Abhinav Sinha
The notion of ‘ideology’ has undergone many changes within the domain of Marxist theory. From the period of Marx and Engels, when it was used mostly to imply the system of ideas through which men became conscious of their real conditions of existence in a fetishistic way, to Lenin when he introduced the idea of proletarian ideology, which represented the world-view of the proletariat and then to Gramsci and Althusser, who, drawing on the concept’s evolution through Marx, Engels and Lenin, developed it in different directions.
For Marx and Engels, the source of the fetish character of ideology must be traced in the material basis of a capitalist society and more generally a class society itself, where the ruling classes oppress and exploit the toiling masses. It was not the ‘invention’ of a clique of the ruling class ideologues, for Marx and Engels. For instance, the ideological notions regarding capitalist relations of production stem precisely from the fetish character of the commodity-form itself, which hides the real social relations among human beings behind a shroud of mystery, namely, the exchange relations. This commodity fetishism reaches its zenith with the money-form. Therefore, Marx presents a materialist theory of ideology rooted in the material conditions of existence prevailing in the society. Thus, ideology here was juxtaposed to science, an idea from which Althusser takes his cue. For instance, Marx writes in German Ideology:
Where speculation ends, where real life starts, there consequently begins real, positive science, the expounding of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty phrases about consciousness end, and real knowledge has to take their place. When the reality is described, a self-sufficient philosophy [die selbständige Philosophie] loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which are derived from the observation of the historical development of men. These abstractions in themselves, divorced from real history, have no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, the difficulties begin only when one sets about the examination and arrangement of the material—whether of a past epoch or of the present—and its actual presentation. The removal of these difficulties is governed by premises which certainly cannot be stated here, but which only the study of the actual life-process and the activity of the individuals of each epoch will make evident. We shall select here some of these abstractions, which we use in contradistinction to ideology, and shall illustrate them by historical examples. (Karl Marx, 1998, German Ideology, Prometheus Books, New York, p. 43, our italics)
It might appear that Marx used the term only in the negative sense, implying a system of ideas through which people become conscious of their real conditions of existence, or their relations of production, but in a distorted or fetishistic way. However, it seems to us that it is due to Marx’s main concern, namely, critiquing the mystifying character of the bourgeois ideology and other ideologies of the oppressor and exploitative classes. A closer look alludes to the fact that the distinction between scientific ideas or science and ideology as made by Marx stems from this fact. Whatever be the case, Lenin used the term ideology in neutral sense and depending upon its class content it can be characterized either as a progressive or scientific ideology or a reactionary or ideological ideology. In fact, Marx himself has used the term ‘ideology’ in a neutral sense at least at one place in the Preface of the A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy written in 1859:
In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. (Karl Marx, 1904. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, p. 12)
As one can see, Marx here uses the term ideology in a neutral sense. Thus, the masses can have ideas that represent true knowledge of the objective conditions which can help them in their class struggle. For Lenin, ideologies have a class character depending upon the real class interests of the classes engaged in political and economic struggle. The proletarian ideology is a scientific ideology because the interests of the proletariat lies with revealing the reality, obliterating the fetishistic character of the social relations in the bourgeois society and exposing petty secret of capitalist exploitation. Its interests coincide with truth, equality and justice. On the other hand, the bourgeois ideology stems from the interests of bourgeoisie in struggle with the proletariat to maintain its domination and exploitative system. Therefore, bourgeois ideology has a fetishistic character, even if individual members of the bourgeoisie are as unaware of this fetishistic character as individual members of the working class who have not internalized the dialectical materialist world-view and methodology and the science of historical materialism. Therefore, for Lenin, ideologies could be proletarian or bourgeois. Moreover, proletarian ideology is not the spontaneous worker’s consciousness, which is almost always circumscribed by various forms of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologies. Proletarian ideology is constituted by constant and conscious political class struggles and political education. Therefore, there is a need to make a distinction between the spontaneous ideology of workers and spontaneous workers’ consciousness on the one hand and proletarian ideology and proletarian consciousness, on the other. It is quite understandable because ruling ideas of each epoch are the ideas of the ruling class. The ideology of the ruling class is in a hegemonic position and therefore spontaneously finds resonance among the people who have been hegemonized by it. On the contrary, the proletarian ideology has to be constituted through struggles and then the revolutionary communists must strive hard to reveal the fetishistic character of the bourgeois ideology before the masses. Of course, this cannot be simply be done by the subjective efforts of the proletarian vanguard but also depends on the objective conditions of class struggle, capitalist crisis and its transformation into a political crisis.
