Decline of Political Ideas

 

The previous post Global Decline treated the level of politics in the meaning of how maturely politics is carried out in the rule of countries during modernities. In the present post I will look into the content of political thought. The figure shows this distinction and illustrates the different paths of development of the two concepts.

 

Politics can be defined in several ways. In a broad sense politics concerns the relation between groups of people like estates or classes and the tactics, strategies and ideas involved in handling these relations. This no matter if the relations are harmonious or characterized by conflicts. Understood in this way humanity has always had politics, both in and outside civilizations. In most of world history politics in this sense has concerned the question of power. Which group and which individual rules who. This is also the case for the greatest part of the history of civilisations despite their more advanced thinking.

 

In a more strict meaning politics is about political ideas or ideologies. Realistic or utopian ideas about the best way to organize and rule societies. In this sense politics is something primarily characterising civilizations’ modernities. This type of politics is not primarily about power. Even though as illustrated in Animal Farm we have very often seen that it degenerates because of the wishes for power by a person or a group, the ideas remain dominant.

 

Thus before modernity the question of power dominates politics. The upheavals in the 17^th century e.g. the English Revolutions and the Fronde in France, were about the distribution of power between king, nobility and gentry. But from the American and French Revolutions which mark the beginning of our modernity, ideas about society and distribution of wealth became decisive.

 

This lasts until a time around eight decades before the end of modernity. From then the question of ideas is gradually again replaced by the question of power. This happens through a process of political simplification and polarization, something which we are experiencing now. In the end, after modernities people and historians will be unable to understand the content and the extent of politics based on ideas. They will typically interpret their own and other past modernities as having been competition for personal power. In our civilization we will reach this level of lack of understanding around 2200, i.e. one century after the end of our modernity.

 

As illustrated in the figure above, politics based on ideas and the public interest in them remain at a constant high level throughout most of a modernity. Clearly this level is not the same as the degree of maturity with which these ideas are implemented. But as we will see below, during their decline in the end of a modernity the two developments converge.

 

Examples of such ideas or ideologies range from Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social over different varieties of Liberalism, capitalism, Marxism or Socialism to Fascism. But also the political programs of political parties are examples. Such ideologies or clusters of ideas are what the French philosopher Lyotard called Grand Narratives. As pointed out by him and others, these ideologies are loosing their attraction in the present late or “post” modern era.

 

This process may be seen in the following way:

An ideology consists of a number of opinions about past, present and desirable future conditions and means to realize the latter. Viewed in a schematic manner these opinions represent different dimensions, where each opinion is somewhere on an axis. Abortion or the desire for money can be seen as good or bad or somewhere between these poles. The entire ideology consists of a more or less complicated structure of such dimensions held together by a narrative which explains and justifies them. Many political parties have identified themselves with specific versions of ideologies. The individuals in a society also have their own set of opinions or dimensions on different topics. Their degree of adherence to a certain ideology or political party is based on the degree of overlap between their opinions with those of the ideology or party.

 

Of course all this is pretty banal. It becomes more interesting when put in a historical context. In contrast to the complicated picture of ideologies in modernities, the political opinions before the Age of Enlightenment were relatively simple and mostly concerned to which person or group power should belong. Then came two centuries dominated by true ideologies. Now nearing the end of our modernity we see certain trends simplifying and ultimately dissolving the complicated political thinking based on ideas or ideologies.

 

There are several reasons behind the political simplifications. One cause is probably that as with old fashions people get tired of old ideas. Another is that through development the societies and hence the thinking about them become increasingly complex. Many people including politicians find this difficult to grasp no matter the intellectual hyper-reflexivity postulated by Giddens. This is even more the case for non-intellectuals. It may lead to the political indifference postulated by thinkers like Lyotard. But what is worse, there is also another reaction; the well-known wish for simple solutions.

 

Applied to the mentioned dimensions of political opinion the simplifications can be summarized as five trends:

 

1] The number of political questions or dimensions regarded as important is reduced to a few. Then a political world view can easily be remembered and formulated as a handful of slogans.

 

2] More and more often people place their opinion concerning each of the dimensions at one of the extreme poles. The nuances between them are lost. You are either pro-choice or pro-life.

 

3] The dimensions tend to collapse i.e. become tied together. If you mean one thing on a certain topic, then your meaning on other topics is given. You loose more nuances in this way as opinions become rigidly locked together. If you are pro-life you are also pro-gun and anti-Obama-care.

