How is Politics Practiced Today? A Critical Look at Power, Elites, and Ideals
How is Politics Practiced Today? A Critical Look at Power, Elites, and Ideals
A Personal Stance: Detachment from Practical Politics
I cannot say that I have sufficient knowledge and experience of the practice of politics. It would not be right for me to write about what I do not know. For a long time I was only interested in history and theory. To be interested in practical politics requires a different personality and a different way of thinking, I do not have these qualities and therefore I am not interested in practical politics at all. I do not consider it moral because it is not appropriate and I am firm in my attitude. However, I can say that I have learnt something from my own limited life experience and mistakes. I do not intend to list them. I can only draw a few subjective conclusions.
The Centralization of Power: Acknowledging a Harsh Reality
Politics today (and unfortunately!) is mainly done by the big political powers and states. With the development of technology, the centralisation of capital, the increase in population and its concentration in metropolises - the effects of which, in my opinion, are much greater than is generally believed and 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 domination at the institutional-structural and ideological-technological levels have taken different forms. Therefore, in my opinion, to say that politics is carried out by great powers is not to agree with it, but to highlight a concrete reality and to become aware of it. Moreover, this statement does not mean that citizens should not and cannot be involved in politics. It can only mean what it says. Although a politics without power is an ideal, I do not think it has any grounds today, and like any decent person I respect those who "put it into practice".
I still remember the day I discussed the idea that politics is closely related to power and, moreover, violence with one of my favorite professors, now 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 objected to was this: "Politics is violence in the purest sense". As the years went by, like the water in a jug gradually evaporating, I saw with my own eyes that the arguments I had developed against my teacher that day collapsed and "evaporated" one by one. In fact, by the time I graduated, I would come to a point where I would see with my own eyes the close relationship between power relations and "violence" and the "politicization" of unbridled, uninhibited violence.
Personally, I still prefer not 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 try to live in the real world, to breathe in our own narrow world. In doing so, we face very difficult ethical and political challenges every second. We all experience this, because the conditions of life force it on everyone. And I am sure that most of us will choose the most humane of the options before us, the one that does the least harm to others. At least I have always tried to do so.
I think everyone is more aware of the effects of power relations today, at least I can see it, especially in those who claim otherwise. I can benefit from "psychoanalysis" as much as anyone else, so it is not difficult to see some things... Personally, I think that those who are most aware of this fact are those who openly deny it, and if we assume that they are "well-intentioned" (I stubbornly "prefer" to believe that they are), this unfortunately does little more than prove the clear ideological superiority of the political forces producing 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 most a simple essay, but rather the impressions distilled from my own observations of its current practical and world-historical form. Otherwise, we are all aware of what a lofty and "virtuous" concept politics is, and we have all endeavored to achieve it to the best of our ability and in good faith, rightly or wrongly. Before closing this paragraph, I would like to add that the existence of political powers, to which I am trying to draw attention in this article, does not in any way devalue the sincere efforts of the subjects who make politics with good intentions and sacrifices, who work and pay for it, on the contrary, it makes them even more valuable, at least in my opinion... I hope I have made my point clear enough.