At any rate, it is clear that for Lenin, ideology generally refers to a system of ideas that might be true or false, correct or incorrect, proletarian or bourgeois and this also seems to be the meaning conveyed by Marx in his Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy written in 1859, even though Marx mostly uses ideology with negative connotations because of his principle concern: presenting a critique of the bourgeois ideology and its fetishistic character, which originates precisely from the fetishistic character of the capitalist relations as embodied in the commodity-form. A detailed discussion of Lenin’s concept of ideology demands a separate essay and avoiding the lure of delving deeper into Leninist concept, we would right away embark upon a discussion of the main topic of this essay.
Althusser occupies a special place in Marxist investigations of ideology. In this essay, we will cast a brief critical glance on Althusser’s conception of ideology, its origin and its functioning. We will be focusing on two central texts written by Althusser: On Ideology, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses and Note on the ISAs, all written during the late-1960s and early-1970s, under strong influence of the ongoing Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. In this essay, we will focus on making some preliminary critical observations regarding the concept of ideology presented in the aforementioned essays of Althusser and refrain from presenting a thorough detailed critique. In the future, we will take up various positions assumed by Althusser on the question of ideology, on the contradiction between productive forces and production relations, on the metaphor of base and superstructure, among others. At present, we will limit ourselves to the modest enterprise of making some preliminary critical remarks on Althusser’s concept of ideology.
In the very beginning of the essay On Ideology, Althusser traces the origins of this word in the circle of Destutt de Tracy who, by the term ‘ideology’, basically meant ‘the theory of origin of ideas’. Marx for the first time gave this word a definite new meaning and also understood the role of ideology in class struggle. As all of us know, Althusser traces what he calls ‘epistemological break’ in Marx from German Ideology. This ‘epistemological break’ refers to Marx’s rupture from Hegelian idealism and humanism, which was prevalent in his writings before German Ideology. We cannot go into a detailed criticism of this idea of ‘epistemological break’ and its ahistorical nature, here and now. On that, later.
Althusser points out that the ‘rupture’ in German Ideology can be seen in two propositions of Marx. First, that the ruling ideas of all epoch are the ideas of the ruling class, because the ruling class not only controls the means of material production but also means of intellectual production. It is in this idea of Marx that Althusser eventually bases his theory of ideological state apparatus (ISA). Second, the identification of ideology with cognition and miscognition. Althusser points out that after 1848 when Marx began the first round of his serious study of political economy, one finds in his writings many elements of a theory of ideology, especially in his critique of the ideological character of the bourgeois political economy. However, a complete and coherent theory of ideology had been lacking and Althusser proclaims the formulation of such a theory of ideology as one of his objectives.
As we are aware, also from the writings of Althusser (!), that one of the basic elements of the intellectual professions, or philosophical vocation, of philosophers is to invent a lack even where there is no lack as such, in order to make a claim on novelty. Without this false claim to novelty, the space of manoeuvring for intellectuals becomes quite limited. It appears to us that in Marx’s writings there is a consistent theory of bourgeois ideology, its fetishistic character and how science reveals what ideology conceals, precisely by probing its silences, its gaps and its blindness. It might be true that Marx never presents his findings regarding the origin and functioning of ideology in a manner fitting to professional philosophers and to academic eyes there might appear a lack of coherence and system in this theory of ideology. The same is true about various other claims too. For example, ‘Marx never gave a complete theory of class’, ‘Marx never presented a coherent theory of mode of production’, etc. However, Althusser, despite this claim which is a bit off the mark, certainly makes some original contributions to the concept of ideology, even if we disagree with certain elements of them.
Further.
