Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.

Adams’s line frames politics less as a contest of individual leaders and more as the visible surface of deeper, impersonal pressures—economic interests, institutional constraints, technological change, public opinion, and historical momentum. The phrase “at bottom” suggests that personalities and party maneuvering can distract from what actually determines outcomes: the interaction of large-scale forces that shape what is possible and what is likely. Read this way, the quote anticipates later “structural” approaches to political analysis, warning against over-crediting (or blaming) particular statesmen for results produced by systems. It also carries a note of skepticism about heroic political narratives, implying that modernity diminishes individual agency.