Solidarity requires structural changes that transform our society and give way to a sustainable future. We attain it when we commit our life, our time, our knowledge and our will to change a society that we dislike for one that is more human and just.
Just like the crumbling of the Berlin Wall surprised experts and media professionals, it is possible that this new revolution is taking place even if we do not perceive it.
The most important events in favor of human dignity, such as important religions or the workers’ movement were initiatives of commited people who risked their lives and vowed for change with a total devotion to others. What drowned their signs of identity and their capacity to attract others was their political or ecclesiastic bureaucracy in some cases. The recovery of their origins requires recreating volunteering and reinventing those processes that were traditionally called militance and devotion.
This form of social volunteering, compared to different ways of helping others that are equally valid, has its origin in the experience of solitude and of the awareness of social injustice. This leads to a reaction of responsibility and solidarity. The Welfare State weakened the tradition of volunteering by pretending that public powers were the only subjects of social life, that the workplace relationship was the only reputable one and that specialists displaced efficient actions that should emerge from the iniciative of the citizens. Everything remained under the control of the Administration or the market economy.
When the State looses its vocational spirit, society suffers its intrusion with the risk that citizens’ natural rights –not granted by anyone, but rather inherent in the person – are not guaranteed. The State administration organs should deal with promoting, recognizing and safekeeping those rights. That is why the development model that attributes social welfare to the State is injust and is no longer sustainable. It is necessary to look for alternatives in front of the “savage capitalism” or the “State socialism” false dilemma. The right to resistance becomes an obligation where the structures are not fair. Not doing so converts us into observators of the consequences.

José Carlos García Fajardo
Profesor of Contemporary Social and Political Thought. CCS Director
fajardoccs@solidarios.org.es