"Politically constructed solidarity: the idea of a cosmopolitan avant-garde", Contemporary Political...

Special Feature

Global Solidarity

Patti Tamara Lenarda, Christine Straehleb and Lea YpicaGraduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada.bGraduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada.

E-mail: [email protected] College, New Road, Oxford OX1 1NF, UK.

E-mail: [email protected]

Web: http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/General/Members/ypi.aspx

Contemporary Political Theory (2010) 9, 99–130. doi:10.1057/cpt.2009.9

Introduction

Cosmopolitan accounts of justice often struggle to provide arguments for whywe should endorse cosmopolitan redistributive duties. Many commentatorsargue that since we lack a cosmopolitan account of solidarity, we cannotdistribute responsibilities for such duties, nor can we motivate people tocarry them out. To put it differently, they question the analogy often madebetween the domestic and international context of justice, and correspondinglybetween domestic and global solidarity. The papers in this collection con-sider how we should conceive and construct a truly global, and cosmopolitan,solidarity.

All three authors accept a working definition of solidarity as a shared senseof responsibility for the welfare of others. What distinguishes them, however, ishow they conceive the group to whom we owe duties of redistributive justice.

Lenard begins by observing that although many people believe thatcosmopolitan principles of justice are the right ones, few people seem preparedto act on these principles. Cosmopolitan thinkers have, of late, consideredwhether solidarity, appropriately conceived, can motivate individuals to fulfilcosmopolitan duties of justice. Lenard identifies two strategies scholars haveemployed to develop a conception of global solidarity: the ‘sentimental’strategy and the ‘justice’ strategy. Neither is successful, she argues, becauseboth implicitly rely on a conception of solidarity that is workable only at thedomestic level.

Ypi and Straehle believe that an analogy between the domestic andcosmopolitan context can be made. Ypi provides an interesting account of

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local political mobilization to promote causes of justice by what she calls ‘theavant-garde’ – and argues for the correlative enterprise by ‘those individuals,civil associations and political agents responsible for promoting global justiceinitiatives’. To her mind, feelings of solidarity do not necessarily or onlycorrelate with the ties that bind the nation together but rather also depend onthe political institutions that construct the context of solidarity.

Straehle agrees with Ypi’s argument concerning the importance of thepolitical background conditions for solidarity in the nation-state and usesthe structures of the welfare state to illustrate how solidarity at home can beimplemented. Moreover, Straehle like Ypi puts into question Lenard’s claimthat there is a conceptual difference between motivations for solidarity at homeand abroad. She tackles the argument that solidarity is tied to a feeling ofshared identity and promotes instead an understanding of solidarity asaddressing individual vulnerability. As this account of the motivational basis ofsolidarity is universal, it supports arguments for cosmopolitan solidarity.

What is solidaristic about global solidarity?

Patti Tamara Lenard

Cosmopolitan accounts of justice have encountered an obstacle: most peopleagree that cosmopolitan principles of justice are correct in the abstract, but thiswidespread agreement does not appear to motivate cosmopolitan action. Wehave been persuaded to ‘believe’ in cosmopolitanism, but we are not ‘doing’cosmopolitanism (Dobson, 2006, p. 166). Two standard explanations areoffered to explain our unwillingness to do cosmopolitanism, in spite of ourapparent commitment to cosmopolitanism in principle: one that focuses onfeasibility and one that focuses on moral motivation. The feasibilityexplanation suggests that we are already persuaded by cosmopolitan principles;we are simply faced with a global environment that, for now, renders actingon these principles near impossible. Once the proper institutions emerge at theglobal level – in her paper, Christine Straehle emphasizes the importance ofinstitutions in developing solidarity – the fulfilment of cosmopolitan duties ofjustice will follow. The moral motivation explanation emphasizes thechallenges posed by human moral psychology: although we accept cosmopo-litan duties of justice in principle, we must be persuaded to act on theseprinciples. We must therefore focus our efforts at fleshing out the source of ourmoral motivation.

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Theorists of global solidarity have, of late, become preoccupied with whethersolidarity can resolve the problem of ‘doing’ – that is, of motivating –cosmopolitanism, and they have adopted two broad strategies through whichto tackle this issue: one strategy focuses on ‘sentiment’ and another on ‘justice’.The former suggest that a concept of global solidarity, focused on either‘interconnections’ or ‘sentiment’, can persuade us to carry out cosmopolitanduties. The latter argue that a concept of global solidarity, focused on fleshingout the reasons for which we are implicated in injustice, can persuade us tocarry out cosmopolitan duties. These two strategies are distinct in many waysand their practical consequences vary tremendously. But, what they share is thehope that the concept of solidarity can do the work of getting us to ‘do’cosmopolitanism. This paper explores whether these solutions are persuasive.

The paper first outlines the problem of motivating cosmopolitanism, fromthe perspective of cosmopolitan philosophers themselves. Second, it identifiesthe four standard features of domestic solidarity, along with the roles typi-cally ascribed to it, namely, supporting democratic political participation anda commitment to redistributive welfare policies. The third section explores thetwo strategies theorists of global solidarity have employed as a way to motivatecosmopolitanism. The final section of the paper asks whether global solidaritywill be able to carry out the tasks assigned to domestic solidarity, andconcludes that it is not clear that the concept of solidarity can be meaningfullytranslated to the global environment.

The Cosmopolitan Problem of Motivation

Cosmopolitan philosophers are not blind to the failure of cosmopolitanprinciples to guide political action. As Thomas Pogge asks in the opening ofWorld Poverty and Human Rights: ‘How can severe poverty of half ofhumankind continue despite enormous economic and technological progressand despite the enlightened moral norms and values of our heavily dominantWestern civilization?’ (Pogge, 2002, p. 3).1 Many acknowledge, moreover, thatthe failure stems from an apparent inability of cosmopolitan principles tomotivate ethical action. Max Pensky suggests that cosmopolitanism appears to‘remain agnostic on what would motivate individuals to realize global justice,apart from the experience of acknowledging moral duties that one is presentedwith as a logical consequence of one’s subscription to the doctrine of universalequal basic rights’ (Pensky, 2007, p. 167). In what is a well-known defence ofcosmopolitanism, Martha Nussbaum suggests that the appeal to cosmopolitanprinciples may fail because ‘patriotism is full of color and intensity andpassion, whereas cosmopolitanism seems to have a very hard time gripping theimagination’. Cosmopolitanism, she writes, may fail to gain adherents because


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it ‘offers only reason and the love of humanity, which may seem at times lesscolorful than other sources of belonging’ (Nussbaum, 1996, p. 15). This paperevaluates whether attempts to rely on global solidarity can provide the ‘colour’needed to motivate thick cosmopolitan duties.

Defining Domestic Solidarity

Solidarity is often a feature ascribed to the domestic sphere or, at least, tosmaller scale communities. At the domestic level, it is said that democraticpolitical activity depends on extensive solidarity among members: democraticpolities ‘require a great deal of their members, demanding greater solidaritytowards compatriots than toward humanity in general’ (Taylor, 1996, p. 120).This is because, continues Taylor, ‘a citizen democracy can only work if mostof its members are convinced that their political society is a common venture ofconsiderable moment and believe it to be of such vital importance that theyparticipate in the ways they must to keep in functioning as a democracy’ (Ibid.).This difficult work – which often involves sacrifices of time (because politicalactivity takes time) and material interest (because democratic policies are oftencommitted to redistribution from the best to the least well-off) – demands acohesive solidarity among community members.

More specifically, to describe a community as solidaristic is generally to saythat it has the four following features.2 A solidaristic community is one inwhich its members identify with the goals and values of the collective, and theytherefore feel that they are integrated members of it (Durkheim, 2006, p. 225).3

Additionally, members of solidaristic communities are loyal to the institutionsthat instantiate these shared goals and values (Shelby, 2002, p. 238). To extendloyalty to one’s group, as a component of one’s life plans, means evaluating theways in which the choices one makes will or will not serve the community, andperhaps even putting the interests of the group ahead of one’s own interests(Heyd, 2007, p. 118).

If these two conditions are satisfied (shared values and loyalty), two furtherfeatures of solidarity may develop: mutual empathy and trust. A solidaristiccommunity is defined in part by members who are empathetic towardseach other, that is, members who are concerned for the well being of othergroup members, and this concern will often translate into a willingnessamong the well-off to provide aid to those who are less fortunate (Habermas,1990, p. 244). Equally, a solidaristic community is defined by trust among itsmembers, and this mutual trust is the foundation of the cooperation thatdefines a solidaristic community. When members of a community are confidentin the knowledge that fellow members share values and goals, when they areconfident that others are loyal to the group, and that this loyalty often

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prompts them to prioritize the needs of the group as well as the needsof its individual members, they are free to extend trust to them (Shelby,2002, p. 238).

