One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the ‘inner contradictions’ of such a system.
Certainly if the fundamental problem of society is that demands are infinite and resources are always limited, politics, not economics is the master science.
Politics are, as it were, the market place and the price mechanism of all social demands – though there is no guarantee that a just price will be struck; and there is nothing spontaneous about politics- it depends on deliberate and continuous activity.
The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.
If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.
Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking.