 

4] Often one of the dimensions become dominant and all-decisive, and thereby it determines the rest of the group of interlocked opinion-dimensions. For Evangelicals abortion has often been the dominant dimension leading to other opinions and to a vote for Donald Trump despite his obvious sins.

 

Clearly trends 2], 3] and 4] together come close to being a definition of extreme political polarization, and all four can be seen in present politics in many countries.

 

When we make historical comparisons with previous civilizations or we simply extrapolate a fifth trend becomes clear:

5] Increasingly the dominant dimension will be the question of who is the leader; who shall rule the country? The person who should is then seen as only good and without faults. The person at the other pole of this dimension, the one who should not rule is viewed as utterly evil. Donald Trump is a good example of this personalization of politics. But the trend is a general phenomenon as can be seen in many populist and autocratic rulers around the World.

 

Voters, parties and demagogues mutually reinforce the five trends. Typically parties start exploiting and  thereby amplify the simplifications which are spreading in the population. Then politicians begin to believe their own lies. Demagogues start to exploit both voters and parties. In our modernity where the elites mentally are now approaching the level of the population, even intelligent and cultivated people and media are affected by polarization.

 

Political parties fall into their own trap. Even though the parties themselves initially may not be that polarized, they use polarizations of the electorate to gain votes by making the divisions more extreme, placing themselves and the opponents at the opposite extreme poles of the dimensions. Thereby the parties demonize each other. Now it is difficult to retreat from their own rhetoric if they want to keep their new voters satisfied. And sooner or later simple cognitive mechanisms make the politicians of the parties identify with their simplifying and polarizing rhetoric. Thus what was initially tricks to fool voters have become reel characteristics of the parties.

 

Denmark is right now carrying out an interesting experiment. Especially since the beginning of the Corona-pandemic this country was well underway to American conditions. The political parties had made many voters believe that their opponents were wholly bad. Social media were filled with outright hatred. But the parties had not yet become fully identified with their rhetoric. Now after the recent elections they have showed incredible courage by forming a coalition government consisting of both sides of the division. It will be interesting to follow whether this will also reverse the polarization of the electorate or the feelings of betrayal will cost so many voters that the experiment will fail.

 

Another trap is if parties rely on a populist demagogue as a tool to gain voters. They risk that the tool reduces the party to become his or her own tool.

 

Presently, political opinions are still of great importance. It is also a fact that throughout modernity persons often have been important in politics. But over the next decades the question of who is the leader will become all- dominant. This dimension will tower far above the more political dimensions. These will continue to matter, but mean less and less. As these lower ranking dimensions of opinion are tied to the dominant dimension of the leader, this person can change policies anytime. Then we can no longer talk about political parties. In the end, probably shortly after 2100 politics will have lost most ideas and ideologies and will only concern power of persons and groups of persons.

Then modernity will be over.

 

As said, the ideological content of politics described here is something else than the level of political maturity treated in my last post. But in their decline the two developments run in parallel and reinforce each other. Or put another way: the same developments undermine both the ideas and their implementation. The Greco-Roman (ca. 330-30 BC) and our own modernity have a simultaneous decline in the ideological content of politics and political maturity. Both the simplifications, the polarization and the increasing role of persons are points of overlap. We have a dangerous mix where politics is carried out in an irresponsible manner which is without ideals and tries to reduce the complexities of World, society and politics to a few simple dichotomies. Wise strategies are replaced by opportunistic acts by the dominant leaders who alone decide. Complex societies cannot be administered in such a way. And this even less if one half of the population values the opposite extremes of the dichotomies.

 

As said, after the end of a modernity people and historians will increasingly wonder what all the fuzz and the conflicts in the three centuries were about. Like in a historical novel it will be reinterpreted as having had to do only with hate and love. Political parties will be understood as factions only fighting for dominance, heir leaders only aspiring personal power. But exactly this is what political parties and political groups and their leaders will have developed into. Several political parties in the World, not least the US Republicans are already moving in this direction.

 

Like in the previous post we may ask if the depletion of politics is unavoidable? The experiences from the Greco-Roman and the Oriental civilization seem to suggest that this is the case. But again the Song Dynasty (960-1279) in the second Chinese modernity gives hope. As we saw, this modernity did not move only up and then continuously down in politically maturity, but rather both up and down and up again. And when we look at the content of politics, polarization and personal power did indeed matter, but ideas continued to be immensely important to the end, not least in the form of the Neo-Confucian party. Thus in principle the present depletion of politics can be stopped. But this will demand responsible and courageous political elites in the leading parties.