If a community is characterized by these four features, it is robustlysolidaristic: robust solidarity is a ‘solidarity that is strong enough to movepeople to collective action, and not just a mutual sympathy born of therecognition of commonality or a feel-good sense of group belonging’ (Shelby,2002, p. 237).

Accounts of Global Solidarity4

There are, as noted earlier, two broad approaches taken to conceptualizingglobal solidarity – one focuses on the motivating power of sentiment and onefocuses on the motivating power of our complicity with injustice – and thesetwo positions correspond to two conventional positions in moral theory.We can be roughly Kantian and so believe that moral motivation stemsdirectly from the principles of justice themselves. On this view, we carry outour duties of justice because we wish to act in accordance with the morallaw, that is, because we wish to be beings that carry out duties of justice. Inother words, our motivation to carry out thick duties of cosmopolitanjustice, stems from our belief that these principles are true or right. Inparticular, no facts of human moral psychology play a role in defining, ormotivating the fulfilment of, the duties we have as moral beings. On the otherhand, a broadly Humean outlook is deeply concerned with the empiricalfacts of normal human psychology; these empirical facts play an essentialrole in founding moral obligations. On this account, the motivation tocarry out our duties of justice is deeply connected to the source of theobligations themselves; there is an explicit connection between motivationand obligation, where the presence of duly motivated individuals tells us thatthere are obligations of justice to fulfil. The sentimental account, describedbelow, corresponds to a roughly Humean position and the justice-basedaccount corresponds to a broadly Kantian position (for more on thisdiscussion, see Scheffler, 1992; Thomas, 1988; Goodin, 1992; Meyer, 2000;Bufacchi, 2005).

Sentimental accounts of global solidarity

Sentimental accounts of global solidarity emphasize that all humans arefeeling, emotive creatures and, especially, that we have a tremendous capacityfor empathy. This latter capacity allows us to ‘feel into’ the experiences



of others, by imagining or remembering what it is like to be in their situation.On this view, empathy allows us to ‘participate’ in the feelings of others, and soenables us to be sensitive to the kinds of situations that others might findpleasing or objectionable. We put ‘our sentient aspect to the fore, the feelingrather than the thinking human being’; we rely on the empathetic feelingsthat sustain our relationships to respond to the objection that cosmopolitanismis necessarily cold and rational, and thereby unmotivating (Lu, 2000, p. 256).Empathy and solidarity are therefore linked: solidarity necessarily contains an‘affective’ element, that is, empathy, that allows us to ‘understand the specificsof others’ concrete situation, and to imaginatively construct for oneself theirfeelings and needs’ (Gould, 2007, p. 156). We can, therefore, understandsolidarity as, in part, ‘the social counterpart to empathy’ (Ibid., p. 153).Empathy allows us to make ‘room for the wider networks of interconnectionsbetween people, associations and political societies’ that characterize anincreasingly global environment and encourages the development of relationsacross boundaries of various kinds (Gould, 2006, p. 46).

These relationships underpin the larger solidarity that is to be recruited tomotivate the carrying out of extensive obligations towards others, in two ways.On one view, the connection between the motivation that solidarity pro-vides and the duties of justice we have is intimate: the ‘affective relations ofsolidarity are in fact an essential component to the recognition of thesehuman rights themselves’ (Gould, 2007, p. 148). As a result, any emergentsolidarity is decidedly not universal in scope. For Carol Gould, for example, weshould think of solidarity as serving as ‘a basis for conceptualizing moralresponsibilities towards’ others, but ‘to the degree that these normativerelations are in fact based in sentiment, which is inevitably particularisticand limited, they would seem inapplicable to our relations to distant others inany universalistic sense’ (Gould, 2007, p. 149). On the one hand, this viewprevents us from relying on a concept of solidarity that encompasses all ofhumanity: any interest that we take in others by virtue of their humanity is‘bound to be abstract, lacking the warmth and power’ that comes from moreintimate relationships. On the other hand, the view presses us to acknowledgethat any genuine engagement with ‘strangers is always going to be engage-ment with particular strangers; and the warmth’ that emerges form theserelationships ‘will often be available’ to underpin the motivation we needto carry out duties towards others (Appiah, 2006, p. 98, emphasis added).One way in which this progress can be made is described in Lea Ypi’saccompanying paper.

On a second view, the link between the obligations that we have towardsothers and the motivation we have to carry them out is less tight. Thereare those who wish to embrace the motivating power of empathy, withoutgiving up the emphasis on the universal nature of cosmopolitan justice. For

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Catherine Lu, for example, global solidarity provides a way to motivate thecarrying out of cosmopolitan duties that are independently derived andindependently just. Lu recognizes the power of loyalty to particular groups:relations of loyalty can ‘serve as powerful motivations for people to fulfiltheir public or private moral obligations’ (Lu, 2000, p. 259). The bonds ofloyalty we share with others are morally legitimate, however, only insofar asthey serve to make cosmopolitan justice more feasible. For Lu, then, globalsolidarity serves to motivate the carrying out of duties of cosmopolitanjustice, but it is not implicated in founding or legitimating these obligations inthe first place.

The danger lurking in a view that disconnects the foundation of theobligations from the motivation necessary to carry them out is, however,precisely the one that motivates this paper, namely, that the feelings of loyaltyor solidarity that are meant to motivate the carrying out of duties do not seemstrong enough to do the work that is hoped for. In Lu’s account, for example,the central emotional tie is cruelty – it is our instinctive reaction against crueltythat is meant to motivate our willingness to carry out our duties of justice(Lu, 2000, p. 254). In cases where the duties of justice that we are meantto carry out are demanding, however, it is not clear that disapproving ofcruelty will prove sufficient to motivate us to do so. The feelings on whichLu and others rely appear too thin to support a commitment to thick duties ofjustice, absent a deeper sense of interconnection among those who aresupposedly obliged by them.

Justice-based accounts of global solidarity

Whereas sentimental accounts of global solidarity emphasize our capacity toempathize with the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves, justice-basedaccounts suggest that it is our responsibility for global injustices that serves togenerate solidarity. This strategy owes much to Thomas Pogge’s attempt toconceptualize the obligation to carry out duties of justice towards all others interms of the harm principle. For Pogge, it is because we are implicated ininstitutions that actively harm others that we are responsible for improvingthe conditions of many of the global poor (Pogge, 2002). That said, Poggeexplicitly rejects attempts to interpret this strategy in terms of solidarity; rather,he says, we ought to be motivated to carry out duties of justice simply in virtueof the power of the duties themselves. In general, though, justice-basedaccounts of global solidarity take for granted that cosmopolitan dutiesof justice exist (rather than suggesting that global solidarity is the source of theduties in the first place), and argue for a global solidarity that will motivate us tocarry these duties out. Rather than emphasizing sentiment as a way to generate



solidarity, the emphasis is on strengthening the sense that we are implicated inrelations of justice and injustice with all (or nearly all) others.

On this view, global solidarity emerges from the intuitions we already shareabout the nature of justice and injustice. We agree as a matter of course that ifwe treat someone unjustly, we are thereby responsible to remedy the injustice insome way. As we are clearly implicated in causing harm worldwide – globalwarming is a signature example – we are thereby responsible for remedyingthis harm. Understanding causal responsibility in this way ‘produces a thickerconnection between people than appeals to membership in a commonhumanity, and it also takes us more obviously out of the territory ofbeneficence and into the realm of justice’ (Dobson, 2006, p. 172). An emphasison causal responsibility, moreover, will make ‘ ‘‘nearness’’ a more palpablereality than can be produced through reflecting on our common humanity’(Ibid., p. 177). We can therefore capitalize on our ‘emotional dispositions notto harm’ which applies in the first instance to those near us and, ideally, canthen be ‘extended to y possibly all members of the human race’ (Linklater,2006, p. 114). In particular, this account emphasizes the shame and guilt wefeel when we become persuaded that we are causing harm and failing to remedyit (Ibid., p. 117).

What is Solidaristic About Global Solidarity?

It is perhaps helpful to note that both justice-based and sentiment-basedattempts to generate global solidarity focus on persuading us of the ‘tiesthat bind’. Both justice and sentiment are invoked to persuade nationalcitizens to think of themselves as members of a solidaristic global community,in which we accept, and carry out, duties of justice towards others. Do theysucceed?

