This blog is a follow-up to my earlier rumination on "Identity Politics". In that piece, I expressed comfort with identity politics as a progressive practice, but some dissatisfaction with its theoretical underpinnings (putting me squarely in line with most of the socialist left). This piece offers a deeper dive into the underpinnings of the politics of solidarity, coming to stronger and firmer conclusions.
Radicalism, then and now
My book, "Politics for the New Dark Age" presents in its early chapters an overview of liberalism using as a device the slogan of (parts of) the French Revolution (and later the French Republic): liberty, equality, and fraternity. Although right-libertarians may disagree, it is wholly uncontroversial amongst serious liberal philosphers (and many Marxist ones) than equality and liberty are twinned objectives. We cannot rigorously justify liberty without accepting an original position of equality, and we (non-authoritarian socialists) also accept that the ethical purpose of equality is to maximise individual liberty. The core blindspot of right-libertarianism is failing to recognise that under conditions of inequality some will always be more free than others.
Fraternity, then as now, is a trickier propostion. In Chapter III, I argue for the need for the left to reclaim fraternity, and since the word and some of the concepts underlying it are potentially problematic, I will instead substitute "solidarity" in this blog to refer to the progressive version of the concept. In the book, I write that solidarity is "the sense of belonging we can find in sharing values with and trust in our fellow citizens", and argue that this trust finds expression through the laws, norms and institutions which bind a society together. Trust, as readers will know, is an important resource to solve collective action problems and we will return to it later.
Liberal philosophy, in attempting to reconcile the twin goals of liberty and equality, has on the main settled on equality of opportunity as its guiding principle. The egalitarianism of even left-liberals is what Elisabeth Anderson calls "luck egalitarianism": it attempts to correct for some forms of inequality, but only arbitrary differences in personal circumstance and not differences cause by 'choice'. If original conditions are equal and equality of opportunity exists, then social outcomes, even if unequal, are to be considered 'just'. What all liberals, from both the 'egalitarian' and 'libertarian' ends of the spectrum, share is an emphasis on methodological individualism and agency. In other words, once just rules, norms and institutions are in place, society should be blind in practice as well as theory to the consequences of individual choice.
Needless to say, this is an incomplete theory of justice: the fairness of outcomes matters to individual liberty and happiness, and some material needs (housing, healthcare, food, clean air & water) are so important to our wellbeing that they have the status of fundamental right. Even liberals like Will Kymlicka have been forced to admit that the current approach is counterproductive, forcing the disadvantaged to engage in what he calls 'shameful revelation' in order to qualify for social sympathy (which contributes to the construction of a hierarchy of moral worth). Yet Kymlicka's own support for multiculturalism is justified similarly: if a social group can demonstrate that the impartial application of law leads to an injustice in fact, then the law should craft special assistance or exemptions for members of that group.
Charles Taylor famously labels this 'the politics of difference' and the resulting hybridity between liberalism and identarian claims of culture leads to what I have called in the past the 'second form' of identity politics: adapting laws and institutions so that arbitrary differences such as race, gender and sexuality no longer systematically disadvantage individuals. It is dialectical middle ground between communitarians who hold that groups and cultures are ontologically prior to the individual; and liberals who seek to merely 'correct' for arbitrary differences in individual characteristics. The liberal fantasy is that everyone regardless of group membershio or disadvantaged status has a formal opportunity to 'rise to the top'; failing to question why we have a top or why people would want to be there in the first place.
Socialism is liberalism plus structure
In a broad sense, the left (which I prefer to call socialist but which others may label differently) is liberalism plus structure. What I mean by that is we share with liberals a common foundation in humanism and much of the philosophy of the social contract. And to a point, we can also share their methodological individualism. Where we part ways, however, is by positing social structure as an intervening variable between individual choice and outcomes. To us, difference neutrality looks alot like taking sides in favour of the status quo. Feminists label the structure 'patriarchy', because it systematically differentiates between genders; I call it social and economic interdependence, because my focus is on how the nature of games creates collective action problems; anti-rascism activists similarly use the concept of systematic rascism.
