This is a 2012 text, focused on my annoyance over the common abuse of the word “solidarity”, which was left unfinished and unpublished. Re-visiting the text for publication in 2025, I have merged in a strongly overlapping mini-treatment from an excursion to a 2020 text (the main matters of that page might also be interesting in context), made a cut as discussed below, and performed some polishing (mainly language). I have not tried to fill in the blanks implicitly left when I interrupted work some thirteen years ago, or tried to improve the dubious structure.
(Other mini-treatments might exist elsewhere: I have been annoyed at this abuse since the 1980s.)
The section on “true solidarity” initially began with
For those of us who are not members of a biker gang or the Marine Corps, solidarity means little more than the compassionate impulse that leads us to comfort a bereft friend; for Beezer and his merry band, solidarity is the assurance that someone’s always got your back. They are [i]n each other’s hands, and they know it. For the Thunder Five, safety really is in numbers.
and a vague mention of the Stephen King/Peter Straub book “Black House” (which features Beezer and his merry band = the Thunder Five). These claims have considerable truth, but could be argued to be partially off-topic—and the references are definitely too obscure. (My own first reaction upon reading in 2025 was “Who the hell is Beezer?!?”) I include them in this manner as a compromise and with the note that a reading of “Black House” could give some further insight into matters of solidarity.
The abuse of the word “solidarity” by e.g. the Swedish Left (“solidaritet”) is outrageous: “we” must show solidarity—by taxing others and giving to ourselves or our voters.
(Depending on whether the statement is made by a Leftist working-class voter or a Leftist politician.)
This can be contrasted with the very well-know Swedish–Finnish poem Bonden Paavoe (“The Farmer Paavo”):
The poem has a repeating pattern, where, over several years, something goes wrong with Paavo’s farming activities (be it floods through melting snow in the spring, hail in the summer, or cold in the autumn), his wife despairs and exclaims that God has abandoned them, and Paavo resolutely pushes through with hard work, ditch digging, and bark breadw, while selling off cattle to pay for new seeds. For the last year, the two first steps are reversed in character: the intended harvest survives the three misfortunes and his wife rejoices over the newfound happy days and bread without bark; however, in the third step, Paavo insists on bark bread, as his neighbor’s field is frozen. (With the implication that a portion of Paavo’s harvest will be going to the neighbor.)
Here we see solidarity in its true form: One party voluntarily helps another party (with which it has some group belonging in common) to survive dire straits, to overcome a particular problem, or similar.
Runeberg was a priest and Paavo’s confidence in God, in contrast to his wife’s despair, is another theme of the poem. It is also quite possible that Runeberg’s own intents were less on solidarity and more on “Christian behavior”.
However, a very interesting parallel in contrasts is that Christianity is fundamentally incompatible with most variations of Leftism through the inherit voluntariness of help in the New Testament, while Leftists almost invariably force others to “help”, whether they want to or not. This well matches the difference between true solidarity and solidarity in the mouth of a Social-Democrat propagandist. This is also the core difference on takes between, say, Conservatives and Leftists—Conservatives are often very much in favor of helping others, but on a voluntary basis, while Leftists rarely give the helper or “helper” a choice. (Other common differences relate to topics like whether worthiness is considered before helping, whether help is in form of “teach a man to fish” or handouts, and similar.)
I have vague plans on a more specific analysis of the New Testament vs. politics, but have, so far, been deterred by the need to systematically go through a very large text mass and to do so with an eye at correct and often metaphorical interpretation. The question, however, is interesting, because there are so many conflicting or conflicting-seeming takes even in the Gospels alone, as with the seemingly anti-Capitalist camel-and-needle’s-eye and the seemingly pro-Capitalist “Parable of the Talents”.
The word “Solidarity” (“Solidaritet”) also happens to be a catch-phrase of the Swedish Left: We must show more solidarity! The rich must show more solidarity! The tax system must be made more solidary! Etc.
