Challenges to Solidarity

Abstract

Abstract This chapter evaluates four common critiques of solidarity, and shows that none of them succeeds. The first critique: solidarity encourages exclusion, and hence is not an appropriate aspiration for a modern, diverse, and individualistic people. The second critique: its demands for unity stifle liberty. The third critique: solidarity is a wishy-washy, vague term whose meaninglessness is a honey trap for demagogues and bad politics. The fourth critique: when given a more precise character, solidarity becomes redundant, no different from similar ideas such as altruism, empathy, identification, fellow-feeling, or justice. When one has a clearer picture of what solidarity is, and why it matters, the force of each of these objections falls away. The conclusion is that solidarity is much more compatible with liberalism than is often assumed.