Both Ypi and Straehle are optimistic in their contributions that they dosucceed. I will suggest, however, that thus far theories of global solidarity failto offer a persuasive account of motivating thick duties of justice acrossborders. A comparison between accounts of domestic and global solidarity tellsus why it is that a more narrowly focused solidarity can be effective atmotivating individuals to carry out duties towards others: it is a relativelythick account of the bonds between individuals. The accounts of globalsolidarity are too thin to do the work that, at present, can effectively be doneby domestic or local solidarity. There are four reasons to be sceptical ofconceptions of global solidarity, and they emerge from a comparativelook at the four features typically used to describe domestic solidarity. Thesereasons will have different weight with respect to the two distinct conceptionsof global solidarity.

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First, accounts of domestic solidarity give precision to the commitmentsmembers must hold in order for solidarity to exist. Members must becharacterized by shared values or shared goals; the implication in mostaccounts is that these shared values or goals must be fairly precise. It would befair, for example, to describe a community as bound by a commitment toextensive redistributive policies, or by an ethos of ‘rugged individualism’. Onthe other hand, accounts of global solidarity – whether focused on justiceor sentiment – are silent on the question of the underlying goals or valuesthat bind global citizens. This is certainly not to suggest that theorists ofglobal solidarity fail to give expression to interests that we share in commonacross nations: there is, for example, considerable emphasis on the globalconsequences of environmental damage or the spread of disease across borders.But these accounts emphasize interests rather than the values that are essentialto generating lasting solidarity.5 Insofar as shared interests can be said togenerate solidarity, they generate a thinner solidarity that cannot be reliedupon to motivate the self-sacrifice required to remedy significant globalinequalities.

Second, accounts of global solidarity are silent on questions of loyalty.Whereas domestic accounts of solidarity are clear that its members are loyalto the community, where loyalty often demands the sacrifice of its members’self-interest in exchange for promoting the common good of the community,accounts of global solidarity have little to say about the source of loyalty(or the sacrifices it might engender) at the global level. Critics of this analysismight observe that loyalty is typically described in ‘us versus them’ terms, sothat a group that ostensibly encompasses everyone is devoid of resources onwhich to draw to generate loyalty. It seems to me that this is a fair objection(even if I do believe that loyalty can oftentimes emerge in situations that donot carry an insider–outsider distinction); yet, scholars of global solidaritymust offer an account of what replaces the motivational force of loyalty at theglobal level.

Third, in accounts of domestic solidarity, a commitment to shared values orgoals, alongside a loyalty to members with whom these values and goals areshared, gives rise to both empathy and trust. Both empathy and trust, oncepresent, are self-reinforcing (the presence of some trust serves as a basis onwhich to build more trust, for example). Sentimental accounts of globalsolidarity attempt to capitalize on our natural empathy (as distinct from theempathy that emerges from shared goals and values), as a way to generate acommitment to thicker duties of justice. But, empathy on its own is insufficientto build a commitment to thick duties of justice, even if it is enough tointerest us in the affairs of others. These accounts are as of yet imprecisewith respect to the steps that must be taken from empathy through tomotivationally efficacious solidarity.



Fourth, neither the justice-based nor the sentiment-based accounts ofglobal solidarity have much to say on the question of trust-building amongmembers of larger groups. As the sentiment-based accounts of global solidarityrecognize that solidarity builds outwards from smaller groups which,themselves, share commitments of some kind, they are closer to havinga plausible explanation for the source of trust at the (near) global scale. Here,trust begins among members of a group described in terms of shared values orgoals – this is one of the standard stories told among scholars of trustconcerning its source6 – and is meant, eventually, to extend outwards acrossgroup boundaries. The mechanism by which trust builds across boundaries isleft under-explored, however, and the substantial challenges connected tobuilding trust under conditions of tremendous diversity are unbroached byscholars of global solidarity. Because trust is essential to the coordination oflarge-scale cooperative projects, accounts of global solidarity must develop anaccount of cross-border trust-building.

Conclusion

This paper has attempted an evaluation of notions of global solidarity, withthe intention of asking whether concepts of global solidarity are able to solvethe apparent motivational problem at the heart of cosmopolitan theory.The problem, I suggested, is this: in spite of agreement that cosmopolitanprinciples are correct from a justice perspective, most people are not motivatedto put these principles into action. Theorists of global solidarity – thosethat focus on sentiment and those that focus on justice – attempt to remedythis problem of motivation, by examining ways to expand the set of peopleto whom we feel a strong connection. They attempt, to their credit, to takereal account of what we know about moral psychology, namely, they recognizethat as we know them, humans conceive obligations to others in terms ofrelationships they share with them. A focus on the relationships that ought tobind members of humanity strikes me as a plausible – from both a moraland a realistic perspective – strategy through which to pursue remedyingthe woeful failure of wealthy global citizens to carry out their duties to poorerglobal citizens. The comparison launched just above is meant constructively,as a guide to those who are motivated to flesh out a thick, and thereforeeffective, account of global solidarity. Comparing accounts of solidarityat the domestic and global levels suggests why it is that a more narrowlyfocused solidarity can be effective at motivating individuals to carry outduties towards others: it is a relatively thick account of the bonds betweenindividuals. The accounts of global solidarity considered here are too thin

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to do the work that, at present, can effectively be done by domestic or localsolidarity.

Notes

1 I was directed to this quote by Andrew Dobson in his recently published ‘Thick

cosmopolitanism’, Political Studies 54 (2006), pp. 165–184, at p. 165.

2 This list is certainly not definitive. Rather, it should be understood more as a compilation of the

features most frequently described by scholars of solidarity as essential to the concept.

3 It is sometimes suggested that solidarity can be understood in terms of identity. Jeff Spinner-

Halev writes, for example, that a new democracy ‘needs a source of solidarity to motivate

citizens, which it can obtain by codifying and appealing to national identity’. See his ‘Democracy,

solidarity and post-nationalism’, Political Studies, (2008) 56/3: 604–628. However, solidarity is

more often conceived as an alternative to identity as a cohesive force. See Ann Ferguson, ‘Global

gender solidarity and feminist paradigms of justice’, paper presented to APSA Boston 2008, on

file with author.

4 There is a third account of global solidarity that I do not consider here, according to which

solidarity at the global level depends first and foremost on a strong state (or nation-state). Unlike

the two forms of solidarity that I consider here, which in some sense aim at moving beyond

national borders, this way of arguing for global solidarity does no such thing. On this view,

global or cosmopolitan solidarity ‘is of a second-order kind y transnational inclusion can very

often arise through national debates over the limits and impediments to inclusion of new persons

and groups’ (Pensky, 2007, p. 167). See also Joseph Schwartz, ‘From domestic to global

solidarity: The dialectic of the particular and the universal in the building of social solidarity’,

Journal of Social Philosophy 38/1 (April 2007), pp. 131–147 and Stuart White ‘Republicanism,

patriotism and global justice’, in D. Bell and A. de Shalit (eds.) Forms of Justice (Lanham:

Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), pp. 251–268.

5 Here one obvious objection is that shared values and goals do not exist even at the domestic level.

I do not have the space to examine this objection here, but see Lea Ypi, ‘Political membership in

the contractarian defense of cosmopolitanism’, Review of Politics 70/3 (2008), pp. 442–472 for

more.

6 This way of conceptualizing the source of trust is reported in, among others, Francis Fukuyama’s

Trust (New York: Free Press, 1995).

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Date submitted: 3 September 2008Date accepted: 13 November 2008

National and cosmopolitan solidarity

Christine Straehle

Some social liberals defend a restricted scope of redistributive internationalobligations with reference to the lack of conditions for cosmopolitan solidarity.


Straehle

I will call this the ‘argument from motivation’ (see Lenard in this volume)against concepts of cosmopolitan solidarity. The ‘argument from motivation’as I understand it holds that cosmopolitan authors have yet to providecompelling reasons why we should be motivated to contribute a share of ourincome, say, to the cause of international redistributive justice. When thinkingabout redistributive justice we have to consider what brings about principles ofjustice, and under what circumstances they can be implemented. One of themost important conditions, so the argument says, is a feeling of solidarity.Solidarity as it is needed for the purposes of redistributive justice is tied tothe fact that individuals identify with their community and the welfare of itsmembers. For social liberals, such conditions come about in the context ofa shared national identity. The shared national identity functions as a ‘battery’(Canovan, 1996) generating a sense of common purpose and of being involvedin a common project. In this sense, solidarity is not a universalist feeling, butone that extends primarily to co-nationals.

