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Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. True solidarity means moving beyond individual identities and single issue politics. Still, solidarity does not reject and sees individuals as the basis of society. It refers to the social relations that bind people together as one. The term is generally employed in sociology and the other social sciences, as well as in philosophy and bioethics. It is a significant concept in Catholic social teaching and in Christian democratic political ideology. (2013). 9781136610035, Routledge. ISBN 9781136610035 Although closely related to the concept of charity, solidarity aspires to change whole systems, not merely to help individuals.
Solidarity is also one of six principles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union,Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Title IV and International Human Solidarity Day is recognized each year on December 20 as an international observance. Solidarity is not mentioned in the European Convention on Human Rights nor in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and therefore has lesser legal meaning when compared to basic rights.
Concepts of solidarity are mentioned in the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, but not defined clearly.
Conservatism, following the French Revolution, introduced the concept of "solidarity", which was detached from the legal system, as a Reactionism against rapid social change and as a longing for a stable society. During the July Monarchy, Pierre Leroux, a utopian socialist who is also said to have coined the term socialism, also introduced the concept of non-legal solidarity. Auguste Comte, the so-called founder of sociology, adopted the concept in the sense of social interdependence between people. Comte linked solidarity to the concept of altruism as the opposite of egoism. Instead of emphasising the individual, altruism emphasises common responsibility and solidarity. The interpretations of Pierre Leroux and Auguste Comte gave rise to the idea of a specific social solidarity as the basis of the social order. Jyri Liukko 2008. François Ewald, vakuutus ja solidaarisuuden liberaali kohtalo. Science and Progress 1/2008 ()
After the French Revolution, new scientific and ideological interpretations of solidarity emerged in France. The concept took on sociological, economic, legal, and political variants. Thinkers with different emphases shaped the meaning of the concept of solidarity to suit their own purposes.
The Communards, for example, exchanged the revolutionary slogan of "fraternity" for "solidarity". Some French liberal economists also began to use the term "solidarity", but they changed its meaning in an individualistic direction. Liberalism argued that interdependence between people meant that people also had to take responsibility for their actions without the state intervening. Charles Gide, an economist who opposed liberalism, developed his own interpretation of the concept and even proposed solidarity as the name of a new school of economics.
Through these stages, by the turn of the 20th century, solidarity had become a generic term that could be associated with almost everything that was considered good and . The Paris World Fair in 1900 was accompanied by a congress on "social education and the new solidarity". The Catholic Church also began to use the popular concept of solidarity. According to sociologist Steven Lukes, solidarity played a role in France at the time that was almost as strong and influential as individualism was in the United States at the same time.
Although individuals perform different tasks and often have different values and interests, the order and solidarity of society depends on their reliance on each other to perform their specified tasks. "Organic" refers to the interdependence of the component parts, and thus social solidarity is maintained in more complex societies through the interdependence of its component parts (e.g., farmers produce the food to feed the factory workers who produce the tractors that allow the farmer to produce the food).
Bourgeois also introduced the term solidarism to describe a political ideology based on solidarity. Solidarism was a precise and clear structure of ideas which radicalism was also able to assimilate, and it came to regard it as its own ideological expression. After the turn of the century, Bourgeois solidarism came to be regarded almost as an official idea of the Third Republic. His solidarism combined elements of Durkheim's theory of solidarity with the theories of Louis Pasteur and Charles Darwin, and constituted an alternative to the confrontation between classical liberalism and workers collectivism. Bourgeois emphasised the solidarity generated by interdependence between people as a positive factor for all human growth. Solidarism thus combined the natural interdependence of human beings with solidarity as a moral goal. Although the idea of solidarity had different successors and interpretations, they had in common the emphasis on both the social responsibility of the state and the cooperation of citizens.
In Gide's solidarity, the common property created by free cooperative associations is their own and the added value created by their activities is returned in the form of profit sharing. Solidarism preserved the foundations of the free market economic system and also accepted differences in people's economic status. However, large income disparities were not in line with the idea of solidarity, as Gide considered them to break the ties that bind the individual to society. Gide is considered a major representative of the French historical school, and his ideas were different from the mainstream liberal economics of the time. Gide's social philosophy was close to that of Léon Walras, the developer of neoclassical general equilibrium theory, and he was one of the few supporters of Walras during his lifetime.
Solidarity is still the core value underlying cooperatives today, alongside self-reliance, ownership, Social equality, and justice. Cooperative members have a duty to emphasise the common interest and to ensure that all members are treated as fairly as possible. In addition to solidarity with its own members, the cooperative now also emphasises social responsibility beyond the cooperative itself.
In his introduction to the book, Kropotkin wrote:
Kropotkin advocated an alternative economic and social system, which would be coordinated through a horizontal network of voluntary associations with goods distributed in compliance with the physical needs of the individual, rather than according to labor.
