The Priority of Solidarity to Justice

Abstract

AbstractRecognising and responding to injustices that benefit us is a pervasive problem of contemporary life, and arguably a mark of moral seriousness in anyone who presumes to take moral stands at all. In response, a number of authors have defended the view that such benefits normally bring with them prima facie obligations of compensation. This ‘wrongful‐benefits’ approach has considerable intuitive plausibility, much of it founded in the financial metaphor that gives it an appearance of precision. Yet while the compensation scenario works reasonably well in one‐off cases such as receiving stolen property, it yields incoherent results when facing ongoing structural injustices. In such cases ‘innocence’ is ambiguous and our status as beneficiaries and victims is complex. In contrast, solidarity — understood as a principle of equity requiring that we side with the least well off — provides a better account of duties to respond to structural injustice. In solidarity the agent follows the lead of organised out‐groups and defers to their judgment about collective actions to overcome injustice. Solidarity leads us to support the organised group that suffers from the greatest inequity. Solidarity does not use a financial metaphor and thus it neither requires full disgorgement, nor absolves us of further action when we reach the point of net‐zero benefit. Rather, solidarity is a principal means for ordinary citizens to promote equity by affirming the equal status of the victims, and to atone for having benefited from injustice, whether they did so willingly or otherwise.