How is Politics Practiced Today?

Photo: French National Assembly. Source, Wikipedia

I cannot say that I have sufficient knowledge and experience in the practice of politics. It would not be right for me to write about what I do not know. For a long time I have only been interested in history and theory. To be interested in practical politics requires a different personality and way of thinking, I don't have those qualities and therefore I am not interested in practical politics at all. I don't find it moral because it is not appropriate and I am firm in my position. However, I can say that I have learned something from my own limited life experience, from my mistakes. I do not intend to list them. I can only make some subjective conclusions.

1. Politics today (and unfortunately!) is mainly done by big political powers and states. With the development of technology, the centralization of capital, the increase in population and its concentration in metropolises - the effects of the concentration of population in metropolises are, in my opinion, much wider than one might think and are not sufficiently discussed - the influence of these powers has reached unimaginable proportions. The means of control have developed, their ideological influence has increased, and we have begun to see that the forms of control and control at the institutional-structural and ideological-technological levels have taken on different appearances. Therefore, in my opinion, determining that politics is done by big powers does not mean approving of this, but underlining a concrete reality and becoming aware of it. Moreover, it does not follow from this that citizens should not and cannot do politics. It can only mean what it says. I personally observe such a reality in today's world, and I think it should be taken into account; a politics free of power is an ideal, but I don't think it has grounds today, and I respect those who "put it into practice" like any decent person.

Just like today, I remember the day I discussed the idea that politics is closely related to power and moreover to violence with one of my beloved professors who has now become a doyen in his field. Of course, as an idealistic young student, I vehemently disagreed with him. I argued for a long time... The statement I disagreed with was exactly this: "Politics is violence in its purest sense". Over the years, just like the water in a jug evaporates little by little, I would see with my own eyes that the arguments I had developed against my teacher that day would collapse and "evaporate" one by one. As a matter of fact, by the time I graduated, I would come to a point where I would see with my own eyes the close relationship of power relations and "violence", unbridled, uninhibited violence, with "politicization".

Personally, I still do not prefer to see politics as a power relationship in any way. I find it contrary to my personality and the values I prefer to believe in. Unfortunately, my preferences do not change the reality we live in because we do not live in a world of dreams. We are trying to live in the real world, to breathe in our own narrow world. In doing so, we face very difficult ethical-political challenges every second. We all experience this because the conditions of life impose it on everyone. And I am sure that most of us choose the most humane options, the ones that cause the least harm to others. At least that is what I have always tried to do.

I think everyone is more aware of the effect of the power relationship today, at least I can see it, especially those who claim otherwise. I can benefit from "psychoanalysis" as much as anyone else, so it's not so difficult to detect some things... I personally think that those who are most aware of this fact are the ones who openly deny it, and if we assume that they are "well-intentioned" (I persistently "prefer" to believe that they are), this unfortunately does little more than prove the clear ideological superiority of the political forces that produce the effect in question... Politics in the sense that I am dealing with it in this article is not from a theoretical perspective, this is at best a simple essay, but rather a distillation of my own observations of its current practical and world-historical form. Otherwise, we are all aware of what a lofty and "virtuous" notion politics is, we have all tried to reach it to the best of our ability and in good faith, rightly or wrongly. Before closing this paragraph, let me add that the existence of political forces, which I am trying to draw attention to in this article, in no way devalues the sincere efforts of the subjects who do politics with good intentions and sacrifices, who work for it, who pay the price for it, on the contrary, it makes it even more valuable, at least in my opinion...I hope I have made my point clear enough.