As can be suspected by looking at these statements, the Swedish Left has its own rhetorical meaning for the word. The first example is likely in order; however, the second is highly dubious and the third entirely disconnected from true solidarity: Here it is no longer a matter of voluntary help, but of enforced “help”. Indeed, looking at many Leftist voters, “solidarity” does not even imply that group A forces group B to “help” group C, but that group C, itself, forces group B to “help”. The alleged solidarity has then degenerated to nothing more than theft hidden by thin rhetoric.
Concerning the first example (“We must show more solidarity!”):
Firstly, I stress that my approval is with regard to the use of the word from a semantic point of view. Whether I approve of the message is a different matter entirely, and will depend on the details of intents and context.
Secondly, even such claims are often highly dishonest, misleading, or otherwise worthy of condemnation, because the “we” is abused to consist of the single speaker and the millions of tax-payers (for whom he presumes to speak without waiting for their opinion)—or, even, just the millions of tax-payers, because the speaker might actually be unaffected by or outright benefit from whatever suggestion should be justified by the claim. This, of course, is still fake solidarity in sheep’s clothing.
A radical contrast is formed by the Vulcan mantra “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”: To my recollection of the various Star-Trek series, it is never used to force an individual or a small group to sacrifice for the larger group—it is always the quoter who sacrifices himself. Here we see a mentality far more similar to Paavo’s than that of the average Leftist party.
An interesting aspect of (pseudo-)solidarity on the Swedish Left, is that it is applied hypocritically:
Within Sweden, the (in a global comparison well off) Leftist voters/parties are all in favour of a transfer of wealth from the “rich” to the “poor”.
However, when it comes to a transfer of wealth from rich Sweden to e.g. poor African countries, the interest is far, far smaller—and an election has never been won by promising to transfer money away from Sweden (and, thereby, from the Leftist voters).
It must not be denied that Sweden is, per capita, one of the countries that attempt (whether successfully is another matter) the greatest help of third-world countries. However, this help is dwarfed by the internal transfers of wealth—despite international transfers being far easier to justify when applying principles like “From everyone according to his ability; to everyone according to his need.” or “Help the unfortunate.” (note that when comparing different countries sheer luck has a far greater, and individual skill and effort a far smaller, effect on the individual’s situation that it has within one single country).
Bonden Paavo also illustrates the principle that those who themselves are, or have previously been, in need can be more likely to help others. Whether this principle holds in real life is unclear to me, but there are plenty of claims in this direction. Factoring in that “Adversity builds character.”, a few years of hardship in life might actually be a good thing—in particular, among those who grow wealthy later in life. (However, not something that should be forced upon others using this line of reasoning.) Annoyingly, even most of the Leftists who see themselves as the “poor” to be helped by the “rich” have led very comfortable lives—but lack the comparison with the truly poor to understand this. Even among those who actually are (objectively and indisputably) poor, very few have it as bad as far larger groups just one or two hundred years ago.
The poem makes no mention of whether the neighbor had earlier helped Paavo. However, speculation on this demonstrates that there might be two types of (true) solidarity: Self-less help and help based on the hope for a later tit-for-tat (possibly, including scenarios where the later helper is someone else than the earlier helpee). Of course, even an absence of prior help need not be a mark against the neighbor—it might simply have been that he had the same problems as Paavo in the preceding years.
A particular outrageous example is the German Solidaritätszuschlagw:de: Explicitly claiming solidarity in the very name of the additional, arbitrary, and very often criticized tax, it is nothing but a forced redistribution of wealth from the West of Germany to the East—remaining more than twenty years after the reunification.
By 2025, we are closing on 35 years, also making this a very good illustration of how allegedly “temporary” taxes and whatnots tend to be permanent.
To make matters worse, “Zuschlag” distorts the meaning further: At best, the word can be interpreted as a “surcharge”, a something-for-something; at worst, it gives the impression of actually giving out something extra, possibly a bonus. By all rights, it should be referred to as ‘Steuer”, “Abgabe”, or similar (“tax”, “levy”, whatnot).
Further, I strongly doubt that this type of tax actually causes the alleged ear-marking of money (at least, after such a long time). In reality, it is just one of the ways the government pulls money in—and where the money later goes does not actually depend on how the money was procured. (Generally, ear-marking income for a specific purposes is almost nonsensical due to the fungibility of money.)
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