The Meaning of Politics

In the absence of a consensus on the meaning of politics, an argument found in Marx’s work will serve as the basis for its definition. Politics is the explicit appearance of the contradiction between the whole and the parts that lies at the heart of all social formations. At a certain point in history, politics arises as the relation between the state, which has come to embody and defend the principles and relations that define a society, and civil society, which is comprised of the individual and other components of the social unit: the family, church, trade unions, corporations, and so on.