2- The developed and highly influential states that I call great powers (it is also possible to call them superpowers, but since the concept has become quite vague today, I will not use this concept in this article, I will try to discuss the concept of superpower in another article) We can talk about "big politics". What is this "big politics"? It is the development of various strategies, the selection and use of appropriate means and methods in order to create lasting and comprehensive changes in the world-historical sense (we can trace the history of the world of mentality that this concept refers to back to Ancient Greece, just as another important sibling, the concept of "hegemony", can be traced back to the Pelopponic Wars) and to direct it in line with its own interests. In fact, we have seen many examples of this kind of politics, especially for those of us who live in one of the world's major conflict zones, such as the Middle East, it is not difficult to recognize. A world has collapsed in front of our eyes and everything we hold dear has been transformed into something completely different. At least when we see them we no longer recognize them as they were, and the fact that something continues to be called by that name does not mean that it is still the same thing. In the course of the historical process, something transforms quantitatively and qualitatively passes to another level of reality. For example, in my youth, the phenomenon known as the "nation-state" was something different from what we are experiencing today, in fact it had little to do with what we are experiencing today. The left was something completely different, it was understood in very different ways on the ethical-political plane. Literature was completely different. For example, the novel was a prized novel and using the spoken language with care was a social value. For example, not everyone was called a writer... Today, many concepts and values have been transformed, the value system of societies has changed, changing values are reflected in political culture, and this is mainly related to the repositioning of the major political powers in the world. Failing to recognize this is in itself a kind of "mental eclipse". To return to the topic at hand, the political actors I have mentioned, which I prefer to call great powers, are not interested in relatively small groups that think they are "doing politics" (!) for a long time, but they can establish relations with them on a conjunctural basis. Conjuncture is another important concept in politics, just like the concept of the State itself. These are really very difficult, "ambiguous" concepts, first of all they are overloaded and not easily understood even after years of thinking about them. As a matter of fact, there are thousands of concepts that I don't know and have difficulty understanding, and I have to rethink them every day. The conjuncture is a combination of political situations that needs to be interpreted and analyzed, and in order to analyze the conjuncture, extraordinary data needs to be systematically interpreted and various projections about the future need to be developed based on them. This is closely linked to the means at hand and the qualitative level (knowledge and intelligence) of the people who interpret it. Even a child knows that politics is not something that is done at a desk, but certain stages of politics are indeed done at a desk! Selecting the goal and objective, planning accordingly, establishing the foundations of the program, matching means and ends, determining the strengths and weaknesses of the subject and other actors, using the means rationally in line with the determined goal and objective, and massing in the right place... Therefore, in order to implement such a policy, you need to have great means at your disposal, which I think is as rational and sound a justification as possible for the main argument I am making. A "politics" of this kind, which is implemented by analyzing the many forces of the kind I have mentioned and assessing their possible interrelationships with each other, also puts on the agenda sweeping changes on a global scale and actively uses certain means to this end. We know that the great powers have very comprehensive and detailed plans for how they will do this for 20, 50, 100 years. Much of this planning is rational, that is, those who develop it have a strategy for how they will realize it, including a strategy for the use of resources. But of course they can be changed by real, living forces. Not everything is as it is thought to be, nor is it possible for it to be. The forces that make up politics and are parties to it have their own histories, rights, expectations, political aims, identities and aspirations for the future they expect for themselves. In short, it is a very complex and difficult situation, and not everyone is capable of "doing big politics!" I was in my late twenties when I first encountered this reality in all its dimensions, and as a highly idealistic and downright "naive" person, I persistently, stubbornly and resolutely rejected this obvious truth that was right in front of my eyes for years. I was emotional and for some reason preferred not to believe in the truth that I knew. But I was wrong, and it would be more accurate to say that I was deliberately wrong. As a matter of fact, today I openly admit that I was wrong and I am self-critical. I apologize to myself before I apologize to others. I apologize to my alienated family, to the social environment from which I emerged, to my loved ones, to all the people who really trusted me and with whom I argued and fought in vain.... Reality imposed itself and I was so wrong.

3- In politics, it is essential to rely on one's own strength, which is how we were taught. However, overestimating your own strength always leads to frustration. This is true in all areas of life; in personal life as well. As human beings, we all have ideals, feelings and desires. But there is also a field of imperatives that surrounds us, that determines the scale of our actions and the range of possibilities towards which our choices are directed. This field of necessities is often based on the expectations and needs of the society around us, on material realities, and on another set of possibilities generated by the choices we have made in the past. I think one of the best exponents of this is the Russian thinker Gregory Plekhanov. Unlike his contemporaries, and especially the Russians, who rarely deal with the problem of the individual, since they pursue original ideas that combine collectivism and absolutism within their historical traditions of thought, Plekhanov includes the concept of the individual in the equation he constructs, since for them the individual is a foreign "western" concept, and this is still the case today. In his dense and short pamphlet The Role of the Individual in History (2022, I recommend the Yazılama edition that preceded this one), the thinker does not actually contradict the historical and social perspective that is also presented in the traditional tendency. Moreover, he constructs an individual-world relation that is so rigid and deterministic that, unlike his voluntarist contemporaries (such as Lenin and Trotsky, or perhaps his successors?), he approaches an economist perspective. According to the thinker, historical and material conditions present individuals with only a certain set of possibilities, some of which are more likely to materialize than others. It is only under appropriate conditions that the individual as a subject can choose some of them, and the chances of the success of these choices depend on the concrete conditions and the behavior of other individual subjects and forces that make choices under these conditions. Let us recall Marx's famous phrase: "only under certain conditions" (Marx, 2021), right? Likewise, in the first volume of Capital, he speaks of an order built on the work of previous generations. In fact, this approach is constantly emphasized in all his works, we just need to look at them a little more carefully. As a matter of fact, Lenin was a statesman who was able to perceive that the period he lived in was a period of restructuring and conjunctural change similar to today's, and who followed international relations very closely, so he constantly looked for opportunities and achieved the desired result. Moreover, in Lenin's world, the world was not so interconnected and ideologically influenced, although many of the big capital monopolies were exactly the same as today. Nevertheless, unlike Russia, in the relatively developed European states the economic and ideological influence of the great powers of the time could not be overcome. This situation needs to be carefully considered.

