Ryan Kendall (Regent's Park): 'The more the merrier: Solidarity when pitting many people against each other'
Ann and Barb take a standardised test where the university only admits whoever scores higher. Hussain (2020) highlights that when Ann and Barb are “pitted against each other”, they cannot be in solidarity (e.g., Ann cannot root for Barb’s success because Barb’s success entails Ann’s failure). Hussain argues that institutions incur a moral deficit when pitting people against each other. While Hussain analyses solidarity when two people are pitted against each other, this paper analyses solidarity when many people are pitted against each other. Here are the results. When four people are pitted against each other, each participant has a non-zero degree of solidarity with each other participant. Higher degrees of solidarity are available when more participants are involved. With around one-hundred participants, each participant has a virtually full degree of solidarity with each other participant. Since solidarity differs when two or many are pitted against each other, so does the moral deficit incurred by adopting such a scheme. Since pitting many people against each other offers high degrees of solidarity, adopting such a scheme is consistent with Hussain’s “Estrangement Account” of political morality. Therefore, institutions pitting many people against each other incur no moral deficit related to solidarity.
