Arendt's Argument Essay: What Is Politics?

What is politics? Ask around, and you may get answers such as government, the state, political parties, corruption, “something I don’t care about” and “something that is a threat to my privacy and my freedom.” There's always this negative stigma that if you're a politician, you are automatically corrupt, heartless, selfish, evil, and so on. Hannah Arendt probably wouldn’t be surprised. Arendt notes: “Both the mistrust of politics and the question as to the meaning of politics are very old, as old as the tradition of political philosophy.” However, what we must remember is this: politics is merely a tool. Just like any other tool we know, it can be used to benefit us but if misused and abused, could potentially harm us. Take for example a knife.

However, according to Karl Marx, this mentality of allowing others to treat us the way they think we deserve is merely a social construct which we adhere to without anyone exactly telling us to. The moment we obey to the commands of others is the moment we subject ourselves to inequality. “Inequality works to the extent that one “believes” it, that one goes on using one’s arms, eyes, and brains according to the distribution of the positions” (Ranciere, 137). This logic of society is based too much on the idea of a certain status quo. Inequality is a distortion of politics. The powerful exploit the weak for whatever agenda suits the powerful. In a way inequality evokes the most extreme version of Darwin’s survival of the fittest, but with inequality it has nothing to do with fitness or the evolutionary good of the species rather it is concerned with positioning, self-interest, and who has the greater leverage. Thus, it is through the misuse of the mechanisms of politics that inequality

There is either a path from equality to equality or a path from inequality to inequality” (Ranciere, 139). To solve injustice, to solve inequality, Ranciere posits that we shift our frame from equality as a goal, to equality as our situation. For him, to solve inequality, we must presuppose equality. To put it in broader terms, we need to shift our own thinking into acting as if the world is as it should