A politics of de-politicization

"To a certain extent there are real conflicts of interests between all groups - national, religious, economic, social - which live together. As long as these conflicts are dealt within the domain of life itself, solutions are found. These solutions may take the form of negative compromise with both sides narrowing their demands, but may also take the form of positive, synthetic, creative compromise, that is, the creation of new life circumstances which require cooperation and make it possible. Matters are different if the conflicts pass from the domain of life to the domain of politics, and are different to the extent that politics overpowers life. What then happens is what I call political "surplus" conflict. Politics, seeking to retains its domination of life, has an interest in treating the interests of the various groups as if they were irreconcilable. But since this is in fact not so, politics has to make it so. And it accomplishes this by heightening the real conflict of interests to the point that it becomes non-real, albeit furnished with all the terrible force of political illusion. The politics of a group produces within its members a sense of conflict with proportions much greater than those of the real conflict, and accords it a different, seemingly absolute, character. The difference between the real conflict and the politically induced imagined conflict is what I have referred to as political "surplus" conflict. Although this surplus has real vital influence on the politically active part of the group, by political propaganda this segment gains total hegemony over all the others; that it, it achieves the dominance of life by politics."

- Martin Buber
"A Tragic Conflict?"
May 1946
From A Land of Two Peoples, p. 187