In this way, the common interest creates the rule of providing solidarity. In other words, being supportive in today's society means an act of courage and priceless, but fragile and selfish relationship.
The history of Western thought provides us with enough elements to understand such a paradox. Firstly, in Ancient Greece the city-state summarizes the concrete expression of the self-sufficient collectivity. For example, in Athens, political organization consists of consulting the 30 demos of the city, and not the entire people.
In this democratic government, citizens actively participate in decisions on matters of common interest; there is the right to consultation, deliberation, and resolution of issues of collective interest. The setback of democracy slips in collective decisions in favor of particular interests.
Perhaps this is why Socrates and Plato are opposed to democracy. For them, those who confuse good with personal taste cannot decide what is good for the city. Even so, the invention of democratic power remains the best alternative.
With the end of the city-state, democracy subsists in the Roman citizen (Assembly and Senate), but is lost in the medieval feudal regime. Modern bourgeois revolutions bring democracy to the fore. The nation-state replaces the city-state. The nation-state guarantees political rights, but how to guarantee the participation of all?
The solution is not participation, but representation, more linked to the party's directive than to the demands of the population. All this weakens the idea of justice and equality before the laws and the common and public good.
How to rescue a more representative and participatory democracy? The Constitution is for everyone and must be applied with severity. The political party must be a public instrument of the democratic process. Strengthen the participation of other bodies: unions, associations. Overcoming political personalism through rotation in power.
In fact, public issues are everyone's responsibility. Participation and equality are also ambivalent. The assumption of man's natural inequality establishes a fixed place for him in the social structure: ruler and ruled; philosopher-king, warrior and producer (Nietzsche, Plato); higher and lower states (Hegel).On the other hand, the democratic tradition of the Renaissance holds that all men are, by nature, free and equal, with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The recent historical perspective contradicts individualism and collectivism and defends effective personal and social freedom that allows the political participation of all people: ethical and democratic coexistence make human beings solidary.
On the other hand, there is a question here: are there free acts and thoughts? For most philosophers, yes, especially when freedom of expression, democratic experience, citizenship, justice and ethics happen.
Only in this way are democracy, freedom, power and people inexhaustible sources of social change. However, Rousseau warns:
All men are born free and everywhere they live in chains.”
In other words, social change only happens, in fact, when the people have access to education. Without quality education, any nation remains a slave, there is no freedom, civil sovereignty and even less solidarity between peoples.
Finally, without solidarity, what the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes prophesied will reign, “a war of all against all”.
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