POLITICAL ESSAY

In this essay, the concept of politics, its essence and its purpose will be analyzed.
Its beginnings date back to the Neolithic period, when society began to be
organized in a hierarchical system and certain individuals acquired power over the
rest. Previously, power resided in the individuals who had the greatest physical
strength or in the most intelligent of the group.
As you can see, politics is as old as humanity itself.
An analysis will also be made of the political field, seen as a microcosm, a kind of
separate world, a world apart, closed in on itself and it is there where particular
interests are engendered. This group is obviously made up of politicians, deputies,
journalists, political commentators, etc.
In another section, the concept of Republic and the different types of government
will be analyzed. In ancient times, political systems were generally absolutist since
all power was concentrated in a single subject. In ancient Greece, partial
democracy was practiced and Assemblies were held.

It was after the French Revolution that the political system underwent a change;
from that moment on, regimes with democratic characteristics were established,
where decision-making responded to the general will.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “Social Contract” will allow us to analyze the debate
between the public and the private. And finally, I will address the topic of Political
Administration in our country.
Aristotle[1] was the founder of political science, he considered it a practical and
sovereign science, on which the other practical sciences depended.
According to Aristotle, man appears as a social animal (zoon politikon). The animal
is also social, but only man is political. Man does not live in herds, he lives inserted
in the social organism that constitutes the polis, the city, and this is a natural
necessity for him.
All men seek to associate in order to remain alive. The first natural association is
the family, which is sought for procreation. Later, families associate with each other
to ensure their subsistence, and from these family clans the city emerges when
common laws are established among the clans for coexistence.
Between the city and the state there is a verbal correspondence which in Latin is
the respublica which is translated as civic things, what concerns the city: the public
thing.
The term Status means a position, an attitude, it suggests stability. Over time, the
word Status and public affairs gradually acquired the same meaning.
It is Machiavelli[2] in his work “The Prince” who incorporates the current use of the
expression “State”. “All states, all dominations that exercised and exercise
dominion over men, were and are republics or principalities.”

[1] (384 BC-322 BC) He considered that what he called the "practical sciences" such as politics or ethics, can only
be called sciences by courtesy or by analogy; because the freedom of choice of the individual makes it impossible to
carry out a precise and complete analysis of the issues to which they refer.
 [2] (1469-1527) The book was dedicated to Lorenzo II de Medici, Duke of Urbino, as a gift. This book is still fully
relevant today, once the concepts have been understood and adapted to our times.

Thus, the word State replaced the other words used to designate the highest
organization of a group of individuals in a territory.
Let us remember that Aristotle linked politics with ethics in his work "Politics" while
Machiavelli revolutionized the exercise of politics by detaching it from its human
quality and leaving it as the "exercise of power."
He leaves behind the Aristotelian political animal and sees man as a beast: “There
are two ways of fighting: one with laws, the other with force; the first is proper to
man, the second to beasts. “A prince must make good use of beast and man.”
If men are the ones who exercise and apply politics, it is not advisable to give
advice to bring out the part of the beast that they carry hidden. For Machiavelli the
end justifies the means and he states it in the following way:
“Things should be judged by the end they have, and not by the means by which
they are done.”
"Let the prince, therefore, strive to conquer and preserve the State; the means will
always be judged honourable and praised by all, because the common people
must be guided by appearances and by the results of things.
Machiavellianism aimed at the preservation of the State and not the exercise of
power for power's sake.
Machiavelli said that a prince should not deviate from good “as long as he can,” but
“know how to enter into evil, if necessary.” The problem, however, is that politics
should not be the instrument of power, but the way for the powerful to exercise
good without having to resort to evil. Therein lay the Aristotelian virtue of politics:
politics as a service to the polis.

In general, politics is essentially the struggle for power; it is the phenomenon itself.
However, politics can also be defined as the art of facing social problems (or
avoiding them).
For example, poverty has always been a social problem but it became a political
issue around 1830, when the first anti-poverty political groups and movements
emerged. Similarly, slavery became a political issue when the abolitionist
movement gained prominence; oppressive working conditions in the fields and
factories gave rise to the peasant and labor movements respectively;
discrimination based on race and gender became a political issue when civil rights
organizations took to the streets; and so on.
Politics involves the power to lead, the science of organizing and the art of
foresight.
In general terms, it has been mentioned that politics is the struggle for power, both
within a society as well as in the broader context of society.
For other authors, politics is the science of the state.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,[1] conceived politics as the activity that aims to regulate
and coordinate social life through a function of order, defense and justice to
maintain the improvement and cohesion of a given social group.
Rousseau speaks to us here of a pact between the community and the individual
and in turn between the individual and the community.
Antonio Gramsci[2] for his part defined politics as the central human activity, the
means by which individual consciousness is brought into contact with the natural
and social world in all its forms, and for this reason sociopolitical relations would
survive even the disappearance of the State.
In fact, before the State was formed with its current characteristics, various political
institutions existed. In his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State, Engels states that the latter arose when society was divided into classes
(exploiters and exploited).
Karl Marx identified four types of State: slave, feudal, bourgeois and socialist.

