What in heaven’s name is politics?

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Little Johnny goes to his dad and asks, “Dad, what is politics?”

Dad says, “Well son, let me try to explain it to you this way. I’m the breadwinner of the family, so let’s call me ‘Capitalism’. Mummy is the administrator of the money, so we’ll call her ‘The Government’. We’re here to take care of your needs, so we’ll call you ‘The People’. The nanny… well… consider her ‘The Working Class’. Your baby brother, we’ll call him ‘The Future’.”

“Now go and think about this and see if it makes sense.”

So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what his Dad has just explained.

Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying and runs to his room only to find that his diapers are very soiled. So the little boy goes to his parents’ room. Mom is sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny’s room. Finding the door locked, he looks through the peephole and sees his father in bed with the nanny.

He gives up and goes back to bed.

The next morning, Little Johnny says to his father, “Dad, I think I now understand what politics is.”

“Good son, tell me in your own words then what politics is.”

“Well, while Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is sound asleep, the People are being ignored and the Future is in deep shit,” says Little Johnny. (Source: the Internet)

On hearing the word POLITICS, what usually springs to mind are images of government, politicians and their policies, or more negatively, the idea of corruption and dirty tricks. The actual definition seems to have been obscured and almost lost by such representations and clichés that tend to distract one from the true essence of this thing called politics.

In order to make an attempt at a definition of politics, a systematic approach is required. To understand the origins of politics, a brief historical overview should first be considered.

The word politics comes from the Greek word ‘polis’, meaning the state or community as a whole. The concept of the ‘polis’ was an ideal state and came from the writings of great political thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle. In his novel ‘The Republic’, Plato describes the ideal state and the means to achieve it. Hence, the word politics originally has connotations in the ways in which to create the ideal society.

An ideal society, in practice, is a rather difficult aim or maybe even an impossible aim to achieve. Politics implies measures which could and should, in the views of their devisor, be implemented in the hope to create a better society, than that which is already present. The very fact that Plato and Aristotle saw imperfections in the societies in which they lived prompted them to write their political philosophies. These philosophies provided the first written recognition of politics.

In his writings in ‘The Politics’, Aristotle states that “Man is by nature a political animal” — meaning, it lies deep within the instinct of man. It is almost primal. Due to his nature, man should consider and realise his role within the ‘polis’. So, according to Aristotle, Politics is not a dreamt-up concept, but rather an inherent feature of mankind.

The Brainy Dictionary defines politics as follows:

The management of a political party; the conduct and contests of parties with reference to political measures or the administration of public affairs; the advancement of candidates to office; in a bad sense, artful or dishonest managementto secure the success of political candidates or parties; political trickery.

The Laborlawtalk Encyclopedia in turn says this:

Politics is the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions including corporate, academic, and religious. Political science is the study of political behaviour and examines the acquisition and application of power, i.e. the ability to impose one’s will on another.

When we talk about politics we also refer to ‘The Art of Politics’. We know now what the word ‘Politics’ means. What does ‘Art’ then mean?

The Laborlawtalk Encyclopedia defines ‘Art’ as follows:

The employment of means to accomplish some desired end; the adaptation of things in the natural world to the uses of life; the application of knowledge or power to practical purposes.

Skillful plan; device; cunning; artifice; craft.

Since we are attempting to understand what politics means, then maybe we should also understand the meaning of the word ‘Democracy’, the concept touted by all politicians, though when they accede power they very seldom practice what they preach.

Democracy is a form of government under which the power to alter the laws and structures of government lies, ultimately, with the citizenry. Under such a system, legislative decisions are made by the people themselves or by representatives (Wakil Rakyat) who act through the consent of the people, as enforced by elections and the rule of law.

The term ‘Democracy’ — or more precisely, the original, ancient Greek, version of the word — was coined and the system of citizen rule invented thousands of years ago.

The Greek cities were originally monarchies, although many of them were very small and the term ‘King’ for their rulers is misleadingly grand. In a country always short of farmland, power rested with a small class of landowners who formed a warrior aristocracy fighting frequent petty inter-city wars over land. But the rise of a mercantile class (shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680) introduced class conflict into the larger cities. From 650 onwards, the aristocracies were overthrown and replaced by populist leaders called tyrants (tyrranoi), a word which did not have the modern meaning of oppressive dictators.

By the 6th century, several cities had emerged as dominant in Greek affairs: Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. Each of them had brought the surrounding rural areas and smaller towns under their control. Athens and Corinth had became major maritime and mercantile powers by then. Athens and Sparta developed a rivalry that dominated Greek politics for generations.

In Sparta, the landed aristocracy retained their power, and the constitution of Lycurgus (about 650) entrenched their power and gave Sparta a permanent militarist regime under a dual monarchy. Sparta dominated the other cities of the Peloponnese and formed alliances with Corinth and Thebes.

In Athens, by contrast, the monarchy was abolished in 683 and reforms of Solon established a semi-constitutional system of aristocratic government. The aristocrats were followed by the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons, who made the city a great naval and commercial power. When the Pisistratids were overthrown, Cleisthenes established the world’s first democracy (500) with power being held by an assembly of all the male citizens.

Okay, so now we understand what politics and democracy mean. With this understanding, where would you say Anwar Ibrahim, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Najib Razak, Khairy Jamaluddin, and all those so many other Malaysian politicians fit in?

Maybe I will not answer you directly. Maybe I will just point to some of the key words highlighted in bold above and let you figure it all out for yourself. Take note that all politicians are political animals. And do all political animals have the same natural or primal instinct?