solidarity

Individualism is solidarity’s contrary. Individual’s satisfaction at the detriment of society’s satisfaction can be caused, especially today, by a corruption of solidarity: the abuse of gains without giving back breaks the chain of solidarity. Because of this failure, people tend to believe that this system cannot work and turn into individualism. It is nevertheless primordial to understand the importance of solidarity. To what extend is solidarity the basis of a harmonious society?

            First of all, self-satisfaction can lead to others’ disrespect, whereas solidarity allows consideration for others. Respecting everybody is the first step, which we can call “passive solidarity”, consisting in causing no harm to anyone. The second step is “active solidarity”, consisting in getting involved to help others. This action can take many forms, which require more or less implication. Solidarity can push oneself into sacrifice: Primo Levi gives an example of solidarity in its book If this is a man, when somebody offers him a piece of bread, which has a huge value in a concentration camp. Extreme situations can lead to individualism, but they also are the occasions for beautiful solidarity examples. This example is on an individual scale, but there is also solidarity on a national and international scale, particularly visible after natural disasters: because of the suffering and the difficulties they cause, they often push people and nations to help and call to their sense of human responsibility. Those examples have a present impact, but the consideration of future generations is also a form of solidarity. In France, for example, students are standing up against the reform of Parcoursup (the French platform for admission into higher education) because they want a better system for the years to come. Union between people is powerful. Besides, acts of solidarity warm the heart, they are moving us and making us feel supported. Gratitude is the main feeling ensuing solidarity and it has the power to give sense to Human existence. This is the first reason why solidarity is so important: because it gives hope into humanity. Camus explains in his Stockholm discourse that the function of the writer is to carry hope and to express the experience of its generation. Art can therefore be considered as an act of solidarity. But is solidarity really efficient?

            Solidarity seems to exist since men realized they had to unit their strength by organizing a civil state. Rousseau reminds us that the legitimacy of the civil state comes from the protection it allows to people, as opposed to the natural state, in which the law of the strongest prevents from solidarity. Nowadays, this institutional system is similar, but the delegation of solidarity to the tutelary power leads the individuals to forget the sense of this feeling. Solidarity, represented by social protection, is imposed: one works and pay taxes that allow social cohesion, but doesn’t work for the sole purpose of wealth distribution. Collective and institutional solidarity doesn’t seem to encourage private solidarity. Nevertheless, because of the numerous challenges that institutional solidarity has to face, like the question of its financing, social corps is partly appropriating its function by privates exchanges, for example in an associative scope. Those two dimensions are complementary: by delegating the sense of solidarity to a tutelary and disincarnated power, individuals risk to lose it; on the other hand, public institutions and private care of social distress both have a limited power. The actual social and environmental crisis shows that solidarity is needed in the State as much as between States. This leads us to the idea of a worldwide governance.

            The actual political system relies on a priority to the country. This form of individualism on an international scale prevents from solidarity, or motivate it by self-interest. For example, at the end of the World War II, the US helped Europe to reconstruct through the Marshall plan. But the main supposed purpose of this financial help was the fight against communism: a poor and destructed Europe would not have resisted against the expansion of USSR. If each country gives a priority to its own vitality, solidarity between nations and with nature is impossible. What is keeping us from solidarity? Solidarity is actually difficult to organize equally, and wealth’s distribution is limited. Fear is the main limit to solidarity: people can be afraid to give without receiving. Today especially, in a capitalist society, the chain of solidarity is broken. The exploitation of every resource in order to gain as much as possible leads to take benefits from solidarity without giving back. How to answer this fear?

We need to understand that receiving doesn’t go without giving. Being able to give to anyone means respecting anyone. Respect is the capacity to recognize dignity in someone, it is therefore the basis of solidarity. Reminding us that we are all equal humans allows us to have a sense of responsibility toward each other.

It seems therefore that solidarity is linked to the respect of human values. The necessity of having an ideal is specific to the human nature, as men don’t have a predetermined function. However, animals can also show solidarity. A bear recently saved a bird instead of eating it. How to explain that an animal helps another animal, which is in a situation of weakness? Especially when it is his prey? The first source of the feeling of solidarity might be love.

The case where the love for someone else is the strongest is probably maternal love. A mother naturally shows solidarity towards her child. The Judgement of Salomon illustrates the strength of this feeling. As two women are pretending to be the mother of a child, Salomon finds a solution to discover the one who lies. He proposes to cut the child in two. One of the women, horrified by this idea, confesses that she is not the real mother. Salomon then knows that she actually is the real mother, because she would do anything to save her child. We might wonder if any act of solidarity doesn’t originally come from maternal love.

            In conclusion, solidarity seems to be a sense, a feeling and an action at the same time. Each person has a different way to express it. Because it binds people together, it needs to be the basis of the world order: the respect of humans, from all origins, religions, or social backgrounds, as the respect of animals and nature is the key to sustainable evolution and development. The system should therefore evolve in a way that allows the circulation between giving and receiving, to maintain the chain of solidarity.