Lecture seven politics as power-part two
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The document discusses the relationship between politics and power. It defines three dimensions of power: decision-making, agenda setting, and thought control. Politics involves a struggle over scarce resources, and power is the means through which this struggle is conducted. Radical feminists and Marxists view politics as occurring wherever resources are unequally distributed, including within families and personal relationships. The document concludes that politics takes place at all levels of social interaction, from personal relationships to international organizations, as it involves the allocation of scarce resources.
Lecture seven politics as power-part two
- 1. MY LECTURES ON “WHAT IS POLITICS?” 2010 LECTURE SEVEN “Politics is Power and Power is Politics’’ “POLITICS AS POWER” (Part Two) As we have already discussed in my previous lecture that in essence politics is power, the ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever means. Today in this seventh lecture we will explore the dimensions of power and close connection of politics and power”. Politics is now at work in all social activities and in every corner of human existence. It “is at the heart of all collective social activity, formal and informal, public and private, in all human groups, institutions and societies.” In this sense, politics takes place at every level of social interaction; it can be found within families and amongst small groups of friends just as much as amongst nations and on the global stage. This view is being made popular only when politics is being understood in relation with power. Let us first examine the three dimensions of power. 1) Power as decision-making: This dimension of power consists of conscious actions that in some way influence the content of decisions. Such decisions can nevertheless be influenced in a variety of ways. For example, decisions can be influenced by the use of force, or intimidation (the stick), productive exchanges involving mutual gain (the deal), and the creation of obligations, loyalty and commitment (the kiss). 2) Power as agenda setting: The second dimension of power is the ability to prevent decisions being made: that is, in effect, ‘non-decision-making’. This involves the ability to set or control the political agenda, thereby preventing issues or proposals from being aired in the first place. For instance, opposition parties may exert power both by campaigning to defeat proposed women’s reservation bill in Indian Parliament (first face), and by lobbying parties and politicians to prevent the question of women reservation being publicly discussed (second face). 3) Power as thought control: The third dimension of power is the ability to influence another by shaping what he or she thinks, wants, or needs. This is power expressed as ideological indoctrination or psychological control. For example, the cultivation of ‘brand’ image by means of shaping the taste of consumers through advertisement. The food offered by MacDonald or Nerulas or Pizza Hut is better than ordinary hotels. American products are better than Indian products. • As we know that politics is about diversity and conflict, but the essential ingredient is the existence of scarcity: the simple fact that, while human needs and desires are infinite, the resources available to satisfy them are always limited. Politics can therefore be seen as a struggle over scarce resources, and power can be seen as the means through which this struggle is conducted. • Advocates of this view of power include feminists and Marxists. Modern feminists have shown particular interest in the idea of ‘the political’. This arises from the fact that conventional definitions of politics effectively exclude women from political life. Women have traditionally been confined to a ‘private’ sphere of existence, centred on the family and domestic responsibilities. In contrast, men have always dominated conventional politics and other areas of ‘public’ life. Radical feminists have therefore attacked the ‘public/private’ divide, proclaiming instead that ‘the personal is the political’. This slogan neatly encapsulates the radical feminist belief that what goes on in domestic, family and personal life is intensely political, and indeed that it is the basis of all other political struggles. • This view was summed up by Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1969:23), in which she defined politics as ‘power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another’. Feminists can therefore be said to be concerned with ‘the politics of everyday life’. In their view, relationships within the family, between husbands and wives, and between parents and children, are every bit as political as relationships between employers and workers, or between governments and citizens. In other words, politics takes place whenever and wherever power and other resources are NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, ORISSA Page 1
- 2. MY LECTURES ON “WHAT IS POLITICS?” 2010 unequally distributed. • Marxists have used the term ‘politics’ in two senses. On one level, Karl Marx used ‘politics’ in a conventional sense to refer to the apparatus of the state. Here Marx referred to political power as ‘merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another’. • For Marxist, politics, together with law and culture, was part of a ‘superstructure’, distinct from the economic ‘base’, which was the real foundation of social life. At a deeper level, in other words, political power is rooted in the class system; as Lenin put it, ‘politics is the most concentrated expression of economics’. Here Marxists may be said to hold that ‘the economic is political’. Indeed, civil society, based as it is on a system of class antagonism, is the very heart of politics. However, Marx did not think that politics was an inevitable feature of social existence and he looked towards what he clearly hoped would be an end of politics. This would occur, he anticipated, once a classless, communist society came into existence, leaving no scope for class conflict, and therefore no scope for politics. CONCLUSION: If politics is conceived as the allocation of scarce resources, it takes place not so much within a particular set of institutions. The lowest level of political activity is personal, family and domestic life, where it is conducted through regular or continuous face-to- face interaction. Politics, for example, occurs when two friends decide to go out for the evening but cannot agree about where they should go, or what they should do. The second level of politics is the community level, typically addressing local issues or disputes but moving away from the face-to-face interaction of personal politics to some form of representation. This will certainly include the activities of community, local or regional government, which in countries as large as the USA and India may well encompass two or more distinct levels of government. It also, however, includes the workplace, public institutions and business corporations, within which only a limited range of decisions are made by direct face-to-face discussions. The third level of politics is the national level, focusing upon the institutions of the nation-state and the activities of major political parties and pressure groups. This is the level to which conventional notions of politics are largely confined. Finally, there is the international or supranational level of politics. This is concerned, quite obviously, with cultural, economic and diplomatic relationships between and amongst nation-states, but also includes the activities of supranational bodies, such as the United Nations and the European Union, multinational companies, NGOs and even international terrorists. Politics, in this view, is everywhere; indeed, given the widespread potential for power-related conflict, politics may come to be seen as coextensive with social existence itself. NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, ORISSA Page 2