When people complain about "politics", what they are complaining about is often a perceived failure within a system. Chesterton's Fence[0] is a parable that describes the need to understand where the system came from before making changes to reform it.
For example, in a large corporation, we might say that the yearly review system is "political", but getting rid of it completely would be removing the one (albeit, flawed) means that the organization has to evaluate employee performance. In its absence, a new system would have to be created to replace it. Any system that would replace it would also be prone to being perceived as "political" to some people.
What does that have to do with software? We write software to be used by and for the benefit of people. There is no point to it, otherwise. Writing software is fundamentally a political process.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...