EMPTY HOUSE

The underlying logic of any leftist movement worthy of the name is the logic of solidarity — the idea that we have obligations to each other, as well as power, by dint of our entangled fortunes. That our individual aims for happiness, security, and comfort can better be achieved in concert than alone. It requires us to take what Vivian Gornick once called “the incomparable risk of shared existence.” Solidarity is beautiful, in this way, but it is not self-evident. On the contrary, it seems like a fairy tale. One only comes to believe in solidarity after having personally experienced, or at least glimpsed, its extraordinary possibilities — by participating in a mass movement, a union campaign, civil disobedience, an uprising, or direct action. In America, by contrast, the dominant common sense is essentially anti-solidaristic: It is the notion that one must look out for himself, for his own; and that others — especially alien or unfamiliar Others — are a natural threat to one’s individual achievement. These are the ideas that feel instinctively true to many Americans, that feel realistic and sensible... Solidarity requires an invitation, a warm and friendly offer to collude in a risky proposition. It doesn’t work as a sanctimonious entreaty to identify with an existing set of self-evident values. As leftists, we must make this offer — of interdependence in exchange for shared liberation — again and again, in different places, to different people, in different ways and hope that it begins to make sense. That’s the whole game. Won’t you join me?