374 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )in the plural is more accurate, since there was no single body of doctrine
constituting solidarism, in the manner of the Vienna School. Solidarism
instead was a loose confederation of approaches bearing a variety of names
such as functionalism or institutionalism. Th ree features shared by these
disparate perspectives justify their placement together under the single
banner of solidarism. One was an insistence on seeing international law as
an outgrowth of actual social relationships in the real world. Th is was the
so cio log i cal component. Second was the stress on the interdependence of
states, rather than on in de pen dence, and the general downplaying of state
sovereignty. Th ird was a basic optimism— and more specifi cally, a belief
that international law is fundamentally rooted in consensus rather than in
confl ict.
In its so cio log i cal character, solidarism’s contrast with the rationalism
and “purity” of the Vienna School was notably sharp. In place of the austere
logicism— the “pure theory” untrammeled by considerations of awkward
reality— the solidarists took an intense interest in the rich complexity and
diversity of real social life. It is therefore hardly surprising to fi nd that major
contributions to this way of thinking were made by sociologists and po liti-
cal scientists, in addition to lawyers— hence the appropriateness of “so cio-
log i cal school” as a possible alternate label for solidarism. Th e various soli-
darist approaches were in agreement with the Vienna School, however, in
rejecting the mainstream positivist support for state sovereignty.
One leading fi gure in the solidarist tradition had been active before the
War: the Chilean writer Alejandro Álvarez. Apart from him, the champi-
ons of this philosophy of law were all of postwar vintage. One was a Swiss
lawyer named Dietrich Schindler, who proudly proclaimed himself a sup-
porter of “the so cio log i cal method.” Th e German writer Wolfgang Fried-
mann, in a similar spirit, regretted that there had been, thus far, “a fatal ne-
glect of the essential social foundations of law.”
In many ways, the solidarists and liberals were close together, especially
in their shared support for collective security arrangements. Politis provides
the best illustration of this point, as he could be fi tted comfortably into both
categories. We have noted his views on collective security and neutrality. He
could be readily classifi ed as a solidarist, too, by virtue of his insistence on
regarding law as “the outcome of solidarity created by human needs” rather
than as a product of transcendental, eternal truths. In this, he expressly