Althusser presents his first thesis at the outset: ideology has no history. He points out that this statement can be found almost verbatim in Marx’s German Ideology where it means two things: first, that ideology is an imaginary construct, like a dream constructed from the ‘diurnal residues’ and secondly, ideology does not have any history of its own and it is only the real material world which has history of its own. Althusser is certainly not correct to claim that ideology for Marx of German Ideology is a purely imaginary construct or is what dream was for psychologists before Freud. For Marx (even of German Ideology), ideology certainly had a material existence and it was not like an imaginary construct. In fact, such a claim would be too idealistic to impute to even the so-called ‘early Marx’! Marx saw ideology as a part of the real history of the material world, as an aspect of it and therefore not as an imaginary construct:
We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist. The history of nature, called natural science, does not concern us here; but we will have to examine the history of men, since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself only one of the aspects of this history. (Karl Marx, 1998, German Ideology, Prometheus Books, New York, p. 34, our italics)
Again:
It is to be noted here, as in general with ideologists, that they inevitably put the thing upside-down and regard their ideology both as the creative force and as the aim of all social relations, whereas it is only an expression and symptom of these relations. (ibid, p. 444, italic ours)
It is clearly apparent that Althusser is exaggerating here in order to claim that Marx’s conception of ideology was purely negative in German Ideology. As we can see that is not true.
Althusser admits that Marx is entirely correct when he says that ideologies do not have a history of their own, that is, they do not have a history independent of the history of real material world. He also accepts Marx’s idea that ideology are only reflections, more-or-less true or false, of the real world. In fact, this is the only meaning that Marx conveys: ideology as cognition and miscognition. As Marx writes:
In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here it is a matter of ascending from earth to heaven. That is to say, not of setting out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh; but setting out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process demonstrating the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the brains of men are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. (ibid, p. 42, italics ours)
However, once Althusser moves beyond establishing the foundations of certain claims of novelty, he makes some extremely pertinent points that are relevant even today.
Referring to the anarchist visions of May ’68 revolt of Paris, Althusser demonstrates how petty-bourgeois anarchists (today, most of such anarchists would be identified as postmodernists) conflated the idea of exploitation with that of repression and thus obliterated the very material foundation of understanding the reality of repression. Once the concept of exploitation is obliterated, such anarchist intellectuals confused the role of ideology with repression. With whisking away of the concept of exploitation by reducing it to repression, the basis of understanding the basis of capitalist society was compromised and consequently the premise to comprehend repression too. The role of base was replaced by the role of superstructure. It tantamount to forget that it is the exploitation of labour that forms the foundation of the capitalist society and repression belongs mainly to the political superstructure, that is, the repressive state apparatuses. Such incorrect theorizations also linked repression with ideology and thus the productive role of ideology was totally obfuscated. One anarchist paper exclaimed: “Get rid of the cop inside your mind.” Althusser takes this paper to task, in particular. Althusser argues that this is how ideology was reduced to repression and concept of exploitation was obliterated by reducing it to repression. Everything was equated with repression resulting in a general confused anti-authority sentiment. Althusser correctly points out:
This explains why Action could come out with the slogan: ‘ Get rid of the cop in your head! ‘ That is a proposition that can be thought and uttered only if one whisks ideology ‘under the carpet’ or confounds it, purely and simply, with repression. From that standpoint, Action’s slogan is a little theoretical gem. For, instead of saying: ‘Fight false ideas, destroy the false ideas you have in your heads – the false ideas with which the ideology of the dominant class pulls the wool over your eyes, and replace them with accurate ideas that will enable you to join the revolutionary class’s struggle to end exploitation and the repression that sustains it!’, Action declares: ‘Get rid of the cop in your head!’ This slogan, which deserves a place in the Museum of the History of Masterpieces of Theoretical and Political Error, quite simply replaces ideas, as is obvious enough, with the cop. That is, it replaces the role of subjection played by bourgeois ideology with the repressive role played by the police. (Louis Althusser, 2014. On the Reproduction of Capitalism, Verso Books, London, p. 178)
Althusser argues that even the anarchists (the postmodernists of the future, in fact) knew that a cop cannot reside inside one’s mind and it is only ideas that reside in the mind. Thus, the next logical step for such anarchists was to characterize all knowledge (the idea of universal, concepts, generalizations, etc.) as repressive, by obliterating the difference between correct, scientific knowledge and false ‘knowledge’ (ideology). Thus, what is emancipatory, that is, scientific knowledge, precisely because it exposes and ends ideology (as fetishistic system of ideas), also becomes repressive.
