Wege zur Solidarität

Der französische Herbst und die Krise der Linken

Abstract

The recent strike movement in France has been seen either as a combat of public sector employees willing to save their material privileges or - in contrast - as a generalized political protest in defense of national institutions and against economic globalization. There was also !arge discord in the weakened French left about whether or not to support the movement. In this mticle it is argued that behind this discord we can see different conceptions of what should be leftist solidarity, each of them being restricted to one of its basic dimensions: the ethical and the utilitaristic one. lt will be shown that along these lines we find a deep cleavage between the academic and the syndicalistic part of the French left in which trade unions figure as social movcment organisations and therefore account for the political character of the strike movemcnt. Despite their structural capacity to enrich pattcms of group interest with ethical reasoning, these organisations fail in what has bccn offercd by thc course of the movement and scems tobe the only way out of crisis: that is confronting the two dimensions of solidarity in a deliberative setting of Ieftist politics.