Big Politics Defined: Strategies, Interests, and World-Historical Change
The developed and 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 to create permanent 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 Peloponnesian Wars) and to direct it in accordance with one's own interests. Indeed, we have seen many examples of this kind of politics, and it is not difficult to recognize them, especially for those of us who live in one of the world's major conflict zones, such as the Middle East. A world has collapsed before our eyes and everything we hold dear has been transformed into something completely different. At least when we see it, we no longer recognize it as it was, and the fact that something is still called by that name does not mean that it is still the same thing. In the course of the historical process, something changes quantitatively and qualitatively, moving 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, and even had little to do with what we are experiencing today. The left was something completely different, it was understood in a completely different way on the ethical-political level. Literature was very different. For example, the novel was the centre of attention and it was a social value to use the spoken language with care. For example, not everyone was called a writer... Today, many concepts and values have changed, 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. Failure to recognize this is in itself a kind of "mental blackout". To return to our subject, the political actors I have mentioned, which I prefer to call great powers, do not deal with relatively small groups that think they are "doing politics" (!) for a long time, but they can establish relations with them conjunctively. Conjunction is another important concept in politics, as is the concept of the state itself. These are really very difficult, "ambiguous" concepts; first of all, they are overloaded and cannot be easily understood even after years of reflection. In fact, there are thousands of concepts that I do not know and that I find difficult to understand, and I have to rethink them every day. The conjuncture is a combination of political situations that need to be interpreted and analyzed, and in order to be able to analyse the conjuncture, it is necessary to systematically interpret extraordinary data and to develop various projections for the future based on them. This is closely linked to the tools available and the quality (knowledge and intelligence) of the people interpreting them. Even a child knows that politics is not something done at a desk, but certain stages of politics are indeed done at a desk! For example, choosing the goal and the objective, making an appropriate plan, laying the foundations of the programme, determining the compatibility of means and ends, determining the strengths and weaknesses of the subject and other actors, using the means rationally in accordance with the determined goal and objective, and deploying the masses in the right place... Therefore, in order to carry out such a policy, it is necessary to have great means at one's disposal, which, in my opinion, constitutes the most rational and solid justification of the main argument I am defending. Such a "policy", which is implemented by analyzing the many forces of the kind I have mentioned and by assessing their possible interrelationships, also puts on the agenda far-reaching changes on a global scale and actively uses certain means to this end. We know that the great powers have extremely comprehensive and detailed plans for 20, 50, 100 years on how they are going to do this. Most of these plans are rational, i.e. those who develop them have a strategy for how they will be implemented and how resources will be used. But of course they can be changed by real, living forces. Not everything is as it is thought to be, nor is it possible to be. The forces that shape and participate in politics have their own histories, rights, expectations, political goals, 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 making "big politics"! When I first encountered this reality in all its dimensions, I was in my late twenties and, as an extremely idealistic and downright "naive" person, I persistently, stubbornly and resolutely rejected this obvious truth that had been right in front of my eyes for years. I was emotional and for some reason I 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. In fact, today I openly admit that I was wrong and I am self-critical. I apologise to myself before others. I apologise to my estranged family, to the social environment I came from, to my loved ones, to all the people who really trusted me and with whom I argued and fought in vain.... Reality set in and I was very wrong.
The Limits of Individual Agency: Acknowledging Power Structures
In politics it is essential to rely on one's own strength, as we have learnt. But overestimating your own strength always leads to frustration. This is true in all areas of life, including personal life. As human beings we all have ideals, feelings and desires. But there is also a field of imperatives that surrounds us, which determines the scope of our actions and the range of possibilities to which our choices are oriented. This field of imperatives is often based on the expectations and needs of the society around us, on material realities, and on another set of possibilities that have emerged from the choices we have made in the past. One of the most eloquent exponents of this is probably the Russian philosopher Gregory Plekhanov. Unlike his contemporaries, and especially the Russians, who rarely address the problem of the individual because the Russians have 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 because the individual is a foreign "Western" concept to them, and this is still the case today. In his dense and short pamphlet The Role of the Individual in History (2022, I recommend the previous edition of Yazılama), the thinker does not contradict the historical and social perspective that is also presented in the traditional tendency. Moreover, he constructs a relationship between the individual and the world that is so rigid and deterministic that, unlike his volontariste contemporaries (such as Lenin and Trotsky, or perhaps their successors?), he approaches an economic 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 be realized than others. The individual as a subject can choose only some of these possibilities under appropriate conditions, and the chances of success of these choices depend on the concrete conditions and the behavior of other individual subjects and forces making choices under these conditions. Let us recall Marx's famous statement: "only under certain conditions" (Marx, 2021). Similarly, 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, one only has to look a little more closely. In fact, because Lenin was a statesman who was able to perceive that the period in which he lived was a period of restructuring and conjunctural change similar to today, and who followed international relations very closely, he was constantly looking for opportunities and achieving the desired result. Moreover, in Lenin's world, although most of the big capital monopolies were exactly the same as today, the world was not as interconnected and ideologically influenced. Nevertheless, unlike Russia, the relatively developed European states could not overcome the economic and ideological influence of the great powers of the time. This situation must be carefully considered.
