LOUIS ALTHUSSER “IDEOLO GY AND IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES”.pdfVIP

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3304 Notes 07 1 LOUIS ALTHUSSER “IDEOLOGY AND IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES” (1969) Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 197 1. 127-188. Althusser begins by agreeing with Marx that a “social formation which did not reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produced” ( 127) the means of its survival was doomed to die. To be precise, if the existing social relations of production within each social formation (i.e. its class structure) are to be perpetuated, that social formation must seek to reproduce the means of production, i.e. what he calls the “material conditions of production” ( 128) (the raw material, the machines, etc.), by reinvesting profits in fresh capital outlays; and the forces of production, i.e. what he calls the “productive forces” ( 130) and “labour power” ( 130), by paying wages that not only ensure the worker’s physical survival but also increase his productivity through skills-training and education. Althusser argues, however, that the reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order, i.e. a reproduction of submission to the ruling ideology for the workers, and a reproduction of the ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression, so that they too will provide for the domination of the ruling class ‘in words.’ ( 132-133) In other words, the schooling system and other state institutions like the church do not only seek to pass on “‘know-how’” ( 133) but also to ensure “subj ection to the ruling ideology or the mastery of its ‘practice’” (133). Th