4. No one can know everything for sure. There is such an "inconvenience" today. Individuals may have very competent, bright and well-educated minds. Moreover, they may have favorable opportunities and conditions. However, this does not make them a force in political situations. Groups of these individuals may not be effective either. It is worth remembering a question that was asked in a book in 1995. If a Politburo composed of Marx, Engels and Lenin had been in power, would the Soviet Union have survived the collapse? At the risk of speculation, even fantasy, such a question could have been asked years ago and it would not have been at all out of place. The answer is undoubtedly no. Here again we must return to Plekhanov. No matter how strong the voluntary initiative is, and at that time, under the circumstances, this trio could not have risen to the Politburo anyway, because corrupt governments do a kind of reverse selection in terms of their political regimes, and this has been the case since Rome, it is not possible for the Soviets to reverse the momentum. If there was such a thing, things would not have gotten to that point for the Soviet Union. A few simple examples are enough to illustrate this. In the August 1991 coup d'état, all the forces of the Soviet State seized power, elite armored units entered Moscow and turned their guns on the Supreme Soviet. However, the Alpha and Spetsnaz teams, consisting of the most elite members of the Red Army and the KGB, stormed the summer residence of Boris Yeltsin at the very entrance to the city, but left the scene without arresting him. They did not intervene in any way with the crowd gathered in front of the Supreme Soviet. The commander who should have obeyed the order did not, was dismissed, and the second one did not. They were up against nothing but an unarmed mob, and those who wonder about the effectiveness of elite armed units against an unarmed mob can look at the raid on the TV station in Riga. If they can stomach it, of course! I can't watch it to the end because I have a nervous breakdown every time. They can also look at the famous Bloody Yanvar raid in Azerbaijan. There is a kind of procedure for suppressing an uprising, it starts at midnight and ends in the morning. But that didn't happen in that situation, because it wasn't supposed to happen. The subject did not have a say in that structure in those circumstances, or rather, it was not that kind of subject that had a say there. We see such subjects committing suicide at midnight. In conclusion, there are infinite variables that influence politics and it is impossible to calculate them. However, there are certain trends and networks of relationships that can help you find what is close to the truth. If you know their interactions and history, you can make accurate predictions. I have come across many people who claim to know best and they can never admit that they are wrong because they have invested so much emotionally in their own ego-affirming false conclusions. As a result, they gradually begin to distort reality and eventually become bankrupt. Being politically bankrupt is a valid reason not to engage in politics, but I have seen very few people who have been able to do this, who have been able to control their passions.

5- Ideals and utopias are beautiful, they are possible, and I would say that they are extremely important, at least for me, as any emotion is in the purest sense. But it is inevitable that professional politicians who, for the reasons I have mentioned above, do nothing but harm to themselves and the people around them, will eventually undermine the ideals and goals they claim to defend. They see politics as a kind of tradesmanship. However, unlike real shopkeepers, they only profit from it and do not really believe in most of the values they seem to defend. They go to "turn lamb" the next day with the men they fight with. Seriously, I have seen it with my own eyes. In my opinion, this type of person has no place in real politics. The "politics" of such people carries the danger of leading not only themselves but also the gullible people who fall into the error of believing them.

6- Today it is possible to speak of a great decline in the quality of political elites. I think 50 or 100 years ago this was not the case. There was a certain concentration of qualifications and equipment. We knew extremely qualified names, also in bourgeois politics... Today we see phenomena such as post-truth and populism "throwing quality over the cliff", so to speak. They pose a great danger not only to the present but also to the future of societies.    

In conclusion, it would not be wrong to argue that practical politics today cannot be saved from the disease of degeneration without highly qualified, well-educated, not only educated, but very well-trained, intelligent people who can put their personal interests on the back burner. A person must be able to say, I was wrong, I am no longer engaged in the practice of politics, I have set myself concrete, cultural-theoretical or aesthetic goals to fill my life. He must have the foresight to show this. I think we need this kind of people and political culture more than ever at this time in the world.

Onur Aydemir

October 2024, Ankara