An open problem in polarization theory is to determine the binary operations that always lead to polarization (in the general multilevel sense) when they are used in Arikan style constructions. This paper, which is presented in two parts, solves this problem by providing a necessary and sufficient condition for a binary operation to be polarizing. This (first) part of this paper introduces the mathematical framework that we will use in the second part to characterize the polarizing operations. We define uniformity preserving, irreducible, ergodic, and strongly ergodic operations, and we study their properties. The concepts of a stable partition and the residue of a stable partition are introduced. We show that an ergodic operation is strongly ergodic if and only if all its stable partitions are their own residues. We also study the products of binary operations and the structure of their stable partitions. We show that the product of a sequence of binary operations is strongly ergodic if and only if all the operations in the sequence are strongly ergodic. In the second part of this paper, we provide a foundation of polarization theory based on the ergodic theory of binary operations that we develop in this part.