Where is the beautiful, old, venerable word solidarity? In Germany, the once proud concept of combat and friendship has been removed step by step from the usage of language; for example, with the end of the last great labor disputes of the early 1980s and the dangers of leftist utopias at the end of the decade. In the nineties, the word came absurdly above all in the fiscal context, in the form of the solidarity surcharge for the then new federal states.
The solos, that was the stubborn little brother of the church tax that they just could not get rid of, could not help a best tax adviser. The solos were prescribed solidarity - that is, the opposite of lived solidarity, that humanity's orientation towards the other human being, which has to be activated again and again from within. Finally, the partial rebuilding of the welfare state, which made man a player on supply issues in the volatile health, pensions and care market, marked the final end of the term.
The sociologist Heinz Bude now pops a book in this socio-political wasteland with an almost defiant title: "Solidarity". In the subtitle, Bude attests to the inexhaustible return to the term, which was actually already handled by history: "The future of a great idea."
Plea for a tender sense of the world
Is the man a dreamer? Yes and no. There are touching, meditative passages in his book in which he demands a new, tender sense of the world with reference to the existentialist Albert Camus. And there are jumbled, analytical passages, exploring our current sluggishness in terms of solidarity.
imago / Manfred Segerer
Heinz Bude
So what's the problem? Bude sees it mainly in a new, large, cross-stratified population group, which he calls "the self-concerned." This group is concerned with self-administrators driven by panic and pessimism, who have been conditioned to provide for all imponderables autonomously. One does not want to be fooled by life. Bude made them in 2014 in his book "Society of fear" on the subject, where he drew the modern man in the hamster wheel of self-optimization.
The "self-concerned", as she calls now, believe that every risk to life and work can be minimized, if not eliminated, by taking private-sector protection measures. According to Bude, the "ideal of self-socialization in self-operation" applies.
Solidarity as weakness?
Health, work and livelihood, everything can be managed autonomously from the perspective of the self-concerned; Sports, nutrition, training and insurance ensure stability in all circumstances. The state as a social, as a solidary instance gets in this logic more and more into the background.
The book states, "Those who are self-absorbed move away from the idea of solidarity because they see it as a formula of weakness and dependency." Bude makes clear how much the neoliberal idea that happiness is only a matter of proper (self-) organization has long been consensus across all party lines.
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Heinz Bude
Solidarity: the future of a great idea
Publishing company:
Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
Pages:
176
Price:
EUR 19,00
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But in the absolute belief in the organizing of happiness is just a brutal exclusion mechanism: If the logic of the self-concerned every decline can be prevented by the proper provision, then those who still descend, have just made the wrong or no provision. Bude summarizes the attitude behind it as follows: "Unemployment is not the fate of capitalist wage labor, but the undeniable result of a ruthless way of life."
Participation at eye level
Under such a debt and debt balance can be no We think. You can look mercifully at those who have allegedly screwed up their lives and given them money or clothes, but you will not want to give them the benefits of a security system that you believe has been built at your own expense. Solidarity, however, does not mean the distribution of alms, but participation on equal terms, which extends over a group of people, some of which operates a different organization of life than you: you, me and everyone else.
And what do you have from such a close alliance? Nothing at all; at least not an economically measurable result. Bude writes, "Solidarity is often meaningless for the whole and expensive for myself." The co-and for each other, as it represents the author with historical recourse to antiquity and in euphoric preview of a new community, is not a clearing process, not an economically controlled balance of interests between different social groups. It is rather - Camus once again - allowing an existential self-experience: The others are simply there, "and I can not imagine how I could be without the many others."
Perhaps solidarity, as we can think of it today, is simply a therapeutic measure to learn seemingly purpose-free rapport and to overcome the ultimately destructive neoliberal competition in care issues. For a society that is about to collapse, such a therapy is urgently needed.