Ideological State Apparatuses

is the idea that people work by themselves — against their own interests — to reproduce class relations.

Under capitalism the state sets up institutions to defend property. The most obvious of these is the law, backed by the police force and the prison system. When in 1969 Louis Althusser reread (or rewrote) The German Ideology in the light of Saussure and semiology, as well as Marx’s own later work, he began from there and went on to explain how capitalist society maintains itself. According to Althusser, the Repressive State Apparatus preserves order, the existing relations of production, in which some people have to sell their labour-power to earn a living, and some don’t but live on their investments. If it is directly challenged by revolution or civil disobedience, the Repressive State Apparatus works in the last analysis by force. But many, or perhaps most, of us barely come into contact or collision with the police and the courts. We ‘work by ourselves’, Althusser says, to reproduce the class relations on which capitalism depends, even if these do not serve our long-term interests. The deserving poor of the 19th century reaffirmed the values of that society, even though by doing so they mostly remained poor. Why? Because, in Althusser’s account, the Repressive State Apparatus finds a parallel in the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), institutions that produce and reproduce the meanings and values which represent the relationship we imagine we have to our real conditions of existence. The ISAs tell us that work is a duty; that work well done is a pleasure; that we are free to get another job if we don’t like this one; that we can move to Cuba if we don’t like capitalism. (The range of places to move to is dwindling fast, of course, as McDonald’s takes over the world for the free market.)

ideological state apparatuses, n.All

ideological state apparatuses