Here Althusser accurately anticipates the future trajectory of such elements who appeared in the confused Paris of May, 1968 as anarchists, but had the seeds of reactionary postmodernism. Althusser points out that even Plato had understood that the people must be told ‘beautiful lies’ apart from naked repression by the army, police, etc. These beautiful lies, the noble lies or the myths, the ideology, are inculcated among the masses right since their childhood through various institutions and practices and it is precisely this subjection by ideology, which makes them ‘go’, as Althusser would say, or which makes them obey and accept the status quo as natural or divinely-ordained.
Here Althusser makes an important comment. He argues that even the Marxist-Leninist ideology performs the same function though in a different way. The revolutionary ideology also makes the militants of the movement ‘go’ or ‘march’, but this ideology is highly “reworked” and “transformed” by Marxist science, that is, the science of history. Althusser alludes to a notion of ‘scientific ideology’, an ideology which belongs to the most revolutionary class of history, the proletariat; an ideology which is highly “reworked” and “transformed” by the science of history, Marxism. Althusser points out that it is class struggle that structures the ideological struggle between the classes, mainly, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie and its parties are for the status quo and reproduction of bourgeois ideology and subjection of the people by the bourgeois ideology is much simpler. The bourgeois social order, its established practices and institutions, its ideological state apparatuses ensure that most of the time, the masses obey, they ‘go’ and ‘march’ in congruence with the bourgeois interests. Althusser is referring here to the hegemony of the bourgeois ideology in the society. However, proletarian ideology and its embodiment, that is, the communist party, challenges that hegemony by revealing the secret of exploitation and repression and the way the masses are made to ‘go’. They are illuminated in this by the experience of historical class struggle and the abstraction, generalization and summation of the same which give us objective truths, the Marxist science.
In this way, proletarian ideology is designed according to the interests of the proletariat which are aligned not with concealing the truth, by with revealing the truth. In this way, the case of proletarian ideology is special one. However, the ideological question within the communist party itself is a question of constant struggle. If the party makes the scientific principles a set of dogma, or capitulates to the bourgeois ideology, while retaining the garb of proletarian ideology, then it is transformed into reformist/revisionist party.
Althusser was responding here to the accusation, which is still hurled at him, that his concept of ideology lacks any theory of subject, it snatches away agency from the masses as the masses are always-already interpellated or subjected by ideology and consequently ideology appears to stand above class struggle. Althusser in his Note on the ISAs responds precisely to these accusations and contends that such accusations are based on misreading and misunderstanding of his writings on ideology and ideological state apparatus. Regarding the specificity and particularity of proletarian ideology, Althusser writes:
It will doubtless be objected that the communist party constitutes itself the way all other parties also do: on the basis of an ideology, which the party itself calls, moreover, proletarian ideology. That is true. In the communist party as well, ideology plays the role of ‘cement’ (Gramsci) for a particular social group, unifying it in its thinking and practices. In the communist party as well, this ideology ‘interpellates individuals as subjects’ – to be very precise, as militant-subjects: one needs only a little concrete experience of a communist party in order to have seen this mechanism and this dynamic artwork. In principle, it no more seals an individual’s fate than any other ideology does, given the ‘play’ and the contradictions among the various ideologies. But what is known as proletarian ideology is not the purely ‘spontaneous’ ideology of the proletariat, in which proletarian ‘elements’ (Lenin) are combined with bourgeois elements and, more often than not, subordinated to them. For in order to exist as a class conscious of its unity and active in its fighting organization, the proletariat needs not just experience (that of the class struggles it has been waging for more than a century) but also objective knowledges, the principles of which Marxist theory provides it. It is on the twofold basis of these experiences, illuminated by Marxist theory, that proletarian ideology is constituted: the mass ideology capable of unifying the avant-garde of the working class in its class-struggle organizations. It is therefore a very special kind of ideology. It is an ideology, because, at the level of the masses, it functions the way any ideology does (by interpellating individuals as subjects) . It is, however, steeped in historical experiences illuminated by scientific principles of analysis. It presents itself as one of the forms