Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea

Political activists Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor (The Age of Insecurity) offer a lucid and provocative treatise on the transformative potential of solidarity, which they define as “the recognition of our inherent interconnectedness, an attempt to build bonds of commonality across our differences.” The authors spell out solidarity’s benefits as a political tool: when people view themselves as “intrinsically bound in relationships of mutuality and care that span generations,” it promotes their sense of an “obligation to provide a secure and dignified life to others,” as well as their own entitlement to the same thing. Highlighting what is achievable when mutualism is at the forefront of political thinking, Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor point to a fifth-century BCE Roman labor strike for economic reform, revolutionary-era France, the 20th-century American labor movement, and the 1980s Polish dockworkers strike that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moving on to contemporary tactics and talking points, they explain why solidarity does not require unity of opinion, detail how effective social movements are created, and condemn both sides of establishment politics as anti-solidarity: “If conservatives recklessly wield a scythe, demonizing different groups with sinister and destabilizing abandon, their liberal counterparts prefer to use garden shears, perpetually trimming solidarity back to manageable, and certainly not transformative, proportions.” This will resonate with idealists eager for consequential change. (Mar.)