Solidarity Economics treats solidarity as collective achievement—generated through democratic participation, liberation from below and egalitarian procedure. But procedural solidarity cannot ethically ground dignity, justice, or common good; it presupposes what it claims to construct. Solidarity must be refounded in participation in a “primary Good”, ordering roles and relations toward human flourishing, not aggregating shared interests.

The failure is structural. First, proceduralism is circular: equal dignity justifies equal participation, yet dignity cannot arise from participation—ground and consequence collapse. Second, procedural ethics treats persons as pre-social "unburdened" atoms while solidarity requires constitutive relationality. Third, lacking transcendent criterion, procedure cannot distinguish consensus from justice, shared flourishing from shared egoism, or charity from tribalism. Thus, popular solidarity rhetoric oscillates between voluntarism and moralism without adequate ethical foundation.

Personhood is not solitary substance but "being-in-relation": our identity is constituted through relation with others. Dialectical tensions—individual/community, freedom/responsibility—cannot be resolved procedurally but become generative when oriented toward the Good as mediating principle. Dignity arises from participation in the good itself which acts as a moral horizon - neither constructed nor imposed but realised through constellational participation. In Platonic terms, particulars instantiate universals through methexis: justice is not a negotiated outcome but dialectical orientation toward transcendent Good.

The necessary inversion: we do not generate solidarity; we participate in the Good, making solidarity possible. This is not a return to dogma but a shift from political proceduralism to participatory metaphysics, where the normative horizon is objective, not constructed. The common good is not preference aggregation but unity-in-difference ordered toward shared flourishing. The Good “diffuses downward,” giving intelligibility and direction to human becoming.

Solidarity often seeks removal of hierarchy, but authentic hierarchy is not domination but structural participation: higher orders exist to enable the flourishing of lower orders by mediating shared participation in Good, not exercising power over them. Solidarity is completed by subsidiarity —not decentralized decision-making but firm commitment to enable each person's unique capacity to become good, not satisfy preferences.

Solidarity without primacy of Good collapses into procedural formalism or tyranny of the majority. Only an ideal of an objective Good constellates persons into right relation, rendering solidarity binding, non-arbitrary, and genuinely common. We need a “metaphysical turn” to convert society from collective self-assertion into a political, social, and economic project of continuous integral human development.

#Leadership #Philosophy #CommonGood #PoliticalTheory #Solidarity

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