Question 1. what is politics ?
Answer.
- Generally politics has always been about state and government at it' s most basic and has involved the study of formal political institutions such as parliament, executive, judiciary and the bureaucracy etc
- Politics is thus a science and art of government and the basic political relationships: between state and individual and between states.
- In the Greek word polis, which means the community or populace or society. Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle saw politics as everything that is concerned with 'the general issues affecting the whole community'
- Greek concept of politics included the study of man, society, state and ethics and the subject was treated as a combination of religious and moral philosophy, metaphysics, a course for civic training of citizens and a guide to power
Question 2. Compare the liberal and maxist view of politics?
Answer 2.
The Liberal View - Politics as a Conciliation of Interests
- Politics is a part of the social process to manage and provide conciliation in such conflicts and thus for providing law and order, protection and security which according to the liberal view constitutes the fundamentals of justice.
- It has to be understood clearly that on questions of economic systems, liberalism is for free market capitalism and private property unhindered and uncontrolled. The later liberals particularly Laski were for a welfare state where government does play an important role economically but on the whole liberals are for a model led and dominated by private business with only the least participation of the government in the economy
- In the liberal view therefore fundamentally the individual is the real social entity and the society is artificial. Hobbes for instance called society like a sack of corn with the corns being the individuals who pursue their own interests. Bentham called society the creation of a social contract between individuals who are after individual ends. MacPehrson termed this concept of society the 'free market society', a meeting place of self-interested individuals, a society based upon free will, competition and contract.
- The liberal view as has been mentioned evolved over time. The early liberal view was that only the individual human being with his self-interest, enterprise, desire for richness and happiness and reason can be the foundation of a stable society. Thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith etc not just saw man as a selfish, egotistic being concerned only with his own self-preservation and not a social or moral being, they even argued, this was all for the best, because when everybody tries to promote his own selfish interest, the utility or happiness of society as a whole
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Maxist view of politics
- Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosopy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx.
- Man shall not be exploited by man" and where each individual will have the full opportunity to develop his or her personality and potential.
- He also was the first major thinker to stress on the historical exploitation of the female gender and the need for women's liberation.
- The most important themes of Marxist political theory are class division, class struggle, property relations, modes of production, state as an instrument of class domination and revolution by the proletariat. Marxism also suggests that rights, liberty, equality, justice and democracy in a capitalist liberal democracy are really only enjoyed by the rich and properties classes because the state is controlled by the upper classes who use the institutions of the state as a tool for class exploitation.
- He believed real liberty and equality can only be achieved in a classless and stateless society.
- Thus whereas Liberal theory provided the theoretical basis for a capitalist free market system, Marxist political theory provided the basis for the establishment of a socialist state through revolutionary action.
Question 3. Why
do we need to study political theory?
Answer 3 .
- The study of any social science is impossible without an understanding of the historical evolution of the subject.
- The political institutions and systems of political behavior which we observe today are a result of evolution of centuries.
- A political theorist needs to study history to understand this evolution. He does not need to study the dates and colorful historical details of kings and princes and the battles they fought and the lives they led but rather the growth and changes in the economic structures, in technological capabilities and the impact that had and in political institutions and ways of governing.
- Social classes, political power and economic processes do not emerge overnight and cannot be understood by examining them in isolation in their contemporary settings.
- One needs to study the history of political thought to understand the evolving relationships between man, society and political authority and indeed the popular perceptions of those relationships through history.
- The study of the views and theories of past political thinkers enables one to go beyond the dominant contemporary political orthodoxies and draw intellectual resources from the past.
- A reflection on the thoughts of past thinkers provides a guideline to actual theorist. Political theories thus emerge not from nowhere but is constructed by building, expanding and developing the vocabularies of the past author's texts. This also enables easy comparison and judgement between past and contemporary works.
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