This seems to suggest that solidarity among compatriots has an inherentaspect that is lacking in the global sphere – namely a genuine tie betweenmembers of the community. It is this tie that putatively provides the motivationfor solidary actions in the midst of the national community – and it is the lackof such ties that explains the problems for cosmopolitan solidarity. Thisconclusion bears closer scrutiny. I want to question whether it is indeed thecase that there is a conceptual distinction at play between ideas of national andcosmopolitan solidarity. To do so, I shall examine what many social liberalstake to be the vehicle for enacting national solidarity, namely the institutionsof the social welfare state. More specifically, I want to investigate whatmotivates our support for provisions of the welfare state. I want to argue that ifwe can conceptualize our motivation to contribute to the welfare state inuniversalist terms then it is not clear why we cannot conceptualize ‘solidarity’in universalist terms.

The argument proceeds in three parts. Part one sets the stage by definingwhat we mean when we speak of solidarity. I will define solidarity ascharacterized by three aspects: (i) the postulate of equal moral worth of allhuman beings; (ii) a sense of interdependence between human beings, ofempathy and common cause with others; (iii) and the concern for individualautonomy and self-determination. While I take the first two elements to beuncontroversial, the third element is worth exploring. To support my argumentfor solidarity as premised on the value of individual autonomy, I examine themotivational basis of the welfare state in part two by looking at differentproposals that aim to account for the motivation people may have tocontribute to welfare state regimes. The most plausible of these is the argumentthat our motivation to support measures of the welfare state derives from thefact that we accept the moral duty to protect the vulnerable. Vulnerability,



I explain, should be understood as a lack of meaningful individual autonomy.If we accept that solidarity with others implies valuing their individualautonomy then the lack of conditions of meaningful autonomy like beingvulnerable can trigger feelings of solidarity. In the conclusion, finally, I sketchbriefly how solidarity understood in this way can also motivate compliancewith global duties.

Solidarity

When talking about solidarity, some distinctions should be made in order toaccount for the different uses of the term in political philosophy. I distinguisha descriptive use from two normative ones. The first one comes to usfrom sociology and Durkheim’s distinction between ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’senses of solidarity. Durkheim argued that the mechanical version of solidaritywas genuine to traditional, identity bound societies that shared the sameset of values and morality. The organic version of solidarity came about inindustrialized, modern societies and highlights the interdependence of indiv-iduals in the economic process as the source of this solidarity (Durkheim, 1964,63f). The first normative use derives from political theory and highlights thelink between democratic deliberation and organization of the political processwith a sense of community (Taylor, 1996, p. 120). Proponents of this view tracethe origin of solidarity back to the revolutionary moments of the eighteenthcentury, when sentiments of ‘fraternity’ were coupled with calls for liberty andequality (see Brunkhorst, 2005). The roots of solidarity in its second normativeuse, on the other hand, lie as much in the original uses of Roman law whereobligatio in solidum designated a joint liability in case of debt (Hoffe, 1999,p. 90), as with Christian notions of caritas or charity. The latter sense ofsolidarity is exemplified in accounts that stress feelings of empathy (cf. Harvey,2007) and feelings of sympathy for each other (Rorty, 1989) whereas theformer is represented by those authors who underline the reciprocal characterof solidarity.

The moral ideal of solidarity as I construe it accepts several differentelements that derive from these uses. First, it seems to me that any concept ofsolidarity accepts the fundamental premise of the equal moral worth of allindividuals. The fact that individuals are willing to share in a democraticcontext implies that each participant is equally worthy of consideration,and equally worthy of political participatory rights.1 The same idea of equalmoral worth underlies popular convictions about the foundations of a commonproject of social justice (see White, 2008). Think about pronouncementslike ‘Each individual should be able to meet his or her basic needs’ or that

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‘people should not be allowed to starve in the streets’. What such ideasexpress is the fact that all have a right to a decent life that springs from ourconviction that all have the same basic moral worth. To accept equalmoral standing of all individuals is thus fundamental albeit implicit in accountsof solidarity.

Equally accepted seems to me the sense of interconnectedness betweenindividuals that solidarity demarcates, and which Durkheim identified early on.Again, in its political vein, we could say that the very reason why we need toconceptualize solidarity springs from the fact that the realization of our ownpolitical preferences is dependent on the cooperation with our fellow deliberantsin the democratic sphere. Put in normative terms, solidarity is ‘a moral vision ofhuman beings as interdependent and connected, with duties as well as rightsagainst one another [y it is] a sense of social responsibility, of commitment tocommunity’ (Carens, 1986, p. 685). Indeed, this is the very basis of the argumentfrom motivation as I examine it here: to recall, social liberals claim that while thekind of interconnectedness necessary for solidary action can be found in thenational community, we simply do not share the same interdependence andconnectedness on the global level.

Finally, I understand our motivation to act in solidarity as stemming fromthe value we put on individual autonomy and agency. I want to argue that actsof solidarity such as contributions to the welfare state aim to enhanceindividual agency and autonomy. This is less well-trodden ground indiscussions of solidarity and warrants exploration.2

Welfare

The welfare state I have in mind is built upon several different kinds of policies(see Barry, 1990). Now, some provisions such as access to health care andpublic schools benefit all members of the community. Besides these universallyapplicable components, however, the ideal welfare state encompasses othermeasures that are more immediately directed towards the socio-economicallyweakest members of society. Social assistance programmes and social housingprojects, for instance, are designed specifically to help those below a certainincome level and are thus only accessible to those who fulfil some qualifyingcriteria of need.

What, then, might motivate those not so in need to support schemes thatare aimed at the socio-economically weakest members of society? One optionmight be to argue from the position of rights.3 We might say that individualshave a right to assistance if they fall below a certain level of welfare. Note thatthis is one of the most prominent arguments in the cosmopolitan debate,indeed the one that many theorists – social and cosmopolitan liberals



alike – have accepted. If we follow this lead, we could say that access to basicgoods and services such as housing and a minimum income must be guaranteedbecause without such access, there is no human life worth promoting. In thisvein, we could say that we accept welfare responsibilities towards othersbecause we accept that we incur duties to assure the means of subsistence. Andindeed, this view is promoted by social liberals, who accept the basicsubsistence level as a baseline of international duties of assistance (Miller,2007).

One problem with the rights-based approach and the corresponding duties,however, is that it doesn’t answer the motivational question why we should bemotivated to provide the needs of basic subsistence. However, if we do notsimply want to propagate ‘manifesto rights’ – that is, rights that all are happyto subscribe to, but which nobody is actually required to help realize – then weneed to accept that rights come with corresponding duties on the part of some.Without recognizing this fact, rights holders simply ‘cannot find where to lodgetheir claims’ (O’Neill, 2001, p. 287).

Prima facie, this may not raise a problem from a social liberal perspective,where the motivation to fulfil such duties of justice is putatively grounded inour sense of belonging to a national community. Recall that herein lies theimportant distinction between (successful) conditions of national solidarityfrom (unsuccessful) ones of global solidarity. The idea here is that we incur andaccept obligations towards those ‘close’ to us, like our compatriots, relativelywillingly. The reverse of the argument is that we have much less motivation tohelp those outside of the realm of moral partiality.

Note that this model of the distribution and acceptance of duties does acceptcertain international duties. The strength and breadth of duties is determined,however, by the relationship the claimants have towards us. The basic idea ofthe model can be summarized as follows: each of us is situated at the centre of aset of concentric circles – very much like those I cause when throwing a stoneonto a still surface of water. The second circle is made up of those closest to us,encompassing immediate family members and friends. Each subsequent circle,then, consists of a group of people to whom we relate less – until, in the lastinstance, the individual at the centre is very far removed from those whopopulate the outer circle. This outer circle is, furthermore, so impreciselydefined in its perimeters and so vast, that it is impossible to fathoma meaningful relationship to those in that circle (if really a circle it still is –to remain in the analogy, it would rather constitute the rest of the lake). Thelast circle, in other words, is populated by people whom we do not know, inwhom we do not take any specific interest, and for whom we assume suchindifference to be reciprocal. According to the concentric circles model of ourduties, then, the extent of our obligations is strongest at the centre – towardsthose in the circle closest to us – and diminishes slowly as we move from

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the centre to periphery. We accept duties and obligations more or lessunquestioningly towards those close to us – those in the second circle – whileaccepting a different, diminished set of duties and obligations, morebegrudgingly perhaps, for those in the third, and so on.

