Group solidarity is the collective cohesion forged through shared hardship, the true engine of political and social power, which rises from struggle and dissolves through the comfort it creates.
The concept of group solidarity, most systematically theorised by Ibn Khaldun as asabiyyah, describes the mechanism by which groups achieve power. Shared hardship, common threat, and mutual dependence produce a cohesion that no institutional arrangement can replicate. This cohesion enables collective action, sacrifice, and the coordination necessary to build and maintain civilisations.
The paradox of group solidarity is that it contains the seeds of its own dissolution. The cohesion forged in hardship produces success. Success produces comfort. Comfort produces individualism. Individualism dissolves the solidarity that produced the success. The group that rose through collective strength falls through individual comfort.
This is not a moral failure but a structural pattern. The conditions that produce solidarity (hardship, threat, mutual dependence) are precisely the conditions that success eliminates. The group that achieves security and prosperity no longer needs the cohesion that security and prosperity destroyed.