IDEOLOGY AND IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS
Marxism is essentially a materialist philosophy which aims at creating a classless society based on common ownership. In the work The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have claimed that the history of every society is the history of class struggles. Here in the essay, Althusser brings in the concept of State Apparatuses and how class struggle always attempts to possess the State power which consequently results in the possession of the State apparatuses. Marxism also believes that capitalism and industrialisation have led to the alienation of people so much so that people have become mere things. This is justified by Althusser's idea of Interpellation where ideology interpellates or hails individuals as subjects. According to the traditional Marxist model, society is constituted by Base and Superstructure. The base is the means of production while superstructure is the cultural world. Traditionalists also believed that superstructure is determined or shaped by the economic base and this is called Economic Determinism. This one to one correspondence is negated by Althusser by bringing in the concept of Overdeterminism which is the effect produced from a variety of interacting causes of Ideology.
Althusser begins the essay by bringing in a statement of Karl Marx according to which the ultimate condition of production is the reproduction of conditions of production and for this one must reproduce the productive forces as well as the existing relations of production. Reproductions of productive forces involve the reproduction of labour power. The workers need the skills to work which they learn from the educational institutions wherein they also learn the rules of good behaviour established by the dominant class. Therefore reproduction of labour power involves the reproduction of submission to the rules of established order which in other words is the ideological subjection. Negating the one to one correspondence of traditional Marxist model of society, Althusser believes that there is a ‘relative autonomy' of the superstructure with respect to the base or infrastructure and also that there is a ‘reciprocal action' of the superstructure on the base. The Marxist Theory says that the proletariat must seize the state power in order to destroy the existing bourgeois State Apparatuses and replace it with the proletarian State Apparatuses. There are two kinds of state apparatuses- Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) and Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). RSA functions by violence while ISA functions by ideology. RSA include the police, the army, the government and the military while ISA includes religion, education, family, legal, political, trade unions, communication and cultural arts. RSA could be said as a single unit and as an organised whole while there is a plurality of ISAs and they are distinctly multiple. RSA is a public domain while ISA is a private domain. RSA is centralised under a commanding unit of political representatives of the ruling class in possession of state power while ISA is relatively autonomous. RSA also functions by ideology but it will always be a secondary functioning. In the case of army and police, we
find them trying to maintain ideological values. Similarly, we find ISA functioning through violence too- churches and educational system have managed to result in punishments and expulsions. According to Althusser, no class can hold state power for too long without exercising its hegemony over the ideological state apparatuses. The class cannot do away with ISA as easily as RSA because of two reasons. The first reason is that the former ruling class retains a strong hold over there. The other reason is the oppressed class finds a means of expression in these ISAs. There is always a ruling ideology that ensures the harmony between RSA and ISA and also between different ISAs. In the pre-capitalist period, the dominant ideological state apparatus is church while in the capitalist period it is the educational institutions. It has been said in Plato’s Republic that the key to sustaining a just state was controlling the education of its citizens and thus certain dominant values are maintained according to the wishes of the ruling class. The capitalist motives are concealed by a universally reigning ideology that school is a neutral environment that is purged of any kind of ideology. Ideology, Althusser says, has no history of its own and rather it has a non-historical reality or omni-historical reality. Ideology is an allusion as well as an illusion of reality. It is an imaginary relation to real relations and there are two reasons why this imaginary relation exists. The first reason is that there are certain people who would like to take control of our minds by providing a falsified representation of the world. The other reason is that men create these imaginary relations to their conditions of existence is because these conditions of existence are themselves alienating. Therefore, ideology is not the representation of real relations to the existence of individuals but imaginary relations of these individuals to the real relations in which they live. Ideology has a material existence and not a spiritual one. Spiritual existence of ideology exists only in the idea or ideology and ideas. The moment ideology becomes a part of apparatuses and its practises, which it always does, then its existence becomes a materialistic one. Every subject with consciousness believing in ideas must a ct according to his ideas. Althusser says that "his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practises governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject". Hence, he concludes that there is no practise except by and in an ideology and that there is no ideology except by the subjects and for the subjects. The last part of the essay talks about how ideology interpellates or hails individuals as subjects. Althusser believes that we are always already subjects and practise the rituals of ideological recognition which assures us that we are concrete, individual, distinguishable and naturally irreplaceable subjects. He takes the example of Christian Religious Ideology to elaborate on the how ideology interpellates individuals as subjects. Religious ideologies interpellate in the name of a unique and central other Subject and the Subject needs the presence of subjects. Althusser makes use of Lacan’s concepts of imaginary, mirroring and subject formation and Freud’s concepts of the Imaginary, the Real and the Symbolic. For Althusser ideology is like the Imaginary and interpellation is similar to the notions of
mirroring and recognition. Just as a child recognises himself in the mirror, subjects recognise themselves when they are interpellated or hailed. Ideology, thus, has a duplicate mirror structure which ensures the interpellation of individuals as subjects, their subjection to the Subject, the mutual recognition of subjects and the Subject, the subjects’ recognition of each other , the subject’s subject’s recognition of himself and finally, the subject recognises what they are and acts accordingly. In conclusion, an individual is interpellated as a free subject so that he will freely submit or accept his subjection. In standard Marxist tradition ideology is defined as “false consciousness”. Althusser’s theory revises this same concept and reveals to us the subtle way in which the society works. Ideology, according to Althusser, is the result of structural factors in society and with this concept, he completely abandons the standard humanist notion of free will and brings us a world wherein we learn the practise of obedience to the authority. authorit y.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barry, Peter. Beginning Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester Theory. Manchester University Press, 2010. Brewster, Ben. Althusser Ben. Althusser Glossary 1969. https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/althusser/index.htm Accessed 10 Apr. 2018. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Critici sm. W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
