Having spent a lot of time thinking about, and thinking with, the concept of "negative solidarity," it sometimes occurs to me that I should think about its opposite, about solidarity, as the necessary condition for collective action. I have read on the topic from time to time, I read Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix's book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World Changing Idea as soon as it came out. However, I struggle to say anything interesting about it for two reasons. First, as I argued in The Double Shift, capitalism has so undermined our imagination that it is difficult to think of any model of action than a purely individualistic one, everyday people deal with poverty, precarity, and insecurity, by endeavoring to work harder, to hustle, to find a side gig or scam. Working with others collectively is unimaginable, especially when that collectivity is mediated not by the wage form. Second, I am not sure if this default in the imagination can be addressed theoretically, or even through a historical recounting of times in which solidarity seemed easier to imagine, it is not a matter of theory, but of practice. Solidarity increasingly seems like something to do rather than ponder.
