Politics - 1 - [Draft]*

Image credit. This 19th century painting combines all the elements that are characteristic of politics. For I contend that acting politically amounts to monitoring, challenging, and persuading one another, with a view to maintaining or changing the standards of admissible social behaviour that govern a community of two or more human beings.

§ 1 Freedom — The Most Politicised Stage in Human Development

Freedom is a political phenomenon. Being an adaptation to the historical trend of individualism, freedom depends on the possibility of voluntary participation by every mature member of society in the processes of public decision making. What is more, in her everyday life in a free society, the individual constantly acts as a political agent in the sense that freedom accords her an unprecedented range of options to influence and alter socially accepted behaviour. Thus freedom is in at least two respects the most politicised stage in human development: 

in a free society, 

• (a)  the formal political order is geared to mass political participation, and 

• (b)  the individual is empowered to affect society in ways that previously were either (a) non-existent, inconceivable, placed under taboo, actively precluded, or (b) reserved to a small political elite.

§ 2 The Definition of Politics

We shall distinguish between politics in a wider and in a narrower sense. 

Politics in a Wider Sense

Politics in a wider sense is any effort to make one's social environment comply with one's needs. That would even include bilateral influencing, as in a situation where a spouse is trying to get his partner to accept his demands/desire—say, to attend a sports event rather than go to the opera. So, there are good grounds why we would refer to certain private activities in small groups or even bilateral relationships as "practising politics". 

Politics in a Narrower Sense

But, of course, this is not the sense in which we more ordinarily speak of politics. Politics in a narrower sense suggests the idea that people try to make an impact on what counts as acceptable, commendable or enforceable behaviour in a community, usually understood to be of rather large a size, even an entire nation made up of millions of people.

A General Definition of Politics

Human beings are social creatures that cannot survive without embarking on the kind of interaction with other members of their species that is aimed at and results in taking influence on one another.

Therefore, engaging in political activity is an anthropological constant, a trait of human conduct that is tied to the human being as an existential prerequisite.

We may, therefore, give the following general definition of politics, covering both its wider and its narrower denotation:

Politics is the exertion of influence of humans on one another—by force, stratagem or persuasion—with the purpose of establishing in a community the validity of certain rules and options for action, ensuring the admissibility, endorsement, toleration or enforcement of certain decisions, customs, habits, convictions and interests, including established and novel rights.

Politics, then, may be characterised as the type of behaviour that is directed toward achieving acceptance—in a social unit or social relationship—of certain expectations embodied in norms, status, and compliant action.

If A bows his head and doffs his hat to B, while the latter is not deigning to look at A, this may be interpreted as a result of politics.

A is complying with an accepted expectation embodied in 

• the rule (norm) that 

• a man of lowly rank (status) is supposed 

• to demonstrate respect (compliant action)

• for a higher-ranking member (status) of the community.

 ★

Despite the general and timeless aspects captured by politics in a wider and narrower sense, politics undergoes a sea-change under the influence of freedom. There are, then, distinct meanings of politics before and after the emergence of free societies. This difference only underscores that it is politics that lends freedom its distinct character. 

However, before turning to the unique features of politics under conditions of freedom, I shall take a closer look at the anthropological foundations of the political disposition in humans. This will help explain how political behaviour is intrinsic to the human condition in a way that renders freedom a project of great political indeterminacy, whose outcomes are impossible to predict and resist capture by any single ideology.

Having established the central and in many respects invariant role assumed by politics in the human condition, I shall be able to spell out more fully my contention that freedom is the most eminently political stage in the development of human society.

Continued here.