Transcription
What is political ideology? Most viewers will have the vague idea that concepts like fascism, communism, anarchism, liberalism, and conservatism are examples of ideologies, which would be a correct idea to have. But what is an ideology exactly?
Now, the term initially originated during the French Revolution and was posited as the science of ideas, with the main goal of social and political improvement. The term was radically reversed in Marxist thought to be specifically about the self-justification of governing powers. Nowadays, it is somewhere in between, and political ideology has been broken down by modern thinkers into more methodical schemes.
In truth, the concept escapes strict definition. Too large are the deviations between theory and praxis, and too diverse are the differences between various adherents of nominally the same system. If we wish to analyze political ideology as it is understood today, we can generally break it down into the following constituent parts:
One, explanation and interpretation of current political phenomena. Democracy has deprived the life of the people of style.
Two, moral criteria for the evaluation of political concepts and identification of good and bad. We shall probably all agree that freedom is the greatest of blessings, that its attainment is the true end of our efforts as citizens.
Three, orientation of adherents in regard to their role in the world as a result of their identity, be it individual, national, religious, economic, or ethno-racial. There are a great many god-fearing, dedicated, noble men and women in public life, and yes, we need your help.
Four, a political program to outline the political future. The immediate aim of the communists is the conquest of political power by the proletariat.
We can apply this scheme to various historical documents to reveal their respective ideological underpinnings. Every political ideology is to some degree the synthesis of its predecessors and its various advocates into a common denominator. We will attempt to trace the timeline of ideology in upcoming videos.
This timeline will begin around the revolutionary era of the late 18th and early 19th century. Earlier thoughts on political philosophy certainly existed, for example, with Euripides, Aristotle, or Machiavelli, but these precursors, due to their distance from the present, really only merit closer investigation in context of more contemporary movements that succeeded them.
We will focus initially mainly on the origins of Western political ideology because the Western system of government and politics came through the age of imperialism and colonialism to decisively influence virtually all parts of the world to some degree, overriding or at least amending pre-existing political thought in other parts of the globe. We will, however, at a later stage, also study specifically some ideologies of non-Western societies.
While the series will attempt to mainly focus on ideology, which means mass movements, some insight into the more personal political philosophy is unavoidable. As a result, brief discussions of Rousseau, Locke, Hopps, Burke, Smith, Mill, Marx, Gentile, and others is unavoidable. With historical figures who doubled as thinkers and leaders like Napoleon, Lennon, Mao, and Mussolini, we can study both their political theories and their respective implementations. We will also discuss the implications and different interpretations of various key concepts such as freedom and democracy.
There is quite some ground to cover. We will start in the next episode with political classifications and especially the differentiation between left wing and right wing. Thanks for watching. Cheers.