Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: in Depth Summary

On the Reproduction of the Conditions of Production

According to Marx, a social formation can only persist if it reproduces its conditions of production. This reproduction can be 'simple,' replicating existing conditions, or 'on an extended scale,' expanding them.

Reproduction of the Means of Production

Marx demonstrated in Capital Volume Two that production necessitates the reproduction of material conditions, such as raw materials, infrastructure, and machinery. This reproduction isn't confined to individual firms; it involves a complex network of capitalists and the circulation of capital between different departments.

To understand this mechanism, one must study the circulation of capital between:

  • Department I: Production of means of production.

  • Department II: Production of means of consumption.

and the realization of surplus-value as described in Capital, Volumes Two and Three.

Reproduction of Labour-Power

The reproduction of labor power is achieved by providing workers with wages, enabling them to sustain themselves by purchasing necessities like housing, food, and clothing. This ensures their return to work daily and contributes to raising and educating the next generation of workers.

The value of wages is determined not only by biological needs but also by a historically variable minimum, influenced by the proletarian class struggle against long working hours and low wages.

Labor power must also be 'competent' or skilled. This is achieved through the capitalist education system and other institutions, where children learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as elements of scientific or literary culture relevant to different jobs. They also learn the 'rules' of good behavior, which reinforce respect for the socio-technical division of labor and the established order of class domination.

The reproduction of labor power requires:

  • Reproduction of skills.

  • Reproduction of submission to the established order and ruling ideology.

The school system ensures subjection to the ruling ideology, while also providing 'know-how'. Agents of production, exploitation, and repression are 'steeped' in this ideology to perform their tasks conscientiously.

Infrastructure and Superstructure

Marxist theory views society as structured with an economic base (infrastructure) and a superstructure containing politico-legal and ideological levels. This structure highlights the 'determination in the last instance' by the economic base. The superstructure has 'relative autonomy' and 'reciprocal action' on the base.

The spatial metaphor of the edifice is descriptive, but it's important to think about what it gives us in the form of a description.

The State

The State functions as a repressive apparatus, ensuring the domination of the ruling classes over the working class and facilitating surplus-value extraction. This apparatus includes the police, courts, prisons, army, and the head of state, government, and administration.

While the Marxist theory of the State as a repressive apparatus is essential, it is also partly descriptive, representing an early phase of theoretical development.

The State apparatus may outlive particular political events relating to State power.

Essentials of the Marxist Theory of the State

The Marxist theory of the State posits that:

  1. The State is the repressive State apparatus.

  2. State power and State apparatus must be distinguished.

  3. The objective of the class struggle concerns State power.

  4. The proletariat must seize State power to destroy the bourgeois State apparatus and replace it with a proletarian one, eventually leading to the destruction of the State.

State Ideological Apparatuses

It is crucial to consider not only the distinction between State power and the State apparatus but also another reality: ideological State apparatuses (ISAs). These are distinct from the repressive State apparatus.

Examples of ISAs include:

  • Religious ISA (churches)

  • Educational ISA (schools)

  • Family ISA

  • Legal ISA

  • Political ISA (political parties)

  • Trade-union ISA

  • Communications ISA (press, radio, television)

  • Cultural ISA (literature, arts, sports)

While the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions by violence, the Ideological State Apparatuses function by ideology. Every State Apparatus functions both by violence and by ideology, but with different emphasis.

ISAs function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression. The unity of the ISAs is derived from the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of the ruling class.

ISAs are the site of class struggle, where the exploited classes resist and express themselves.

On the Reproduction of the Relations of Production

The reproduction of the relations of production is secured by the legal-political and ideological superstructure, primarily through the exercise of State power in the State Apparatuses.

  1. All State Apparatuses function both by repression and by ideology.

  2. The (Repressive) State Apparatus is an organized, centralized whole, while the Ideological State Apparatuses are multiple, distinct, and relatively autonomous.

  3. The unity of the (Repressive) State Apparatus is secured by a unified, centralized organization, while the unity of the Ideological State Apparatuses is secured by the ruling ideology.

The repressive State apparatus secures the political conditions for the reproduction of relations of production, while the Ideological State Apparatuses largely secure the specific reproduction of these relations.

