Politics might best be defined by the functions it serves. Politics is the dominant ideology and methodology used by the state to preserve and maintain its social order as a whole. Political ideology enables the state to manage conflict as much as it allows the state to strive toward all that is possible in light of its resources and potential. The modern state is designed to enforce norms, arbitrate conflict, plan and protect, and regulate relations with other societies. Central to these functions being successful is some kind of political ideology and authority that is chosen as the best by state leaders to preserve the social order. We will look at different views of politics (i.e., the state ideology) as viewed or promoted by men such as Karl Marx, Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Niccolo Machiavelli, Plato and John Locke in order to attempt an answer to the question of whether or not politics is more “Conflict Management” or “The Art of the Possible?”
Thomas Hobbes felt government and politics were imposed on society through a mutual social contract with those governed, those who by entering such a contract surrender much of their natural freedom and liberty in order for some authority to prevent chaos and maintain law and order. Karl Marx and Jean Jaques Rousseau argued that the state and politics were in business to manage conflict. Rousseau’s arguments proposed the theory that mankind is born free but he is a captive of the state and politics because they do not guarantee nor administer impartial justice. Instead, they are put into power by the wealthy and influential in order to protect the interests of the wealthy and influential from conflicts with the non-wealthy and non-influential.
Karl Marx took this concept of conflict management further. He proposed that all states are divided into classes, mainly a dominating class that is empowered over a non-dominant class which it exploits through ...