Iris Young provides a useful definition of structure:
"Basic social structures consist [of] determinate social positions that people occupy which condition their opportunities and life chances. These life chances are constituted by the ways [social] positions are related to one another to create systemic constraints or opportunities that relate to one another . . . Structure[s] are constituted through the social organisation of labour and production, the organisation of desire and sexuality, the institutionalized rules of authority and subordination and the constitution of prestige. Structural social groups are relationally constituted, in the sense that one position in the social structure does not exist apart from differentiated relation to other positions."
Thus, as I write in Chapter VIII of my book, poverty only exists in relation to the standard of living of the rest of society (i.e. 'absolute' poverty is an arbitrary, albeit sometimes useful, category). Similarly, gender[s] does not exist objectively outside the social relations defined between them; and race is junk science but conveys powerful social advantages and disadvantages. Any individual's access to social goods in the context of these structures is distributed probabilistically, and so it is therefore analytically relevant to define groups by their collective advantage or disadvantage and to conduct activism on that basis - even if some individuals from a disadvantaged class have the opportunity to rise to the top.
Laws, rules and institutions cannot be value-neutral because they are imbedded in deeper cultural and economic patterns. Laws, rules and institutions cannot produce just outcomes on their own because they are blind to these patterns or explicitly take them for granted (see: Gramsci). And as I have written before, people often experience a powerful backlash bias when these social relations are threatened. If individuals or groups need to claim disadvantage (or perjoratively: 'victimhood') in order to receive compensation for that disadvantage, the act of both claim-making and claim-granting merely re-enforces existing social patterns and fails to challenge the underlying base structure.
Critics of "identity politics" often fail to differentiate between the two sets of arguments. Challenging structural racism, the patriarchy, or the class structure of the economy is not a claim of victimhood and for special treatment: quite the opposite. It is an empowered attempt to change society so that structural inequality no longer exists. This is precisely why Marxists, who critique the class structure of society as being bad for the individual worker, were so often accused during the Cold War of being collectivists. And why critics of multiculturalism or feminism misinterpret claims for equality as attempts to secure special treatment: they are operating under complete different philosophical understandings. If structural inequality magically ceased to exist, we could all be some type of liberal. But it does, so we aren't.
The Politics of Solidarity
As I write in Chapter IX, in a totally different context, "If the state is thought of only as a redistribution machine, we can blind ourselves to ways cooperative social institutions can prevent inequality from occurring in the first place. Better to stop inequality from growing than seek to cure it after it occurred." In that chapter I'm talking about the economy, but the principle applies equally to all forms of social hierarchy and structural difference. Redistribution does not generate social trust; in fact, it may be corrosive of it. Much better if we address our activism at the root causes of difference, recognising that formal equality of opportunity does not in and of itself generate egalitarian outcomes. So if right-wingers really don't like paying taxes or the recognising special group rights, then the only logical solution should be to join a union or cooperative, support feminism and the movement for black lives.
And here we return at last to the concept of solidarity. If unequal and hierarchical structure is the problem, then the solution is solidarity that transcends that structure and undermines it. That's why sexism, rascism and other forms of discrimination, especially paternalistic versions thereof, have no place in any progressive movement. Solidarity means pursuing cooperative solutions to the problem of generating social trust, without which we cannot transform and prevent inegalitarian structural structures.
Solidarity means trusting others in at least three important ways. First of all, it requires working across group boundaries to build ties between social classes, rather than seeing politics as a battle for the scarce control of social resources (i.e. identarianism). Importantly, this acknowledges that deconstructing hierarchies will also be of benefit to those currently privileged by them. Secondly, it means trusting others' claims about the sources of their own disadvantage, and not expressing skeptical or paternalistic beliefs about the moral value of their claims. If an individual is unable to access their fundamental rights, the course of events leading them there are not relevant to the inquiry. Lastly, and most radically, it means trusting that if our fellow human beings are in need, that we should offer help, and not make judgements about their own capacity for or skill at autonomous decision-making.