thought. It does not appeal to floating, gliding, sweetly shining, perishing sentiments; it trains the mind, fortifies the character, and provides the whole of society with an iron foundation for the transformation and renewal of all human relations in their entire scope. Solidarity has its cradle in the minds of mankind, not in the feeling. Science has nurtured it, and it went to school in the big city, between the smokestacks and the streetcars. Its apprenticeship is not yet completed” (quoted in Wildt 1999, 215).

Despite differences in their inflection, however, both conceptions of solidarity have run into significant difficulties over the past century. The collapse of the Soviet bloc further delegitimized top-down approaches to solidarity among radicals, though this effect has been uneven on a global scale. Meanwhile, bottom-up approaches have not fared much better. Solidarity-based production cooperatives, self-help initiatives, or squatting collectives, for instance, have increasingly found themselves functioning as a revitalizing supplement to neoliberal capitalism (Ratner 2015; Mayer 2013).

One can also detect a disjuncture between appellative and analytical usages of “solidarity” among radicals. Internet searches reveal that, in the majority of cases, radicals invoke “solidarity” while writing letters, signing petitions, and attending rallies. Such activities tend on the whole to be insignificant when measured against the threatening realities they purport to engage. Although solidarity actions like consumer boycotts may sometimes yield enormous consequences (e.g., the campaign against apartheid South Africa), today’s radicals are faced with the challenge of devising a strategy to overcome fragmented activism to produce a solidarity capable of defeating the enemy. Within this context, radicals have found it difficult to define boundaries (friends and enemies) and identify what members of the “obligatio in solidum” actually owe one another.

Having rejected metaphysics, contemporary advocates of radical solidarity struggle to establish stable ground. One current trend is to view solidarity as both the process and outcome of organizing or commoning. This procedural approach understands that solidarity is learned and may be stimulated by appeals to an individual’s immediate concerns. Organizing around specific demands thereby promises to reveal the collective character of the problem and foster solidarity among those who recognize a common interest. According to food activist Martha Stiegmann, “Building meaningful solidarity is a political work-in-progress. Aligning ourselves with this global movement is, in a sense, an acknowledgement that we have much to learn from examples that lay bare the logic of the dominant system, about the ways our domestic challenges are rooted in the globalization project” (Stiegmann 2012, 270).

Despite this objective, however, short-term organizing doesn’t always develop into long-term solidarity projects. Broadened commitment to other struggles is not inevitable. Recently labor activists Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin have taken aim at the predominant approach to organizing solidarity in the US labor movement, where “each side cooperates on the basis of its immediate material interests. No larger view informs this type of solidarity; it forms around the needs of the moment. Both sides treat each agreement akin to a business decision, rather than see their activities as part of a larger struggle for power and against a common opponent” (Fletcher and Gapasin 2008, 195).

Such an account neatly summarizes the challenges that arise from solidarity’s ambiguity with respect to inclusion and exclusion and its ambivalent character as both goal and instrument. As philosopher Kurt Bayertz argues, “the agreement of interests . . . may represent an explanation for solidary activity.” However, solidarity necessarily goes beyond such commonality, since it also “contains a genuinely moral dimension” (Bayertz 1999, 17–18) In a post-metaphysical era, determining how to justify the suspension of immediate concerns in the interest of pursuing a collective future has become a key question. Despite its significant development since the eighteenth century, “solidarity” continues to be haunted by sacrifice.

See also: Allies; Commons; Community; Friend; Love; Politics