The Failure of Cadres: Lessons from the Soviet Collapse
No one can know everything in the best way. There is such an "inconvenience" today. Individuals may have very competent, bright and well-educated minds. They may also have favorable opportunities and conditions. But this does not make them a force in political situations. Groups of such individuals may not be effective either. It is worth recalling a question posed in a 1995 book. If a Politburo consisting of Marx, Engels and Lenin had been in power, could the Soviet Union have avoided disintegration? At the risk of speculation and even fantasy, such a question could have been asked years ago, and it was not at all strange. The answer is undoubtedly no. Once again, we must return to Plekhanov. No matter how strong the voluntary initiative, and given the circumstances at the time, this trio could not have risen to the Politburo anyway, because corrupt governments carry out a kind of reverse selection process 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 were such a thing, the Soviet Union would not have come to this point. A few simple examples will suffice 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. Although the Alpha and Spetsnaz teams, made up of the most elite members of the Red Army and the KGB, stormed Boris Yeltsin's summer residence at the entrance to the city, they left the scene without arresting him. They did not interfere in any way with the crowd gathered in front of the Supreme Soviet. The commander who should have obeyed the order did not and was dismissed, and the second one did not. However, there was no force against them except an unarmed crowd, and those who are curious about the effectiveness of armed elite units against an unarmed crowd can watch the raid on the Riga television station. If they can stomach it, of course! I can't watch it all the way through because I have a nervous breakdown every time. You can also see 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 this situation because it wasn't supposed to happen. The subject had no say in that structure under those conditions, or more precisely, 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 tendencies and networks of relationships that can help you find something close to the truth. If you know their interactions and history, you can make accurate predictions. I have met many people who claim to know best, but who can never admit that they are wrong because they have so much emotionally invested in their ego-affirming false conclusions. As a result, they gradually begin to distort reality and eventually become bankrupt. Being politically bankrupt is a valid reason for not being interested in politics, but I have seen very few people who have been able to do this, who have been able to control their passions.
The Corruption of Ideals: A Critique of Professional Politicians
Ideals and utopias are beautiful, possible and I can say that they are extremely important, at least for me, just like any emotion in a pure sense. However, for the reasons I mentioned above, it is inevitable that professional politicians, who do nothing but harm themselves and the people around them, will eventually damage the ideals and goals they claim to defend. They see politics as a kind of craftsmanship. But unlike real tradesmen, they only benefit from it and do not really believe in most of the values they claim to defend. The next day, they go to the 'lamb' with the men they fight with. Seriously, I have seen it with my own eyes. In my opinion, this type of person should have no place in real politics. The "politics" of such people is in danger of leading not only themselves but also the gullible people who fall into the error of believing them.
The Decline of Political Elites: A Modern Crisis
Today we can speak of a great decline in the quality of political elites. I do not think this was the case 50 or 100 years ago. There was a certain concentration of qualifications and equipment. We recognized highly qualified names, even in bourgeois politics... Today we see that phenomena such as post-truth and populism are, so to speak, "throwing quality over the cliff". They represent a great danger not only for the present but also for the future of societies.
Conclusion: Towards a Regenerated Political Culture
In conclusion, it would not be wrong to say that practical politics today cannot be saved from the disease of degeneration without highly qualified, well-rounded, not only educated but also well-trained, intelligent people who are able to put aside their personal interests. A person must be able to say: "I was wrong, I am no longer involved in the practice of politics, I have set myself concrete, cultural, theoretical or aesthetic goals for my life. He must have the foresight to show this. I think we need people and a political culture with these qualities now more than ever.
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