The model is part of a long tradition in ethical writing aiming to delineatemoral duties in a way that takes into consideration different kinds ofrelationships characterizing our life (see Hart, 1967; Scheffler, 2001). It is basedon the assumption that the call of duty lessens as we go outward alongthe circles because the nature of our relationship with those on the peri-phery implies different obligations than the relationships we share with thosein the centre. This, I believe, is a flawed conception of the source of ourduties because it misconceives the nature of our duties in different con-texts. Clearly, we have a different set of duties towards our parents and friendswho populate the inner circles than we have, say, towards our compatriots.We accept duties of care and love towards the former, grounded in thefeelings that are at the basis of these intimate relationships. As we do not havesuch feelings and thus do not share such relationships with our compatriots it isnot plausible to argue for the same kinds of duties towards them. But if weaccept that the moral duties we owe to others are fundamentally differentbetween the immediate circles of family and friends, that of personalacquaintances, and everybody in the subsequent circles, then it seems to methat everybody outside the immediate circles is comparable – including themembers of my university, neighbourhood, city and nation. Once we leave thecircle of relative intimacy and caring duties behind, ‘a stranger is a stranger’(Shue, 1988, p. 693). But if a stranger is a stranger – as all those outside of theintimate circles must be – it makes little sense to assume that we are moremotivated to observe our moral duty to provide redistributive access to means ofwelfare to those in the next city than we have towards those on the nextcontinent. If we do observe moral duties, then it seems to me that our motivationto assist others outside of the intimate circle will be one grounded in moralreasoning rather than in sentiment.

Individual Autonomy and Vulnerability

Moral reasoning is in fact what underlies a more promising approach toconceptualize our motivation to act in a solidaristic way and to support socialwelfare measures. The one I have in mind accounts for the vulnerability ofindividuals and the motivation to implement and support measures meant toaddress and alleviate this vulnerability.

‘Vulnerability’ can describe different things. It may be employed to describesimple background conditions when thinking about persons and how they



should be treated. The idea of human vulnerability then tries to account forhuman limitations and attempts to capture the ‘fragility of human life, actionand achievement’ (O’Neill, 1998) in rather general terms. Consideringvulnerability should make us aware of fundamental and often unchangeablehuman inequalities in capacities when thinking about welfare provisions. Togive quite an obvious example, the physical vulnerability of a newborn or ayoung child is a simple background condition when thinking about child healthcare and protective legislation, even though we need not assume that most oreven many children will be abused or neglected.

I am concerned with a second meaning of vulnerability, that is, whenvulnerability denotes more specific conditions of constraint on human life.One such constraint is poverty. We can say that poverty makes us vulnerablebecause it constrains us in our options of the kind of life available to us –regardless of what kind of life we would want to lead. If one is poor,one is vulnerable because one is more exploitable. To illustrate, if poor, I willhave to depend more on the job I am lucky to get than if I have someother means of support than the monthly wage. In this instance, ‘onevulnerability’ may carry others in its tail: If I am poor, I depend also on myemployer to not fire me and on my co-workers to not sabotage me. Povertythen is a condition of constraint insofar as it makes us dependent onothers in whose power it is to harm our interests (Goodin, 1985b, p. 779).Such dependency, in turn, breeds the possibility of being exploited – it makesone vulnerable to exploitation. I construe exploitation to mean that oneperson takes an unfair advantage of another, building on a weakness orvulnerability of the exploitee (see Wertheimer, 2008). This need not to happenagainst the will of the exploitee since ‘the morally unsavory forms’ ofexploitation can occur with ‘the exploitee’s fully voluntary consent to theexploitative behaviour’ (Feinberg, 1988, pp. 176–179). Recall that in order tobe unfairly exploitable, one has to be vulnerable. Such vulnerability may leadto giving consent even to conditions of work, say, that are exploitative. Whatmatters is that exploitation is wrong because it ‘violates the moral norm ofprotecting the vulnerable’ (Goodin, 1988, p. 147, italics in original).

As I understand them, the conditions of constraint that characterizevulnerability in fact describe the lack of a meaningful sense of individualautonomy and of the means to self-determination.4 Let me explain thisclaim by providing a definition of autonomy. To be autonomous, it is essentialto have a range of options that inform an individual’s choices in life(Raz, 1986, 372ff). For options to serve the ideal of individual autonomy in ameaningful way, they will also need to be adequate and viable ones. In otherwords, the options available need to represent a choice between one optionin favour of another one, which is equally viable, exciting or fulfilling(Raz, 1986, p. 297). Second, only if the options available can also be realized

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and become concrete can they serve the ideal of individual autonomy. Theoption of becoming a concert pianist does not count if I don’t play the piano orcan’t carry a tune. Finally, and very importantly for the argument I wish tomake, the options available cannot ‘be dominated by the need to protectthe life one has’ which is the case if ‘all options except one will make thecontinuation of the life one has rather unlikely’ (Raz, 1986, p. 375). One mostfamously lacks meaningful options when faced with a highway robber whoasks for money in exchange for life even though this situation still putativelyoffers a choice.

This leads to a second important condition of autonomy. Individuals canonly be autonomous if they are not coerced, if their decision among the optionsavailable is an unconstrained one. Coercion implies that a person is driven totake a decision she would rather not take5 even if the choice is not as stark asthat between money or life. As Joel Feinberg points out, coercive acts do notnecessarily destroy alternatives, but a coercive threat simply makes the desiredalternative much more costly (Feinberg, 1998). It is at this point that theexploitability that comes with vulnerability joins the account of individualautonomy I propose. The non-coercion condition of autonomy is threatenedby severe poverty, say, since such poverty makes us vulnerable to potentialexploitation by others and open to coercion. An employer can exploit the factthat his employee is dependent on the wage he pays to keep them low since thealternative – to go without wage – is still less desirable. Exploitation then iscoercion in the autonomy relevant sense, and if one is exploited one is coercedand thus not autonomous.

Now, earlier on, I criticized the concentric circle model of moral obligationsas too unspecific when it comes to designating who would have to dischargeduties of assistance. The advantage of the vulnerability-based model instead isthat it helps discharge duties based on ‘directed needs’ (Goodin, 1988, p. 15).More specifically, an analysis of vulnerability underlines its relational character– we are vulnerable in relation to somebody else, or a group of individuals onwhom we are dependent and who may or may not decide to harm our interests.Others may affect our vulnerability in good or bad ways. The relationalcharacter of vulnerability then helps us to analyse the source of moralresponsibility: it can help identify where or with whom dependency originates;and, on the other hand, it can be employed to direct moral obligations toaddress vulnerability since those to whom individuals are dependent andvulnerable can address vulnerability. ‘If vulnerability gives rise to moral claims,then those moral claims must be principally against those agents to whoseactions one is vulnerable’ (Goodin, 1985a, p. 779). This is important in thecontext of solidarity and the argumentative work social liberals believe it to do:only if we accept that individuals are vulnerable to our actions can solidarity be anaction guiding principle that motivates us to comply with duties of assistance.6



Conclusion – Cosmopolitan Solidarity

How does the concept of protecting the vulnerable at home help motivatecosmopolitan duties? I propose an argument from analogy, namely thatbetween the socio-economically weakest members of society and the globallyworst off. Members of both groups share some fundamental characteristicsbeyond the obvious one of their socio-economic weakness: Neither group hasmuch bargaining leverage in the context of public policy deliberations – littleon the national and even less on the global level. And second, members of bothgroups are also most in need of solidary actions on the part of the better off –they both share, I would argue, a basic vulnerability to the actions of others.If we accept the argument that concern for vulnerability is at the basis ofanti-poverty measures in the welfare state, then it is not clear why these dutiesshould end at the watershed of the nation. Note that this is not to say thata theory of global justice based on the idea of cosmopolitan solidarity wouldbe open to the standard criticism by social liberals that it would not allowfor specific duties arising from sharing in the institutions of the nation-state –what we can refer to as associative duties. I accept that the institutional set-upof the nation-state may facilitate the implementation and carrying out ofduties of justice. Moreover, it seems uncontroversial that those with whom weshare in the institutional make-up of the nation-state will be most immediatelyvulnerable to our actions and that this vulnerability may warrant specificduties that are based on our political association. To accept associative dutiesgenuine to the national community, however, is not tantamount to callinginto question the shared motivational basis of solidary actions at home andabroad. It is not to say that there is something special in our attachment to ourfellow nationals that makes us understand their vulnerability and their needsbetter than our understanding of the needs of distant others. Neither is it thesame as to say that there is indeed a conceptual difference between motivationsfor solidarity at home and solidarity abroad. The simple point I wish to makehere is that the motivation to address vulnerability is at the basis of solidaryactions everywhere. What remains to be worked out are the institutional detailsthat would allow for the implementation of cosmopolitan solidarity along thelines of the social welfare state at home.7

Notes

1 Rousseau expressed it well in his Social Contract: ‘The instant the People is legitimately

assembled as a Sovereign body [y] the person of the last Citizen is as sacred as that of the first

Magistrate [y]’ (Rousseau, 1997, Book III, chapter 14, at p. 112).