It has been said that insurance can be seen as one of the institutions of the social contract. The way insurance works requires individuals to take a collective responsibility or the events they feel the need to prepare for. Society can be said to have become 'modern' when insurance becomes social insurance and when, thanks to the techniques and institutions of insurance, the insurance model becomes both a symbolic and a functional basis for the social contract.
Solidarity and justice are key principles underpinning the insurance system, according to Risto Pelkonen and Timo Somer. In the context of voluntary personal insurance, solidarity means that the insured share the benefits and costs between themselves, while justice means that each insured contributes to the costs according to the actuarial probability. Social insurance, on the other hand, is available to all citizens, regardless of their choice and health status, as the costs are covered by and statutory contributions.
According to Professor Heikki Ervast, however, three basic concepts can be associated with Nordic welfare states: macro-collectivism, universalism and solidarism. In simple terms, macro-collectivism means that recipients and payers of transfers do not need to know each other. Universalism means that the social protection and Social services of the welfare state apply to all citizens. Solidarism means that the welfare state is not simply an instrument designed to guarantee social peace, but is based on solidarity, human dignity, and equality. Pauli Forma, Associate Professor of Social Policy at the University of Turku, has summarised the central role of solidarity as the ethical basis of the welfare state: 'The welfare state is an institution of collective solidarity'. In other words, a welfare state is a Democracy and Prosperity state that shows solidarity by taking responsibility for the social security and Social equality of its citizens and for helping the disadvantaged. The welfare state can be said to be the "invisible hand of solidarity", in the same way that the "invisible hand of the market" is at work in a free market economy.
In Germany, the solidarity tax was first introduced after German reunification. The tax amounted to 7.5% of the amount of income tax payable (for individuals) and income tax payable (for legal entities). It was later abolished and reintroduced from 1995 to December 31, 1997, after which it was reduced to 5.5% on January 1, 1998. The legality of the tax was repeatedly challenged, but it was recognized by the German Federal Financial Court as not contrary to the German Constitution. The long-term assessment of the solidarity tax was considered unconstitutional in Germany.
In Italy, the solidarity tax was first introduced in 2012. All individuals whose annual gross income exceeds €300,000 are required to pay a 3% tax on the amount exceeding this amount.
In France, the solidarity tax on wealth was introduced in 1981; in September 2017, the French government abolished the solidarity tax and replaced it with a wealth tax on real estate starting in 2018. It was paid by all citizens and married couples whose property exceeded 1.3 million euros on January 1. The tax ranged from 0.5% to 1.5% of the value of property exceeding 800,000 euros.
In 2013 the solidarity tax was also introduced in the Czech Republic in response to economic recession and was cancelled in 2021. In this country it was 7% for all residents earning more than CZK 100,000 per month.
An approach in bioethics is to identify solidarity as a three-tiered practice enacted at the interpersonal, communal, and contractual and legal levels. This approach is driven by the quest to differentiate between the diverse applications of the concept and to clarify its meaning, both historically and in terms of its potential as a fruitful concept for contemporary moral, social, and political issues. The modern practice of bioethics is significantly influenced by Immanuel Immanuel Kant concept of the Categorical Imperative. Pastor and philosopher Fritz Jahr's article "Bio-Ethics: A Review of the Ethical Relationships of Humans to Animals and Plants" refines Kant's original Categorical Imperative discourse by including the notion of the Bioethical Imperative. Biomedical technology has also further introduced solidarity as the pivotal concept in bioethics. Another scholar, Meulen ter Ruud, discusses the need for solidarity within European health and social care systems, through organizations like Solidar.
The guiding principle for our actions is the Bioethical Imperative: Respect every living being in general as an end in itself, and treat it if possible, as suchas it arises in the relationships not only between people, but also with plants and other animal species. Jahr believes that in order to practice bioethics, one must be in solidarity with all forms of life. If one only decides to be in solidarity in humans, then one should not behave virtuously in any manner.
The Church's teaching on solidarity is explained in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, and briefly summarised in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
This is not only applicable to the Muslim community. Other religious communities, especially the people of the book, are traditionally accepted as true believers and protected communities. This lesson is drawn from Surat al-Ma'ida, verse 48. Although opinions differ on this matter, Seyyed Hossein Nasr notes that the majority opinion of Islamic scholars is that this verse pertains to a universal acceptance of other religions. (2025). 9780061125881, HarperCollins. ISBN 9780061125881
Others in that period sought to implement Islamic solidarity principles from the bottom up. In Egypt, Hassan al-Banna established the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 to organize society on the basis of Islamic ethical and social values, including social welfare and solidarity with the disenfranchised. Operating in the capitalist setting of interwar Egypt and drawing on Islamic rights to property, they made the pragmatic decision to advocate an Islamic economy that stressed Egyptian ownership over factories and emphasized social welfare.
Since the 1970s, takāful became theorised in Islamic finance as "a scheme where the participants are the insureds as well as the insurers and therefore share in the loss or profit of the operator, unlike insurance companies, where the risk is borne solely by the insurers"
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