Political Rulers

Justice has hitherto been blocked (so it is said) by the interests of the dominant elites who have always controlled the state. In older versions, this argument juxtaposed rich and poor, bourgeoisie and proletariat, imperialists and subject peoples. More recent theory has focused on the relationship of oppression: whites oppressing blacks, men oppressing women, and so on. And while much of this is melodramatic caricature, it does correspond to one central feature of politics from the days of Solon to the present.



That feature is that politics has been the business of the powerful: citizens, nobles, property owners, patriarchs - all has power and status. It was essential to the idea of the state, in all its forms, that it should be an association of independent disposers of their own resources. The rights of this elite were, over the centuries, generalized to become the modern rights of universal citizenship. but they first became operational as the status enjoyed by the powerful few. It was precisely because the state was composed of masterful characters that it could not turn into a despotism. Having projects of their own, powerful individuals of this kind had no inclination whatever to become the instruments of someone else' project. This is the sense in which despotism and politics are precisely opposed. . .



Kenneth Minogue

Politics

A very Short Introduction

Oxford 1995