of the fusion of the workers’ movement with Marxist theory, a fusion that is not free of tensions or contradictions; for between proletarian ideology as it exists at any given moment, and the party in which it is realized, there can exist a form of unity that is obscure to Marxist theory itself, although Marxist theory is an integral component of that unity. Marxist theory is then treated as if it were simply an authoritative text, that is, a password or a dogma; at the limit, it can quite simply disappear, albeit proclaimed as the theory of the party, and give way to a pragmatic, sectarian ideology that serves only partisan and state interests. No long speeches are needed here to recognize the situation currently reigning in the parties marked by the Stalin period, and to conclude that ‘proletarian ideology’ is itself the stake of a class struggle that saps the proletariat’s own principles of unity and action when the dominant bourgeois ideology and bourgeois political practice penetrate the organizations of proletarian class struggle. (Althusser, op.cit., p. 227-28, italics ours)
Of course, the reference to ‘parties of Stalin period’ can be ignored here. It can, at best, mean the deviation of productivism in these parties, which caused the living link between the party and the class, between the party and the class on the one hand and the masses on the other, to become dormant and ossified. Althusser himself presented a non-dialectical understanding of the relationship between production relations and productive forces, where the primacy, in general, of the former is claimed. However, it cannot be so if we are talking about a dialectic, where, as a matter of rule, the principal aspect becomes non-principal and vice-versa, as Mao has demonstrated in On Contradiction. A general proposition that in the history of society, the production relations, in general, represent the dominant aspect, is certainly a non-dialectical one. However, this much is true that the opposite view that productive forces are always the dominant aspect is the mirror image of this mistake and history has shown the distortions and deformities it created in the proletarian state as well as the party during the socialist experiments of the Twentieth century.
Althusser points out further:
An ideology, to be sure. Proletarian ideology, however, is not just any ideology. For every class recognizes itself in a particular, by no means arbitrarily chosen ideology, the one that is rooted in its strategic practice and capable of unifying and orienting its class struggle. Everyone knows that the feudal class, for example, recognized itself, for reasons that need to be analyzed, in Christian religious ideology, and that the bourgeois class, similarly, recognized itself in legal ideology, at least in the period of its classic domination, before the very recent developments of imperialism. The working class, for its part, recognizes itself – even if it is receptive to elements of religious, moral and legal ideology – above all in an ideology of a political kind: not in bourgeois political ideology (class domination), but in proletarian political ideology, that of the class struggle for the abolition of classes and the construction of communism. It is precisely this ideology, a spontaneous ideology in its earliest forms (utopian socialism) and, later, after the fusion of the workers’ movement with Marxist theory, an informed ideology, which constitutes the ‘kernel’ of proletarian ideology. (ibid, p. 228-29, italics ours)
Thus, Althusser attempts to establish the particularity of proletarian ideology and differentiates it from ideology (of the ruling classes) in general. Moreover, he also points out that as far as the process of subjection or interpellation is concerned, that is, only at the level of functioning, proletarian ideology is comparable to any ideology. This too subjects the cadre, and makes them into revolutionary militant-subjects, and makes them ‘go’. However, since this ideology itself is not fetishistic and does not conceal the truth, but reveals it, the comparison ends at the process of being internalized, namely, the very process of interpellation and subjection.
Regarding the process of interpellation or the functioning of ideology, Althusser presents a number of theses in On Ideology. We had begun our discussion of the first thesis: ideology has no history. We saw what Marx meant by this, namely, that ideology does not have a history of its own and its history can only form a part of the history of real material world. We also saw how Althusser ascribes an incorrect meaning to Marx, that ideology is purely an imaginary construct, a pre-Freudian dream. We discussed how this meaning cannot be ascribed to Marx in any possible sense of the term. Subsequently, Althusser presents his own interpretation of the above statement/thesis. He argues that ideology has no history also because it has no outside for itself. It is omnipresent and it has answers to everything. Though, materially, it does have an outside and more importantly it can be obliterated only from without and not from within. In other words, an ideology never says, “I am ideology.” It claims to provide answers to all questions until it faces a real question posed from without.