2 One could wonder why we should distinguish the idea of equal moral worth from the concept of

individual autonomy. To my mind, the answer lies with Mill : while the value of individual

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autonomy demands that we defend ‘experiments in living’ the equal moral worth we attribute to

individuals may still allow for paternalistic policies that aim to prevent a person from harming

herself by using drugs, say. Thanks to Lea Ypi for raising this point.

3 One other argument might be that we may rely on the mechanisms of reciprocity as part of

society’s welfare provision. I believe the reciprocity argument to fail, however, as it cannot

account for provisions that will only ever benefit a very small but fragile portion of the

population – think of homeless people – from whose needs a majority is firmly removed (see

Barry, 1996).

4 There may be other constraints on individual autonomy and autonomous decision-making. For

instance, we could imagine that certain options may be left off our horizon for cultural reasons. I

might not imagine becoming a doctor if I was brought up to believe that my role is in the house

(see Taylor, 1979). I am not concerned with these kinds of constraints here, although they may

lead to conditions of vulnerability and thence from a liberal perspective, they should be cause for

concern.

5 ‘Coercion is a technique for forcing people to act as the coercer wants them to act, and

presumably contrary to their own preferences. It usually employs a threat of some dire

consequence if the actor does not do what the coercer demands, although it is controversial

whether a non-threatening offer might in some contexts be coercive’ (Feinberg, 1998).

6 Some could argue that taking individual capabilities rather than individual vulnerability as the

benchmark for autonomy might be better suited to address the motivation question. I believe,

however, that in the case of the welfare state, emphasis on vulnerability is much more prominent

than on capability. Since I build on the analogy with the welfare I have selected this approach as

more relevant to my account. I thank one of the reviewer for pointing out this question.

7 There is, of course, quite a debate about what kind of institutions a just global order would call

for (see Blake, 2001; Pogge, 2002). Regardless of what position one takes in that debate, it seems

to me uncontroversial to say that we do not have international institutions akin to those we have

in liberal welfare states, and which redistribute income systematically through the means of

individual taxation and individual benefits. My thanks to one of the reviewers for helping me

clarify this point.

References

Barry, B. (1990) The welfare state vs the relief of poverty. Ethics 100: 503–529.

Barry, B. (1996) Nationalism vs liberalism? Nations and Nationalism 2: 460–465.

Blake, M. (2001) Distributive justice, state coercion, and autonomy. Philosophy and Public Affairs

30(3): 257–296.

Brunkhorst, H. (2005) Solidarity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Canovan, M. (1996) Nationhood and Political Theory. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Carens, J. (1986) The virtues of socialism. Theory and Society 15: 679–687.

Durkheim, E. (1964) The Division of Labour in Society. New York: Free Press.

Feinberg, J. (1988) Harmless Wrongdoing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Feinberg, J. (1998) Coercion. In: E. Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London:

Routledge, http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/S007SECT1, accessed 23 March 2008.

Goodin, R.E. (1985a) Protecting the Vulnerable. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Goodin, R.E. (1985b) Vulnerabilities and responsibilities: An ethical defense of the welfare state.

The American Political Science Review 79: 775–787.

Goodin, R.E. (1988) Reasons for Welfare. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.



Hart, H.L.A. (1967) Social solidarity and the enforcement of morals. The University of Chicago

Law Review 35: 1–13.

Harvey, J. (2007) Moral solidarity and emphatic understanding: The moral value and scope of the

relationship. Journal of Social Philosophy 38: 22–37.

Hoffe, O. (1999) Demokratie im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Munich, Germany: C.H.C. Beck.

Miller, D. (2007) National Responsibility and Global Justice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

O’Neill, O. (1998) Vulnerability and finitude. In: E. Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. London: Routledge, http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/L113SECT2, accessed

9 March 2008.

O’Neill, O. (2001) Agents of justice. Metaphilosophy 32: 180–195.

Pogge, T. (2002) World Poverty and Human Rights. Oxford, UK: Polity Press.

Raz, J. (1986) The Morality of Freedom. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, J.-J. (1997) The Social Contract and other Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Scheffler, S. (2001) Boundaries and Allegiances – Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal

Thought. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Shue, H. (1988) Mediating duties. Ethics 98: 687–704.

Taylor, C. (1996)Why Democracy needs Patriotism. In: J. Cohen (ed.) For Love of Country. Boston,

MA: Beacon Press, pp. 119–121.

Taylor, C. (1979) What’s wrong with negative liberty. In: A. Ryan, (ed.) The Idea of Freedom.

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Wertheim, A. (2008) Exploitation. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (fall 2008 edition). In:

Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/exploitation/.

White, S. (2008) Social minimum. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (spring 2008 edition).

In: Edward N. Zalta (ed.) http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2008/entries/social-minimum/.


Politically constructed solidarity: The idea of

a cosmopolitan avant-garde

Lea Ypi

Solidarity and the Avant-Garde

One of the most forceful critiques against the cosmopolitan defence of globaldistributive justice emphasizes its weak motivational force in the absenceof a trans-national ethos of solidarity (Lenard, 2009). This critique relies on acontrast between the relationships of solidarity supporting generous redis-tributive schemes within the nation-state and the absence of an analogousdisposition between individuals in the world at large. In response, this paper

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draws attention to the politically constructed nature of solidarity even withinthe nation-state. Relationships of solidarity, so the argument goes, do notnecessarily precede the recognition of moral obligations between fellow-citizens. They may also result from the political processes conferring to suchindividual moral obligations an institutional shape.

In attempting to further articulate these claims, the paper introduces thenotion of a ‘cosmopolitan avant-garde’ to refer to those political agentsresponsible for constructing solidarity within particular political communities.It starts by exploring how one should understand the idea of an ‘avant-garde’,its relevance in art and the analogies between avant-garde movements in artand politics in using available resources in tradition in order to promotesolidarity in society. It then discusses who might constitute an avant-garde‘cosmopolitan’ movement and how its civic and political action mightaffect the rest of the citizen body thus gaining support for cosmopolitantransformations. I try to emphasize the role of grass-root organizations andtrans-national advocacy networks in educating the domestic public to cross-national solidarity and from there show their potential influence on the rules ofcooperation in the international sphere. I argue that, if the distribution ofcosmopolitan obligations is conceived as a political and not just moral issue, weneed not consider the absence of comprehensive feelings of solidarity an obstacleto the promotion of global justice (Ypi, 2008). Even if ordinary people are notsufficiently motivated to take responsibility for the welfare of non-citizens, it isenough to count on those individuals, civil movements and political forces thatare already sensitive to issues of poverty and trans-national oppression. Acosmopolitan avant-garde would transform society in ways similar to pastartistic and political innovators in critical historical stages – taking the lead indeveloping emancipatory social projects and motivating fellow-citizens to extendsolidarity beyond territorial boundaries. This normative exploration of therelation between political agency and moral imperatives attempts to show thatwidespread feelings of solidarity do not necessarily precede the construction ofsocial justice initiatives. Solidarity constitutes the result of emancipatory politicalaction rather than its indispensable condition of possibility.

The Concept and its Development: Artistic and Political Avant-Gardes

The notion of an ‘avant-garde’ movement is of course not new. According tothe Oxford Dictionary of Art (Chilvers, 1998), the term originally appeared inthe fifteenth century to denote ‘the foremost part of an army advancing intobattle (also called the vanguard)’. Later on it has been used both in art and inpolitics to emphasize the leading role of particular individuals and social forcesin transforming existing cultural and political practices in light of new projects

Politically constructed solidarity


for the emancipation of society. As I illustrate below, these cultural andpolitical initiatives have historically played a crucial role in stretching theboundaries of solidarity to previously excluded groups in society. Exploringtheir role from a normative perspective, especially by focusing on the way inwhich they channelled moral discourse through concrete political agency,might help us reflect by analogy on how cosmopolitan solidarity could beconstructed in contemporary societies.

