History of political doctrines

Analysis of modern and classical views on the origin of politics helps to better understand the content of this category. It also allows us to present the general structure of this science as a complex of several disciplines.

The history of political thought originates from elementary discussions about the relationship between the ruler and his subordinates, between the state and the individual. The seeds of such reflections are found even in the treatises of Ancient China, India, and the East. But for most researchers the real history of political doctrines still begins with the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato.

Plato - the most famous student of Socrates, and later a teacher of Aristotle. He was a very enlightened person for that time, he created his own philosophical school, wrote many works. His contribution to the development of political science is to create the first concept of the state (albeit in utopian form).

Plato and Aristotle identified politics with the state, and the political sphere with the sphere of state relations. Such tough boundaries were due to the underdevelopment of this region, the lack of a multi-party system, the electoral process, the separation of powers and many other factors that exist in the modern world. At the heart of the political model of Aristotle and Plato was the city-policy. Its citizens performed two roles simultaneously: they entered the city community as a private person and actively participated in public life, in the life of the state. Politics was not conceived apart from ethics. Subsequently, this approach continued to prevail for nearly two millennia.

The further history of political doctrines is connected with the shift of attention of philosophers from relations within the state to those between the state and society. This issue only in its various variations from the 17th to the 19th century was considered by such personalities as Benedikt Spinoza and John Locke, Hegel and Karl Marx. Locke, for example, was the first to understand the state not as a form of government, but as a community of people, which is created to ensure that in society there is order, so that private property is preserved.

In the 18th century the history of political doctrines was supplemented by new ideas introduced by the French philosopher Charles Louis Montesquieu. In the book "On the spirit of laws" he pointed out that the conditions for the development of this sphere are influenced not only by social, but also by extra-social factors (geographic, demographic, climatic and others). Montesquieu suggested that the size of the territory affects the nature of political forms. For example, the empire should be located on a huge area, for the monarchy is quite average, but the republic will last longer on a small one, otherwise it will fall apart.

The history of political doctrines of the 18-19 centuries is characterized by a significant change in the vision of the actors participating in the life of society, the boundaries of their activity. If previously the main actors were monarchs and nobles, now, under the influence of ideas of J.-J. Rousseau, the masses of the common people were drawn into social life.

During the same period, the first political parties, trade unions and electoral systems appeared in Northern Europe and in some European countries . All these events created the prerequisites for a modern, new (but not unified) approach to understanding the structure of society.

In the last decades of the 20th century, Marxist theory collapsed , reducing politics to economic processes. But in practice, something else has happened. Annually developing, politics more and more moved away from economic interests, replacing them with postmaterial bases of public activity. There were characteristic only for her properties, the laws of functioning and development.

Almost all modern models of political life take into account the concept of Weber's policy, which is absolutely the opposite of Marxism. He considered her to be a field of relations in society about power, since everyone seeks to either lead, or at least somehow participate in the process.