Subsequently, Althusser comes to his second thesis. Althusser’s second thesis is that ideology is an imaginary representation of individuals’ imaginary relation to their real conditions or existence. By real conditions of existence, Althusser, following Marx, implies the real relations of production. Althusser talks about two mechanical and over-simplistic interpretations of this statement. First originated in the Eighteenth century when the mechanic interpretation argued that the idea of God, religion, etc. was invented by despots and priests to make people see their real conditions in an imaginary way. The second was the Feuerbachian idea, which, Althusser claims, Marx reproduces in his earlier texts. This idea argues that the real conditions themselves are fetishistic, filled with alienation, and this leads to transposition of the real conditions in an imaginary way. Thus, this latter idea contended that it is not the priests or despots who invented the idea out of the blue, but the real conditions themselves which are the source of fetishistic ideas about the world. The ideological visions of the world are accepted by the people because their real conditions of existence themselves are based on material alienation of labour, on which the whole bourgeois society is based. We will see that Althusser presents Marx’s idea in not fully accurate fashion and it is precisely this inaccurate representation that forms the basis of Althusser’s claim that Marx’s allegedly Feuerbachian idea is not wholly correct.
Althusser argues that it is not the real conditions of existence that are represented in an imaginary fashion in ideology, but ideology represents people’s imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence. In other words, it is people’s imaginary relation to the real relations of production in which they live, that are represented in an imaginary way in ideology. Thus, it is imaginary representation of imaginary relation of the people to their real conditions of existence. Consequently, Marx, according to Althusser missed the point that the real conditions are not simply reproduced in an imaginary way, but their imaginary relation to real conditions are represented in an imaginary way. Althusser claims that this solution obliterates the conspiracy/clique theory of ideology and also the other interpretation which seeks the answer in the alienated character of the real world.
This solution is correct. The only problem is that Marx himself presented this solution, much before Althusser and not only in his ‘mature’ writings but in the early Marxist writings itself. For instance, in German Ideology itself, Marx writes:
If in all ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process. (Marx, op.cit., p. 42)
Again, while critiquing the “true socialists” of Germany, Marx points out:
In so doing, they have abandoned the real historical basis and returned to that of ideology, and since they are ignorant of the real connection, they can without difficulty construct some fantastic relationship with the help of the “absolute” or some other ideological method. This translation of French ideas into the language of the German ideologists and this arbitrarily constructed relationship between communism and German ideology, then, constitute so-called “true socialism”, which is loudly proclaimed, in the terms used by the Tories for the English constitution, to be “the pride of the nation and the envy of all neighbouring nations. (ibid, p. 482, italics ours)
Marx clearly does not simply say that real conditions of existence are simply reproduced in an imaginary fashion in ideology, but he indicates that the very representation of the real conditions of existence as well as the relation of people with them are imaginary in ideology. Moreover, real conditions of existence themselves are nothing but an ensemble of relationships. Therefore, in this preliminary critical investigation itself, it appears to us that even though what Althusser is saying about ideology is more-or-less correct, Marx himself was not saying something too distant from that, even in his earlier writings.
Moreover, Marx, contrary to Althusser’s silence on the question of fetishistic character of the bourgeois social relations of production and economic structure, was much more consistent in his materialism when he pointed out that it was the alienation prevalent in the bourgeois society that is the source of ideological visions that dominate in the bourgeois world. Note bene: when Marx wrote these words he had not yet fully developed his scientific law of value and theory of surplus-value, whose foundation was the discovery that labour-power itself becomes a commodity in the capitalist society.
Thus, we come to the second trait of philosophical vocation: invention of errors, silences, incompleteness, which is related to the first trait that we discussed above, namely, false claims to novelty. There is no doubt that Althusser has valuable insights into what and how of functioning of ideology. However, certain claims about Marx’s early writings is not wholly accurate. Althusser is fulfilling an Althusserian task here: critiquing the Hegelian impact in Marx before his mature writings and theory of alienation is counted as one of the symptoms of this alleged Hegelian and humanist deviation, to which Althusser was vehemently opposed. However, it is noteworthy that even in the most mature writings of Marx, namely, Capital, Marx has not abandoned the theory of alienation, but has only provided it with a much more sound theoretical foundations with his discoveries in the sphere of political economy.