In feudal societies, the Church was the dominant Ideological State Apparatus, while in mature capitalist formations, the educational ideological apparatus has taken this dominant position.

All Ideological State Apparatuses contribute to the reproduction of capitalist relations of exploitation, each in its own way. This concert is dominated by the ideology of the ruling class.

The school system contributes to the reproduction of the relations of production in a capitalist social formation.

On Ideology

Ideology is the system of ideas and representations that dominate the mind of a man or a social group. Despite seeming to offer a theory of ideology, The German Ideology does not present a Marxist theory, and Capital lacks a general theory of ideology.

Ideology has no History

While ideologies have a history of their own, ideology in general has no history. Its structure and functioning make it a non-historical reality, immutable throughout history. Ideology is eternal, like the unconscious.

Ideology is a 'Representation' of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence

Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. It is not their real conditions of existence, their real world, that men 'represent to themselves' in ideology, but above all it is their relation to those conditions of existence which is represented to them there.

Ideology has a material existence in an apparatus and its practices. This existence is material. The ideas of an individual's belief is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject.

  1. There is no practice except by and in an ideology.

  2. There is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.

Ideology Interpellates Individuals as Subjects

There is no ideology except for concrete subjects, and this destination for ideology is only made possible by the subject. The category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same time the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function of 'constituting' concrete individuals as subjects.

In the 'Logos', meaning in ideology, that we 'live, move and have our being'. The category of the subject is a primary 'obviousness'. Ideology imposes obviousnesses as obviousnesses. At work in this reaction is the ideological recognition function. You and I are always already subjects, and as such constantly practice the rituals of ideological recognition, which guarantee for us that we are indeed concrete, individual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects. The writing I am currently executing and the reading you are currently performing are also in this respect rituals of ideological recognition.

Ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects by the functioning of the category of the subject. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are the same thing.

Ideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to making it clear that individuals are always-already interpellated by ideology as subjects, which necessarily leads us to one last proposition: individuals are always-already subjects. That an individual is always-already a subject, even before he is born, is nevertheless the plain reality.

An Example: The Christian Religious Ideology

The structure of all ideology, interpellating individuals as subjects in the name of a Unique and Absolute Subject is speculary, i.e. a mirror-structure, and doubly speculary: this mirror duplication is constitutive of ideology and ensures its functioning. Which means that all ideology is centred, that the Absolute Subject occupies the unique place of the Centre, and interpellates around it the infinity of individuals into subjects in a double mirror-connexion such that it subjects the subjects to the Subject, while giving them in the Subject in which each subject can contemplate its own image (present and future) the guarantee that this really concerns them and Him, and that since everything takes place in the Family (the Holy Family: the Family is in essence Holy), 'God will recognize his own in it', i.e. those who have recognized God, and have recognized themselves in Him, will be saved.

The duplicate mirror-structure of ideology ensures simultaneously:

  1. the interpellation of 'individuals' as subjects;

  2. their subjection to the Subject;

  3. the mutual recognition of subjects and Subject, the subjects' recognition of each other, and finally the subject's recognition of himself;

  4. the absolute guarantee that everything really is so, and that on condition that the subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly, everything will be all right.

Caught in this quadruple system of interpellation as subjects, of subjection to the Subject, of universal recognition and of absolute guarantee, the subjects 'work', they 'work by themselves' in the vast majority of cases. They are inserted into practices governed by the rituals of the ISAs. They 'recognize' the existing state of affairs (das Bestehende), that ‘it really is true that it is so and not otherwise’, and that they must be obedient to God, to their conscience, to the priest, to de Gaulle, to the boss, to the engineer, that thou shalt 'love thy neighbour as thyself', etc.

The ambiguity of the term subject is merely a reflection of the effect which produces it: the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and actions of his subjection 'all by himself'. There are no subjects except by and for their subjection. That is why they 'work all by themselves'.

Unanswered Problems

  1. The problem of the total process of the realization of the reproduction of the relations of production: To adopt the point of view of reproduction is therefore, in the last instance, to adopt the point of view of the class struggle.

  2. The problem of the class nature of the ideologies existing in a social formation: The class struggles in the ISAs is only one aspect of a class struggle which goes beyond the ISAs. It is only from the point of view of the classes, i.e. of the class struggle, that it is possible to explain the ideologies existing in a social formation.