My meditation on solidarity as a social ideal is up today at TCSDaily. Here’s a bit:
Solidarity is tricky. There is a feeling of solidarity, fraternity, and belonging that can pervade the gut and bring a tear to the eye. There is also a system of solidarity in which we can be embedded and enmeshed. As joint participants in the market, relying constantly on far-flung partners in a mind-boggling network of specialization, vying to cooperate with one another on increasingly beneficial terms, we are, in fact, in it together. We are part of the system of solidarity, whether we know it or not. One of the paradoxes of modern life is that the system of solidarity does not necessarily produce or even encourage the feeling of solidarity. I need not feel warmth for, or even recognize the existence of, the Chinese laborers running the machine that made my socks (nor they for me) in order for us to be participants in a needful common enterprise — to be related parts of an interdependent whole.