Note 1256 — Chapter III · : THE SOLIDARISTS

It was in 1889, if we mistake not, that the term “solidarity” was proposed as the title of a new economic school in a lecture entitled L’École nouvelle. This lecture was published, along with others, in a small volume entitled Quatre Écoles d’Économie sociale (1890, Geneva) (L’École libérale, by Frédéric Passy; L’École catholique, by Claudio Jannet; L’École socialiste by M. Stiegler; and L’École nouvelle, by M. Gide). The characteristics of the various schools are summed up as follows: The one is the school of liberty, the other of authority, while the third is the school of equality. Gide then proceeds: “Were I asked to define what I understand by the New School in a single word, I should call it the Solidarity School. Unlike liberty, equality, and fraternity, solidarity is not a very high-sounding word, nor is it a mere ideal. It is just a fact, one of the best-established facts of history and experience, and the most important discovery of our time, and this fact of solidarity is becoming better established every day.”

It would have been better, perhaps, to have spoken of a new movement rather than of a new school, seeing the variety of schools, some of them actually opposed to one another, such as the school of Biological Naturalism and the Christian school, the Anarchist school and the State Socialist school, that have adopted solidarity as a part of their creed.