Solidarism is defined in
sociology as a theory that the possibility of founding
a social organization upon a solidarity of interests
is to be found in the natural interdependence of members of a society. Solidarity, a characteristic of groups per se, is defined as unity — as
of a group or class — that produces or is based on community of interests,
objectives, and standards.
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| "Man is by nature a political animal" |
Put another way, solidarism
is a fancy word for recognizing that, as Aristotle put it, “man is by nature a
political animal.” Any social
organization, from the smallest social group all the way up to the pólis or national political unit, will only
achieve unity (solidarity) by having or instilling a body of accepted common
interests.
Solidarity is closely related
to social charity — to all the social virtues, in fact — but is not, strictly
speaking, itself a virtue. It is,
rather, an essential part of every social virtue, without which social virtue
would be impossible. Those who equate
solidarity and social charity commit an understandable “fallacy of
equivocation,” meaning they confuse the meaning of a word in one context with
the same or another word in a different context.
To explain, where solidarity
is the acceptance of the principles that define a group as that group and no
other, social charity is the virtue that commands us to love our institutions
as we love ourselves. Thus, Nazis and
street gangs have a high degree of solidarity, but cannot be said to be
virtuous in the classic or Christian sense.
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| Gangs have a high degree of solidarity |
Institutions are intended to
provide an environment within which people can acquire and develop individual
virtue. The Nazi Party and gangs do not
provide such an environment, and are therefore flawed institutions. A Nazi or gang member who truly loved his institution
and who had a solid grounding in the precepts of the natural law (remember:
charity, whether individual or social, is not true charity unless the demands
of justice have been fulfilled; charity is the soul of justice, not its
replacement) would organize with others and carry out acts of social justice to
reform that institution so that it did provide the right environment in which
it is possible to acquire and develop virtue.
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| Square Deal, not New Deal |
(The implied paradox here is
that the principles on which Nazi solidarity was based are not themselves
consistent with the precepts of the natural law. Reforming the Nazi Party would, to all
intents and purposes, have resulted in the creation of an entirely new group with
different fundamental principles. It
might still call itself “the Nazi
Party” — although one would have to seriously question why anyone would keep
that name — but it would no more be the original Nazi Party than today’s “Progressive
Party” is the same as that which ran Theodore Roosevelt for president in 1912.)
One of the keys to social virtue — or
any virtue, for that matter — is that it must be completely voluntary, or it
loses its virtuous character. It may be
very good, but it is not a virtue. This
also applies to the parts of social virtue, such as solidarity and subsidiarity.
Given essential human dignity
and the fundamental natural rights of life, liberty (freedom of
association/contract), and private property, then, organized association must
be free and uncoerced. To be truly
solidaristic, no institution or group can consist of conscripted, unwilling, or
servile members, or it ceases to be virtuous.
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| Freedom of association key to social justice |
Freedom of association —
liberty, contract — is so important to solidarity (and thus to all the social
virtues, especially social justice and social charity) that to speak of
involuntary virtue or coerced virtue is to speak nonsense. Such a statement is so contradictory that it
is neither true nor false, regardless how much argument is made or evidence
presented. It is simply a meaningless
noise as it violates the first principle of reason.
That is why Pope Pius XI made
freedom of association the focus of his social doctrine, and the hallmark of
social justice. He mentioned freedom of
association explicitly nearly forty times in Quadragesimo Anno, and countless times by implication.
If good action is coerced, it
might have good effects (although they will likely not last once the coercion
is removed), but it is not virtuous. It
is therefore not justice, social or individual.
Thus, as Pius XI explained,
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| Pius XI |
Moreover, just as
inhabitants of a town are wont to found associations with the widest diversity
of purposes, which each is quite free to join or not, so those engaged in the
same industry or profession will combine with one another into associations
equally free for purposes connected in some manner with the pursuit of the
calling itself. Since these free associations are clearly and lucidly explained
by Our Predecessor of illustrious memory, We consider it enough to emphasize
this one point: People are quite free not only to found such associations,
which are a matter of private order and private right, but also in respect to
them ‘freely to adopt the organization and the rules which they judge most
appropriate to achieve their purpose.’ The same freedom must be asserted for
founding associations that go beyond the boundaries of individual callings. And
may these free organizations, now flourishing and rejoicing in their salutary
fruits, set before themselves the task of preparing the way, in conformity with
the mind of Christian social teaching, for those larger and more important
guilds, Industries and Professions, which We mentioned before, and make every
possible effort to bring them to realization.
(Quadragesimo Anno, § 87.)
Unfortunately,
many people — especially Catholics who have fallen under the influence of
various New Age, socialist, or modernist doctrines — understand “solidarism” in
the sense developed by Émile Durkheim.
Durkheim was a sociologist who was a great inspiration for the
modernists and New Agers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This,
of course, raises the question, Who was Émile Durkheim?
#30#