Apparently the first use of the term avant-garde in its politically emancipatoryconnotation is owed to Claude Henri de Saint Simon’s Literary, Philosophicaland Industrial Opinions. Here Saint Simon emphasizes the power of art in usingimagination to appeal to people’s feelings in order to facilitate society’stransition toward a more progressive and civilized age (Saint Simon, 1825, p.281). His idea of artist-leaders placed the latter at the centre of a trialadministrative elite composed of scientists and industrialists/artisans andassigned them a crucial role in communicating to the masses through didacticmeans whatever science achieved through solid demonstrations.

In continuity with this project, early artistic avant-gardes were characterizedby their political commitment to social justice and by the attempt to use aestheticmeans to influence a particular mass culture (Egbert, 1967; Hobsbawm, 1999).Inspired by the ideas of Saint Simon, Proudhon, Fourier or Marx, andinfluenced by the events leading to the Paris Commune, avant-garde painters(from Courbet to Picasso), writers (from Zola to Brecht) and musicians (fromWagner to Schoenberg) perceived their role in society as a break withconventional aesthetic canons and tried to use existing artistic techniques toraise public awareness on burning social issues. The aim was appealing tofamiliar expressive means but in a way that conveyed a radically differentmessage on the role of art and its relation to mass culture. Whether it was inmusic, literature, architecture or visual arts, the link that avant-garde movementsestablished between existing cultural practices, innovations in aesthetic canonsand political initiative acted both as a critique of present cultural and socialinstitutions and as a concrete instance of their social emancipation.

Political avant-gardes have often perceived themselves in analogy withartistic ones. In the words of Antonio Gramsci, ‘the active politician isa creator, an initiator; but he neither creates from nothing nor does he move inthe turbid void of his own desires and dreams. He bases himself on effectivereality, but what is this effective reality? Is it something static and immobile,or is it not rather a relation of forces in continuous motion and shift ofequilibrium?’ (Gramsci, 1971, p. 163).

It is worth noticing here how the emphasis on the activity of avant-gardemovements shows that particular moral imperatives do not belong to anabstract realm of the hypothetically possible but may be promoted (and in factare) in real-world circumstances. In a way similar to artistic avant-gardes,

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political ones must use imagination and invest creative energies in givingconcrete shape to an abstract vision of the good polity. Both kind ofmovements aim at transforming society by introducing new discourses whichsolicit a particular public sphere to become aware of its own limits andopportunities. Both represent creative activities trying to link the past – whathas already been achieved – with a vision of the future – what remains to bedone – and to motivate the public to undertake specific transformations.

As modern substitutes for the role played in history by individual leaders,avant-garde political agents are assigned the duty to awaken and developa national collective will by introducing and adapting ideals of justice toparticular cultural and political circumstances. The role of ‘avant-garde’ agentsis not exhausted in the application of a political programme that promises tofulfil the needs of particular groups in a given historical situation. Their workbegins with the process of discovering the ideational centre of production ofspecific discourses on political agency, subjecting it to critical scrutiny andproviding alternative visions on how interactions in the polity should beconceived. Moved by the plight of vulnerable subjects, avant-garde politicalactors try to expand the boundaries of solidarity within a given politicalcommunity. They draw attention to the injustice created by the exclusion ofparticular social groups and carry out initiatives to transform politicalinstitutions in a way that promotes democratic enfranchisement.

The historical relevance of avant-garde political movements consists in theirability to occupy the empty space between the critique of existing institutionalpractices and abstract ideals of social justice with a concrete project for theemancipation of society and the political construction of solidarity. In a waysimilar to artistic avant-gardes, political ones have acted as the critical conscienceof a particular political tradition and made use of the cultural resources that itprovided in order to bring into the public arena issues previously excludedfrom the agenda of institutional actors. Their political initiatives and discursiveemphasis on the contrast between the formal recognition of universal principlesof freedom and justice and the practical oppression of particular groups couldbe considered among the main artifices of the expansion of the democraticpublic sphere and of the enlargement of the bonds of solidarity. Owing to theactivity of political avant-gardes what initially appeared unacceptable toconsolidated elites or was considered over-demanding by the larger mass ofcitizens progressively matured into a persistent popular request for modifyingthe scope and franchise of democratic citizenship. It is through theconstruction of similar political initiatives that other fellow-citizens came toprogressively sympathize with the suffering of vulnerable subjects and thatinitially weak moral motives obtained political agency.

Consider, for example, the way in which the formal recognition of the idea ofhuman dignity in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man could go hand in



hand with the exclusion of women or workers from participating in politicaldecision-making. Or how one of the most fundamental assumptions of naturalrights theory, the idea that ‘every human being is born free’, coexisted foralmost three centuries with the institution and practice of slavery. Few peopletoday would question the right of women to vote or defend the legitimacyof holding slaves; few would have doubts condemning apartheid or racialdiscrimination. There tends to be general agreement on the validity of certainmoral standards and widespread sympathy with the victims of such pastabuses. Yet not so long ago several of these issues were subject to heated debateeven on the side of an educated public and few seemed motivated to act in theirfavour. The merit of political avant-gardes consisted in their taking the leadto initiate a process of political protest which made possible the applicationof such principles to domestic institutions and paved the way to the expansionof solidarity’s boundaries.

Think, for another example, about how women’s movements initiated withclaims for institutional transformation within a small number of countriesbefore they attempted to change international electoral norms. Despite theexistence of several suffrage organizations in the nineteenth century, a realinternational campaign was initiated only in 1904, when the InternationalWomen’s Suffrage Association was founded. Before that the struggle had beenlimited to a handful of groups trying to motivate the rest of the citizenbody, and national governments made concessions only on the face of strongpressure. Neither did such pressure emerge by itself. Avant-garde movementsled by female activists constantly engaged in domestic campaigns of ‘moralproselytism’ and tried to persuade other women about the importance ofparticipating in public life and shift opinion in favour of their own cause(Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). Only after such political avant-gardessucceeded having key states modify their electoral laws, did a ‘cascade’ effectoccur, allowing for subsequent reform in a greater number of states. In the caseof women’s suffrage, once a number of key governments accepted such poli-tical transformations, it was easier for domestic actors in other places to exercisepressure and introduce similar changes (Ramirez, Soysal and Shanahan, 1997).

A similar dynamic has been observed with regard to some of the greatestmovements for social reform during both the nineteenth century (anti-slaverymovement, workers’ movement) and the twentieth century (anti-apartheid,anti-colonization movement or civil rights movements) (see Finnemore andSikkink, 1998; Crawford, 2002; Stears, 2009). Domestic avant-gardes continueto play a crucial role in promoting human rights campaigns in developingcountries (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink, 1999). In all those cases the leading rolefor both persuading fellow-citizens on the exclusionary nature of specificpolitical practices and creating political occasions for protesting and modifyingthem was played by domestic ‘avant-garde’ movements: groups of committed

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intellectuals, social activists and enlightened political reformers without whomthe democratic transformations we are all familiar with would have hardlyoccurred. The means through which these groups tried to exercise influence inthe public may have differed as much as in the case of artistic avant-gardes,but the goal pursued by them followed a similar strategy. The construction ofan inclusionary and democratic public sphere through the promotion ofemancipatory political initiatives created the possibility of expanding theboundaries of solidarity.

The Meaning of a ‘Cosmopolitan Avant-Garde’

The struggle for inclusion in the polity of cosmopolitan imperatives iscontinuous with such historical efforts. Cosmopolitan discourses on globaldistributive equality can in fact be interpreted as one more political cause ofexpansion of the aims and scope of the polity, rendering it more sensitive to theconcerns of vulnerable subjects outside our borders and more responsive toideals of global solidarity rather than domestic self-interest. Applied to thecosmopolitan discourse, the concept of an ‘avant-garde movement’ can be usedto denote those political agents for whom the role of the state should not belimited to the protection of those who happen to share particular politicalboundaries, but ought to include in its franchise the interests of all thoseaffected by its own policies or by the global policies that it contributesenforcing.

But who might constitute the ‘cosmopolitan avant-garde’? A growingnumber of authors in recent years have documented the emergence of variouspolitical groups and social movements aiming to raise public awareness andbuild trans-national networks of protest against neo-liberal globalizationand in favour of more just and accountable international political insti-tutions (Della Porta, Kriesi, Rucht, 1999; Dryzek, 2002). Typically suchnetworks include formal organizations (for example socialist, social-demo-cratic and green political parties as well as trade unions), informal associations(religious or indigenous movements, land-workers and peasants’ organiza-tions) as well as various branches of international non-governmentalassociations (such as Oxfam or Amnesty International, Emergency) (Keckand Sikkink, 1998).

