An 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. Grains of such reflections are still found in treatises of Ancient China, India, and the East. But for most scholars, the true story of political doctrine still begins with the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato.
Plato is the most famous student of Socrates, and later a teacher of Aristotle. He was a very enlightened man for that time, 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 a utopian form).
Plato and Aristotle identified politics with the state, and the political sphere with the sphere of state relations. Such tight boundaries were due to the underdevelopment of this area, the lack of a multi-party system, the electoral process, the separation of powers and many other aspects that exist in the modern world. At the heart of the political model of Aristotle and Plato was a city-polis. His citizens performed two roles at the same time: 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 separately from ethics. Subsequently, this approach continued to prevail for almost two millennia.
The further history of political studies is associated with a shift in the 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 Benedict 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 created to ensure order in society, to preserve private property.
In the 18th century, the history of political studies 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 extrasocial factors (geographical, demographic, climatic, and others). Montesquieu suggested that the size of the territory affects the nature of political forms. For example, an empire should be located on a vast area, for a monarchy it’s quite average, but a republic will last longer for a small one, otherwise it will fall apart.
The history of political teachings of the 18-19th centuries is characterized by a significant change in the vision of the subjects involved in society, the boundaries of their activity. If before the main characters were monarchs and nobles, now, under the influence of the ideas of J.-J. Rousseau, masses of the common people were also involved in public life.
In 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 uniform) 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 happened. Developing annually, politics increasingly moved away from economic interests, replacing them with post-material foundations of social activity. Properties characteristic only of her appeared, the laws of functioning and development.
Almost all modern models of political life take into account the concept of Weber’s politics, which is completely opposite to Marxism. He considered it to be an area of relations in society regarding power, since everyone seeks to either lead or at least somehow participate in the process.