ABSTRACT
Solidarity becomes the natural glue of small communities that self-organize at the grassroots level and operate dynamically. They arise from a specific need and open the arena of public action for similar initiatives intended to meet societal needs. The attitude of solidarity as cooperation, therefore, becomes the operational basis for social movements that recognize democratic and parliamentary forms of executing power as failing to fulfill their real functions. The concept of solidarity develops as Tischner interprets social solidarity in the context of a concept of work based on dialogue. He characterizes work relations with employees understood as real actors; he stresses the primacy of this perspective over the concept of work understood in purely economic categories, as in predatory capitalist economies. A society that experienced the exigency of shouldering individual responsibility during the period of dramatic economic transformations following the collapse of communism deprived itself of the chance for civic development.
