Conceptualizing Politics

FIGURE 9.1
   In this French etching of 1793 fraternité, the predecessor of solidarity, is 
embedded within other political values of the Republic and dramatically 
highlighted by the pledge of preferring otherwise to die.
The disruptive effects of the market (A) on the social fabric when it is not shaped 
by rules chosen by political decision have showed up time and again in early and 
then again in postwar capitalism. The 2008 financial crisis was the definitive proof 
of unchained neoliberalism’s failure in making the economy work to the general 
benefit and to preserve the society in good health, instead of preaching a limit-
less possessive individualism. The consequences for political cohesion, such as pop-
ulism and the perversion of direct democracy have been also described above in 

---

184  Ethics and politics
Chapter 5. Justice theory (B) does not seem to be on its way to influencing politics 
as the ‘ideas of ’89’ once did and remains an academic business (more on ideal the-
ory in the next chapter). The cohesion furnished by nations (C) and their degenera-
tion into nationalism has largely vanished after 1945, all attempts (post-Soviet and 
post-Yugoslavia politics in the 1990s, Euroscepticism paired with national pride 
in EU-member states, Arab nationalism) to reinstate it could not but fail and have 
sometimes shown poisonous side effects.
It is against this backdrop that solidarity needs to be rethought as both a norma-
tive category (from which duties of solidarity derive for policy-making actors) and 
a sense of belonging together that survives any defensive closing of the borders, 
both geographic and mental. Since solidarity is a word coming up more and more 
with regard to migrants, it is perhaps useful to be explicit on this matter: solidarity 
does not mean admitting all migrants for whatever reason they migrate from all 
possible corners, but taking care of them wherever they are, instead of leaving them 
in the hands of traffickers or violent governments. On the other hand, reinstating 
solidarity as a self-imposed obligation is not a normative indication that can go 
without a measure of political wisdom, for at least two reasons. First, solidaristic or 
welfare policies – if not well-carved and provisioned with safety mechanisms – can 
be easily misused by people who end up using them as a permanent instead of a 
temporary source of outcome, and acting as a lobby of welfare receivers. Second, 
the difficulties of states overburdened by tasks and not receiving enough tax money 
are likely to last for an entire epoch until a new wave of (sustainable) growth takes 
effect or the economy is reformed in a more efficient and more just way – a model 
for this combination is, however, not in sight.
In the light of these two considerations, a problem that comes up again is our 
stance towards future generations, this time however not in the framework of lethal 
problems affecting people of the far future. Though support cannot be mutual 
between generations if their life-spans do not partially overlap,
7
 here too time uni-
versalism applies: there is no reason why future generations should not deserve our 
solidarity like our contemporaries, particularly with reference to public debt and the 
pension system. Also, generous solidarity towards contemporaries is wrong if it com-
promises or spoils in advance the financial premises of similar policies to be imple-
mented in 50 or 75 years. Let us also remark that in countries with declining birth 
rate, two aspects of solidarity policies – the acceptance and integration of migrants 
and the care for future generations – converge; the first can reveal itself to be instru-
mental in keeping the social security system afloat to the benefit of the posterity.
Finally, my reintroduction of solidarity as a self-standing category in the family 
of normative concepts accompanying politics is due to the intention to comple-
ment this family with a neglected member, by no means to counterpose it to the 
other, more celebrated partners. Rather than rejecting liberal political thinking 
altogether, as communitarians do, solidarity as a category in the company of the 
three others appears to be able to give answers to the questions liberalism leaves 
open with regard to social and political cohesion as well as the interconnectedness 
of individuals, who remain the fundamental agents.

---

Justice and solidarity  185
How liberty and equality, justice and solidarity can interplay is not up to a text-
book to determine, but is rather left to citizens, polities and thinkers reflecting and 
acting within specific configurations of problems and conditions. The tools that 
may be useful to them have been presented in the last two chapters, while in the 
next one suggestions and warnings as to how to use those tools will follow.
Notes
  1  Titles of books and articles are nowadays flooded with ‘justice’, added as a sort of univer-
sal operator (as they say in logic) to the most various topics, both in general and applied 
political philosophy of normative obedience. In Cerutti (2016) this approach is criticised 
with specific reference to climate ethics as the wrong way to develop a political philoso-
phy of climate change.
  2  This word means both ‘justice’ and ‘righteousness’. As with other words relevant to polit-
ical philosophy, the semantic of justice is not homogeneous across languages.
 3  Sandel is also the author of the famous online course (MOOC) Justice, available on the 
Harvard-MIT edx.platform at http://www.justiceharvard.org/.
  4  For this terminology see the next chapter, §1.
 5  www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/solidarity
 6  With regard to them, I have used in Chapter 7 the notion of empathy, which is related 
to sympathy, though being by no means its namesake.
 7  This is true for support, but not in the same measure for sympathy: if we cannot know 
if our posterity will look back upon us with sympathy, we can, nonetheless, act in a way 
that we can reasonably expect it will induce them to do so.