Solidarity

Where the dignity of the person is the first permanent principle of Catholic Social Doctrine and the one upon which the others are built, solidarity, the fourth permanent principle, is the one which binds the others together.  Solidarity is the recognition of the social nature of the human person, a person among many who are on a path to a common final end.  Solidarity is a “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good”. (CSDC 193)

Much more than seeing ourselves as members of the community of humanity, we think of ourselves as individuals.  Individualism has become the defining characteristic of the present day.  This individualism is perhaps best exemplified by the tale of the little red hen. 

Recall the childhood story: a little red hen is strolling through the barnyard one day and finds a grain of wheat.  Rather than eating it, she decides to plant it.  She asks the other barnyard animals for help and they all turn her down and she plants it by herself.  The wheat grows and harvest time arrives.  After the barnyard animals turn down the little red hen’s request for help, she alone fills a wheelbarrow with the grain she harvested.  Once again, she extends an offer for help to take the grain to the miller’s but everyone turns her down, leaving her to take the grain to the miller by herself.  Returning with flour, she extends an invitation to anyone who would like to help her use the flour to bake some bread; everyone turns a deaf ear to her request.  When the bread comes out of the oven, she asks if anyone would like a slice.  Of course everyone answers “YES!”  But now the little red hen turns to them and says “when I asked for help to plant, harvest, transport, and bake you all said no; so now I will eat this entire loaf by myself.”  And she does.

The sentiment of the little red hen is heard often sometimes from individuals who started in poverty but found developed a product or service which brought them great wealth: “I made this fortune myself, don’t come asking me for a handout.”  The little red hen is the archetypal self-made person, able to survive and thrive by determined individual effort alone.  Yet, we have to ask is that really the case?  After all, the little red hen did not act totally in isolation.  While she did act alone with respect to the other barnyard animals, she did interact with one other person in the story – the miller.  We are not told anything about what happened at the miller’s other than she went with grain and returned with flour.  Without the miller there would have been no bread, the little red hen ceases to be a self-made success.  The lesson of this is that, despite refusals to help that made the hen seem the lone individual, she nonetheless could not find fulfillment apart from being involved with another.  Solidarity is the recognition of the other as someone striving just as we do.

We are debtors to society.  Every business person who claims they did it on their own is forgetting the education they received growing up, the food which nourished   them that someone else grew, and much, much more.  Of course this successful person would argue “None of that was free, I had to pay for it, so I don’t owe nobody”.  Simply not true, there are multiple layers that brought that successful person to where they are beginning with the family who sustained them until they could feed and clothe themselves.  There was the school district that taught the successful person to read, write, and deal with numbers.  We fight against the idea of being in debt to society because debt requires repayment.  To accept that we are debtors to society means that there must be some repayment that society expects from us.  What is the repayment?  It is not sending money to the poor in a distant land to relieve a sense of compassion; it is actively working to end corruption, oppression, and exploitation at every level of society.  The repayment is active participation in society, it is not detracting from the common good, and it is caring about those around you. 

Economics for a long time could not explain why unions would go on strike; empirical research showed time and time again that any gains from an improved contract would not repay the losses incurred from the strike.  In the early history of the union movement many workers would not have disagreed with that because a part of the motivation for the strike was the hope that future workers would be better off.  This is a type of solidarity.

Another example of solidarity was evidenced following the economic collapse of 2008.  While not widespread, it happened often enough to be noticed; at some companies workers and management willingly accepted pay cuts rather than work force reductions.  Business had dropped off a great deal and rather than lay off twenty percent of the workforce, everyone took a twenty percent cut in pay and everyone kept their job. 

Solidarity is a commitment to interdependence and mutual responsibility.

CSDC refers to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the number refers to the paragraph in which the quote was found.