By Michael Donelan
The breadth of political philosophies is a bizarre thing. Each of us are intimate members of political life, yet our communal involvement scarcely results in homogenous conceptions of what “politics” is. In a way, this is itself a deeply political situation: we come together with our own perspectives; our own theories; our own concerns and epistemologies and histories. Somehow, without exactly agreeing on what a “community” is, or what counts as “functioning,” we have to intellectually bargain our way to a functioning community.
Like how policies are unintelligible without the context they are conceived in, my particular political arguments lean heavily on my broader view of the nature of politics; this inaugural piece consequently has the unique (and cumbersome) purpose of laying out ex nihilo the foundations of my political thought. Its successors will engage with more specific and widely familiar topics, but this initial baptism in what might be deeply foreign thought is the mandatory first step. However, as you will learn should you bore yourself with my editorial series, authoritarianism and I find each other something loathsome. It would be wrong for me, then, to impress on you my own political conception as patent truth. Take it instead as a footsoldier in the army of idiosyncratic imaginations indigenous to any free society.
I understand politics broadly, as the causal principles that govern reality. I even contend that this is hardly a heterodox theory; I see it only as a generalization of the mainstream definition of politics, “who gets what, and why.” The conventional conceptions revolve around this distributive theme, conferring the “political” label on anything deciding resource assignment. But that perspective zooms in too far, cutting out the reason why distribution is political. It is that question that my own understanding answers.
When you see politics as the causal principles of reality, it places our intraspecies contensions in their appropriate theoretical context. Rather than a peculiar, fundamentally human activity, we can recognize politics as the pattern and grammar of reality across a slew of areas usually condemned to the apolitical.
Think of it like this: when Party A is more popular than Party B, it wins elections; when it wins elections, it implements its policies. Politics—as we commonly recognize it—is the causal language dictating our policy reality. Now take it a step back: when Organism A is more fit for its environment than Organism B, it is selected for; when it is selected for, it becomes the dominant species. The distinctions between this and the former case are so superficial it would be obscene to focus on those petty differences rather than the deep, categorical likeness. The most important information about the former solution is likewise the most important information about the latter: what results, and why? The supposed “distinctions” that make the former case “political” tell you nothing meaningful. Who cares what the parties are, or what policies they endorse? The substance resides entirely in the logic of why one party wins and what the reality it causes looks like; and this template is prominently at work anywhere you look, regardless of the relevance of human activity. Politics is the creation of reality. It is the logic of two molecules binding; the reason behind the engine of natural selection; the rationale of a gunfight. Who lives, who dies: what happens, what does not. In my eyes, politics is the umbrella over this panoply of caused events, a term silly on its face, but profound when you recognize what a marvel it is to change the state of reality. Have you ever heard a professor sermonize on how philosophy is the foundation of the intellectual sphere? (I have). Well in precisely the same way, politics is the foundation of the practical sphere. An astrophysicist cannot know the sun will rise tomorrow without a philosophical justification for empirical belief, and the sun will not rise tomorrow without a politics allowing it to. Using the common denominator of logical cause and effect, politics binds together superficially irreconcilable phenomena, which we arrogantly divide in some self-aggrandizing project to claim “the political” exclusively for human affairs.
But what does this tell us? What does my conception give that conventional distribution narratives deprive?
A recognition of what matters. And once you have that, you have the interpretive key to understand politics beyond facades of unsure norms and fragile narratives.
Entertain an analogy. Consider something commonly considered to be in the “political” realm, like the personal demeanor or policy aspirations of political leaders. These superficial traits are like the variables of an equation: though important, they are useless without understanding their relations to each other. If you had to choose which to know—the variables, or their operators, exponents, and so on—you would much prefer knowledge of the latter elements. At least if you understand the logic connecting the variables, you can see how they will scale with each other, or determine the shape of their curve. If you have the variables, and no connective logic, you would be up a creek with no paddle. Politics is that logic. It is the causation into which variables fit. Whether those variables concern states, firms, galaxies or curling teams, they are all members in the same category: causative determination of reality.
But what does this tell us about human politics? (I will concede that, despite its failure to contextualize human politics in the grand pattern of reality-determination, the distributional definition is excellent at catering to our interests).
I think it tells us something quite important: the politics of our “politics.” That is, it focuses us, clearing out superficial distractions so we can recognize the meaningful logic driving our own world.
So, allow us to make sense of our authentic politics.
It begins by recognizing that political processes, as logical causal processes, are governed by sets of rules. These rules can be arranged in hierarchies, such that one countermands another. Federal law, for instance, is generally unrestrained by state law. Rules need not be literal regulations, though; for instance, an appellate court can overturn the ruling of a district court. Here, the appellate court, though an actor rather than a literal law, is the superior rule. As a final nuance, the hierarchy among rules may be incomplete, or even contradictory. Perhaps all rules are equal, and none can override another, or perhaps they are intransitive. But for our purposes, only one rule matters: the one at the top, called the ultima ratio, which we’ll nickname the U.R. for short. It stands always in superposition to its counterparts. There is no rule which can defy it.
Conveniently, there is a consensus over what the U.R. is in our politics. Call it force, violence, coercion, or another moniker, so long as you respect the essential fact: that there is no higher appeal than physical authority. The presence of an U.R. changes the structure of political rules. When there is an unexceptional rule, which overrides all others, then all political behavior becomes rooted in the eventual exercise of the U.R. In this sense, the U.R. is foundational; it is the bedrock upon which the entire regime of political rules is constructed. Importantly, the share of activity which inferior rules comprise should never be taken to imply a superiority to the U.R. Consider how one must define an origin to make a physics problem intelligible. Without a point of reference, distance and movement have no practical meaning. Thus, though the “important” parts of physics, the parts that dominate our work with it, are conducted in terms of velocity, acceleration, jerk, snap, crackle, and pop (those are the real fourth, fifth, and sixth time-derivatives of position; and physicists call us the fake scientists), they all exist only in their relation to the rarely-used position value. When a U.R. exists, it creates much the same ecosystem amongst the political rules. With an absolute law present, all inferior rules become defined in relation to their ultimate superior; they literally become derivatives of the highest rule.
Politics is the logic of reality, and the logic of our reality—no matter how many proxies we build—is violence. This is the ecosystem within which my thought exists, and which these editorials will explore: a world where politics is always, everywhere, inevitably, cruelly, the exercise of irrational violence.