ABSTRACT
Politics everywhere, in its essentials, is much the same. People do not greatly differ. They want security, wealth and the power through which to get them. They have particular interests and ambitions which they try to achieve, and which in some ways conflict, in others coincide, with the interests and ambitions of others. They band together with other people, either as a matter of convenience or as part of more permanent groups to which they acknowledge some kind of loyalty or obligation. Other groups, similarly formed, they regard with indifference, suspicion or downright hostility. And in seeking these interests, and forming these groups, they gain power over others and are subjected to power themselves, either directly through the imposition of physical force, or indirectly through the organisation of their surroundings in ways which reduce, and perhaps almost entirely remove, their capacity for individual choice. Any form of organisation, essential though it may be for the achievement of group and individual goals, and the management of conflict between competing interests, itself produces inequalities of power, and thus further differences of interest between those who have more power and those who have less.