The role of these agents in transforming the polity in a way that promotesinclusion across borders and reflects principles of global solidarity seems to becrucial in at least two dimensions. First of all, emphasizing their very existencealready responds to the critique that cosmopolitan imperatives are unable tomotivate the citizens of a particular society on issues that elude their immediatesphere of concern (Lenard, 2009). It allows us to show, for one, that the citizens



of Western democracies may, and in fact do, participate in mass mobilizationsagainst, for example, neo-liberal and exploitative policies promoted byinternational financial institutions in remote regions of the world. Existingattachments, on this account, are hardly static: they can be expanded throughinvolvement in political initiatives of the appropriate kind. Just like advocatesof the welfare state have grounded principles of social justice on the duty toprotect the vulnerable without requiring any stronger form of identificationwith the victims of exclusion (see Straehle, 2009, also Goodin, 1985) cosmo-politan solidarity is politically constructed on the basis of analogous premises.

Secondly, by focusing on the role of the cosmopolitan avant-garde in takingthe lead to challenge the establishment of unfair international rules it ispossible to respond to a second critique that cosmopolitanism usually attracts.This critique underlines its inadequate reliance on limited individual actions tobring about large-scale global political transformations. The emphasis on thecosmopolitan avant-garde shifts attention away from the charitable initiativesand personal motivation of individual citizens and focuses on the activity ofcollective political agents acting as intermediaries between ordinary citizens onthe one hand and domestic and international structures on the other. As withhistorical avant-gardes mobilizing for inclusion in the democratic sphere, theirpurpose is twofold: on the one hand to make the citizens progressively moresensitive to public campaigns raising awareness on pressing global issues, andon the other to render institutions that require a shift in the existent way ofconceptualizing the relations between citizens and strangers more responsive topolitical claims.

Consider, for example, the recent call from activists in Europe and theUnited States to boycott the products of multinational companies which makeprofits by employing cheap labour force – in some cases child labour – inparticular areas of the Third World. Several campaigns of mobilizationincluding the organization of public debates and sit-ins, information andactivist demonstrations at the outlets of Nike, Levis, Gap, and so on, have triedto raise public awareness on the labour policies of such multinationalcorporations abroad. In many American universities, student associationshave organized rallies and educative events, occupied campus buildings, andthreatened hunger strikes, in trying to put pressure on their universities toend contracts with sportswear companies responsible for paying manufacturedworkers abroad salaries which did not cover even minimal subsistence needs(Young, 2004). These activities urged fellow-citizens to think about the ethicalconsequences of their preferences as consumers and to take their share ofpolitical responsibility in opposing exploitative practices promoted by multi-national corporations.

Consider another example, namely, the pro-migrant campaigns of interna-tional networks active in countries with restrictive immigration and asylum

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policies such as the members of the European Union, the United States orAustralia. Building alliances between unionized workers, immigrants, refugeesand simple militants these associations have organized international borderblockades, planned actions of civil disobedience in check-points andcoordinated information seminars on non-violent resistance to protest againstthe deportation of migrants, denounce the miserable conditions of detentioncamps and promote the extension of citizenship rights. The goal of such activistcampaigns was not simply to target the institutions responsible for the unjusttreatment of migrants at the border but also raise public awareness amongfellow-citizens about the limits of global institutional processes, which onlyapply to the free movement of capital and goods but raise barriers amongpeople. Connecting local struggles to trans-national networks of advocacy onglobal issues has proved to be one of the most successful strategies forpolitically constructing solidarity.

Clarifying how local political agents should interact with each other andwithin trans-national networks, what degree of inclusion in the statecosmopolitan movements should seek in order to make their claims moreappealing and to what extent institutional groups should try to influence civilsociety or involve its groups in electoral processes is a complex issue. Anadequate answer to this puzzle would require a more case-by-case analysistaking into account the specificities of each political community, its tradition ofsocial mobilization, its institutional past and prospects of reform and the waysits public culture has historically developed. The emergence of a ‘cosmopolitanavant-garde’ seeking to introduce global issues in the agenda of states andinclude global justice imperatives in the moral commitments of ordinarycitizens is, after all, a recent phenomenon. Yet, at this point in the process itseems that the real interest of cosmopolitan avant-garde initiatives all over theworld lies not so much in what the movement achieves but in what kind ofalternative discourses on social solidarity it manages to create; not in whatproblems it resolves but in what issues it problematizes. Without a widespreadpublic awareness on the relevance of a more inclusive democratic sphere,without a massive assumption of political responsibility on the side of thecitizens of both affluent and poor states, institutional processes required tofight unjust globalization processes would lack the popular support andrelationships of solidarity needed to be effectively sustained. It is the long-termissue of mass-political motivation rather than that of making concreteproposals in favour of cosmopolitan political structures (a question whichrelies on political practice as much as on normative argument) that our analysisof the role of the cosmopolitan avant-garde has mainly tried to address.

Someone may object to this normative defense of the role of avant-gardesthat a similar model of political agency may not always serve progressiveideals or that avant-garde movements risk taking politics in an elitist,



manipulative or even authoritarian direction. This is an important objectionbut it overlooks the fact that this paper is concerned with only one type of avant-garde movement: the cosmopolitan one and with a very specific source ofcritique to the cosmopolitan ideal: the motivational critique. The sceptics thatthis paper addresses do not dispute that cosmopolitanism represents a worthymoral ideal (see for one example, Lenard, 2009) and they do not argue thatcosmopolitanism is incompatible with democratic politics. They simply remindus that, notwithstanding its normative plausibility and political desirability,cosmopolitanism may not have enough resources to motivate global solidarity. Itis precisely this argument that the paper’s defense on the role of cosmopolitanpolitical agency attempts to challenge. Cosmopolitan avant-gardes need not beelitist; on the contrary they promote inclusion. They also need not bemanipulative; they stand for greater accountability. And far from raising anobstacle to democracy, they defend the necessity of expanding its reach.

Another potential doubt concerns the relationship between moral discourseand political agency that I have constructed above. In the defense ofcosmopolitan avant-gardes presented in this paper, ideals take precedenceand political agency is required to realize them in practice. Of course the claimthat changes in discourse pave the way to political action and that politicalaction leads in turn to progressively strengthening social bonds is historicallyand politically contingent. Often social movements have advanced more due topolitical initiatives built on existing conflicts of interests rather than relying onuniversal ideals of social justice (Stears, 2009). The success of avant-gardecauses depends crucially on the ability to speak to particular interests andexisting social attachments and combine short-term mobilization with forwardlooking ideals (Stears, 2005). In these cases action precedes moral discourse or,to put it more elegantly, political agency gives greater specificity and enrichesthe social meaning of moral discourse.

However, in the case of cosmopolitanism the opposite seems to haveoccurred. As critics point out: ‘we have been persuaded to believe in cosmo-politanism but we are not doing cosmopolitanism’ (Lenard, 2009, p. 2;Dobson, 2006). But the trouble with finding motivational resources to live upto our normative goals need not be deeply rooted in human psychology, it maybe a political difficulty. The defence of cosmopolitan avant-gardes articulatedin this paper takes issue precisely with that difficulty.

Conclusion

This paper started with one of the most frequent critiques cosmopolitanismencounters, a critique emphasizing its motivational weakness in the absence of

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a global ethos of solidarity. I explored the concept of ‘avant-garde’ politicalagency to illustrate how solidarity may in fact be artificially constructedeven within the nation-state, and I tried to further articulate the role of a‘cosmopolitan’ avant-garde in motivating fellow-citizens to cross-bordersolidarity. By promoting alternative discourses of political agency and byattempting to introduce political transformations in particular public spheres,cosmopolitan avant-gardes occupy an empty space between the desirability ofcertain principles of global justice and their motivational sustainability. Theycan address political concerns in a way that makes sense to every participant ofa shared political culture and they may use existing political structures in a waythat seeks to expand the mechanisms of democratic accountability beyondthose nationally available. Of course their modes of action and their degree ofinvolvement might vary across places and according to the specific features ofthe polity in which such attempts are taking place. However, the globalpresence of political agents committed to cosmopolitan principles of justice andscrutinizing the moral standing of their own states in accordance with suchprinciples, serves as a helpful reminder that constructing global solidarity ismore than a theorist’s dream, it is a reality in motion.

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