[1] (1713-1788) “The Social Contract” What follows is the transformation of society. The Social
Contract program is based on the establishment of "a form of association (...) by which each person,
by uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before"

[2] (1891-1937) Italian thinker and politician and one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party.

For Marx[1] the State is a simple structure that reflects the situation of social
relations determined by the social base. It identifies the State with the apparatus
that the ruling class uses to maintain its dominance, which is why the purpose of
the State is not a noble purpose such as justice, freedom, well-being, but rather the
interest of a part of society that does not seek the common good, but the particular
good of the one who governs. That State is pure and simple an instrument of
domination.
We could summarize that the object of politics is the State as an organization of
power.

[1] (1818-1883) Marx's theories on society, economics and politics, collectively known as Marxism, hold that all
societies advance through the dialectic of class struggle.

To define the political field we will start from Carl Schmitt's distinction between
friend and enemy[1], as long as the friends-enemies distinction exists the field is
specifically political. Only the public enemy is an enemy.
Machiavelli mentioned that politics is defined as ruler-ruled and its field of study in
regards to the power of the ruler over the governed.
Each camp is organized around two opposing poles, for example right and left,
liberal and conservative. Within the field there is a distance between the two poles
such that all activities and discourses within that field can be interpreted
relationally. (Bourdieu, 1991).
They can also be a field of struggle and power, the political field is interspersed in
the social world (Bourdieu, 1981). The objective of the struggles is to change the
power relations that structure this field (Bourdieu, 1981).
The most important fields of social space are classes. There are also struggles to
maintain power relations within that field, that is, to reach the most advantageous
position.
Bourdieu's work on the political field was inspired by Max Weber (1956 and 1972),
Robert Michels (1970) and Antonio Gramsci (1974). Through them, Bourdieu
intended to give an account of the relationship between a politician and his voters.
He wanted to demonstrate the rules of the game in the political field, to encourage
people excluded from it to participate (Bourdieu, 2000). Its main aim was to
analyse the social conditions of political skills and communication strategies in
order to influence public opinion.

[1] (1888-1985) Politics is, then, a conduct determined by the real possibility of struggle; it is also the understanding
of that concrete possibility and the correct distinction between friends and enemies. The political environment is,
therefore, a means of concrete combat.

The public-private dichotomy serves to divide the universe into two spheres. The
public refers to the State and the private refers to the individual. The family, for
example, belongs to the private sphere, while the city refers to the public sphere
and is above the family. The public sphere is imposed by political authority as a
mandatory norm imposed by supreme power and constantly reinforced.
Private law refers to family, wills, property and contract. While public law is
represented by the constitution and is open to the public.
Within the public-private debate, civil society emerges, which is part of political
language and also forms the civil society-state dichotomy. (Bobbio[1], For a
general theory of politics, 1989) The state is born from the dissolution of the
primitive community based on kinship ties and the formation of large communities
derived from the union of many family groups in order to survive internally as
sustenance and externally to defend themselves.
The Marxist view of civil society is expressed, for example, in The Holy Family, a
work by Marx and Engels: “The modern state has as its natural basis civil society,
man of civil society, that is, independent man united to another man only by the
bond of private interest and unconscious natural necessity.”
Other theories mention that civil society refers to the sphere of social relations
(groups, movements, associations) that is not regulated by the State, understood
as the set of apparatuses that an organized social system exercises coercive
power. From a Marxist point of view, one can speak of civil society as a
substructure and the State as a superstructure.

[1] (1909-2004) Bobbio has analysed the advantages and disadvantages of liberalism and socialism, trying to show
that those who defend both ideologies base their activities on respect for the constitutional order and on the rejection
of anti-democratic methods, including, obviously, the analysis and criticism of the corruption that has characterised
Italian political life in recent years and the terrorism that he vigorously opposed during the 1960s and 1970s.

Aristotle stated that the true legislator and statesman should not only base himself
on what is best in the abstract, he affirmed that he should seek what is relatively
best according to the circumstances. Classifies the forms of government,
distinguishing them according to whether they serve the good of the community or
the private interests of one or more people. The first pure calls are: monarchy,
aristocracy and constitutional government or Republic, and degenerate
respectively from each of them: tyranny, oligarchy and demagogy, the law of the
poor. For Aristotle the ideal form of government is the Monarchy.
Aristotle defines aristocracy as “a government formed only by the oldest men.”
The third form of government is constitutional government, which is defined by
Aristotle as "the State in which citizens generally administer the common interest."
Ahead of his time and upholding current principles, he stated that stability and
politics depend on an equitable social and economic order.
As for degenerate forms of government, he mentioned that the worst of them is
tyranny, since it is the government of one for one's own benefit. He also classified
oligarchy as bad because it is the government of a few powerful people in favor of
those of their class and the least bad of these governments is demagogy, because
it is the government of the poor for the poor.
Aristotle is the founder of constitutionalism, by maintaining the convenience of the
government, for its exercise, being divided into three powers, assigning to each
one of them a specific function determined by the law, thus the representatives of
the executive power carried out the functions concerning the administrative acts;
the legislative power had the function of legislating, that is, formulating the laws.