What Is Solidarity?

Obviously the American Solidarity Party is in favor of solidarity—but what is the “solidarity” that this party is in favor of? 

It’s not just any old “solidarity.” A basic dictionary definition of “solidarity” is “community of interests, objectives, or standards in a group.” Even the most appalling anti-life, anti-justice groups can have that. 

It’s not like this illustration from the Wikipedia article on “Solidarity”, showing workers losing their hands to raise a gigantic fist in opposition to the ruling class. The American Solidarity Party is in favor of a Christian Democratic conception of solidarity, not one derived from anarchism, communism, or any such ideology. In the Christian Democratic kind of solidarity, you do not lose all (or any part) of yourself in a gigantic agglomeration, and you do not engage in “class struggle” to grab money and power from those who have more than you do. 

A basic definition of solidarity, according to a Christian Democratic conception, is this: 

Strong and enduring co-operation for mutual help and help for the helpless, in accordance with the common good. 

You don’t have to be a Christian to be a Christian Democrat, but you do have to be willing to accept some ideas that have a long history in Christian tradition. The  word “solidarity” did not enter the English language until the 19th century, and was not used in  Catholic social teaching until the 20th—but the ideas and actions behind the word have been  around for much longer than that. 

Strong and enduring. This is the “solid” in “solidarity.” You can rely on solid things (if  they’re not too fragile) to be strong and enduring, not evanescent like the hot air spouted by  some politicians trying to get votes by making promises they won’t fulfill. Solidity in human character is a good thing, too. This can be seen in the traditional definition of the virtue of justice: “a constant and perpetual will to render to everyone his right.” Human society, likewise, should be solid and reliable in securing the rights of all, not built on the shifting sand of competing factions struggling to subjugate or crush their  opponents. 

Co-operation. Abraham Lincoln said, “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people, whatever  they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not do so well, for themselves.” In Catholic social teaching,  this principle is called “subsidiarity.” The basic idea is that human intelligence and initiative, on the part of individuals, families, and voluntary associations, should be given every chance to do  what they can, before resorting to unfortunate necessities like taxation and government spending. Even where government is needed, things work a lot better when the governed can freely and  honestly co-operate with their government for the common good (see below) than when they can’t. 

For mutual help. This goes back to the divine plan for the family, the first human  society. Even big, complex societies today have the same aim when they work right: mutual help for their members. People living in society need to help one another to secure the rights to life, liberty, and  the pursuit of happiness, and everything we need to exercise those rights to the fullest. That’s not just a notion made up by the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the 18th-century philosophers whose books they read. It goes back to the creation of human beings with freedom and intelligence, made in the image and likeness of God. 

And help for the helpless. This also goes back to the divine plan for the family. Babies are helpless, both before and after they’re born; they need a lot of help from their parents and others to live, learn, and grow up. Grown-ups shouldn’t be helpless, but too many of them are, in the face of poverty, exploitation, war, and all kinds of deprivation, abuse, and crime. Solidarity, in the Christian Democratic sense, is the Golden Rule writ large: you get together and stay together to help the helpless, as you would want and need  help if you were helpless. 

In accordance with the common good. What is the common good? It is not just the good of the government, or of the ruling party, or of any powerful group that might wish to exploit ordinary people by claiming their exploitation serves the common good. A common good, of any kind, is one that everyone can share, without diminishing it by sharing. A common good could be the good of the knowledge and love of God in the communion of saints, shared by all the blessed in eternal life. It could be the good of teamwork and victory for a basketball team. It could be the good of mutual love, shared by all the members of a family. 

The common good of human society as a whole, in the simplest terms, is this: 

Everything needed for society to protect and promote the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

There’s no way to say everything about “everything,” but the common good of society includes at least these things: peace, traditionally defined as “the  tranquility of order”; justice, including honest, unbiased, and effective enforcement of necessary laws; care for the earth as our common home; and the power to produce and rightly distribute an abundance of material goods, needed for the full exercise of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But we’re not talking merely about some dumbed-down, materialistic concept of the pursuit of happiness, for which an abundance of  material goods would be all you needed. We’re talking about the pursuit of the highest and best happiness there is, fully worthy of free and intelligent human beings. 

Solidarity isn’t only a possible way of life in human society; it’s also a good quality of human character. By slightly modifying the definition we started with, we get this: 

Strong and enduring commitment to mutual help and help for the helpless, in accordance with the common good. 

If you’ve got this commitment—or if you want to have it—the American Solidarity Party is for you.