The third thesis of Althusser is that Ideology has a material existence. In other words, from a Marxist perspective, we cannot argue for an ideal or spiritual existence of ideology. For Althusser, such a claim would tantamount to ‘ideology of the ideology’. Ideology exists only through the practices inscribed by the rituals of concrete institutions like the family, school, religion, bourgeois political parties, law, morality, etc. These are what Althusser calls ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). He differentiates them from the repressive state apparatuses (RSAs), like the police, the army, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, etc., which underline and defend the bourgeois production relations through use of force or the threat of use of force; they have the monopoly over the use of force and violence in a bourgeois society. However, since an exploitative and oppressive ruling class cannot simply rule by force, it needs its subjects to conform, obey and ‘go’ without a ‘cop behind them’. Here comes the role of the ideological state apparatuses, which may be privately owned, not directly controlled by the bourgeois state as public institutions; and yet they play an important role in reproduction of capitalist system and its relations of production. The very distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ is very superficial, as Althusser shows. It is true that due to this particularity, the RSAs are under a more direct control of the ruling class and more directly serve its interests, whereas ISAs become a site of class struggle and contestation and besides subjection of the individuals also contain the seed of their own subversion and it is precisely this event that happens during revolutionary times.
Althusser points out that the institutions that play the role of ideological state apparatus define certain rituals; certain practices are inscribed in these rituals. The individuals act according their ‘free will’ and participate in these practices and precisely in this process they are subjected by ideology. Here Althusser recalls Blaise Pascal’s statement : ‘first kneel and pray and then you will believe.’ Thus, the subject first acts according the practices inscribed in the rituals defined by the institutions that play the role of ISAs and then he believes. Althusser categorically points out that this functioning of ideology has its moments of breach especially due to class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Due to this class struggle, the dominant ideology of the ruling class is faced by the proletarian ideology, elements of which are constantly produced due to the class struggle and the fusion of the experience of class struggle with Marxist science. Therefore, the functioning of ideology and the ISAs is not above class struggle and is determined by economic and political class struggle in a class society.
Subsequently, Althusser comes to his fourth main thesis: ideology interpellates individuals as subjects. This is one of the most interesting and complex parts of Althusser’s theory of ideology. The first point that Althusser makes here is that the ideology exists to transform individuals into subject and it is only through the functioning of the subject that ideology can exist. Thus, subject is constitutive of ideology and is also constituted by ideology. The second point that he makes is that in a class society every individual is always-already a subject. He gives the example of birth of a baby, which is surrounded by various ideological anticipations and expectations and rituals; the baby will have its father’s last name, it will have a certain relationship with his father and mother, etc. Thus, as soon as a person becomes conscious of his or her being, he is already transformed into a subject by the first ISA into which he/she is born: the family. Then, the religious ideology makes him a subject again: a religious subject. Again, he is transformed into subject by other ISAs like law, morality, political parties, etc. Thus, for Althusser, the moment we start acting of our free will, we are subject, which is a ‘primary self-evident’, which itself is an elementary ideological effect which imposes the self-evident fact as self-evident fact, to which we customarily react: ‘that’s obvious’!
The individual is transformed into a subject by ideology by what Althusser calls interpellation or hailing. The original French word for this is the verb interpeller which means ‘to really get to’, or ‘capture’ something. For example, “the tragedy of Hamlet really got to me.” The process of interpellation is illustrated by Althusser through the example of a policeman hailing someone: “hey you!” and the act of turning by the individual. This simple act, a turn of 180 degrees reveals that the individual recognizes that the hail is directed to him. It is the recognition of authority. Thus, the process of interpellation starts with recognition. The very act of recognition leads to subjection.
However, for an ideology to interpellate many individuals as subjects, it must create the Subject. Through the example of Christian theology, Althusser elaborates this point. The big other Subject, the God is created, because in order to interpellate individuals as subject the religious ideology also has to identify and recognize Him, the God! The Subject tells all the other subjects that they must obey and promises them the reward of reunification of the subjects with the bosom of the Lord! Thus, first the individuals are interpellated as subjects, then they recognize the Subject and vice-versa and they also recognize each other as subjects, and this double recognition guarantees them their rewards. It is this process of interpellation which transforms each individual into subject and makes them ‘go’, and willingly so, without a cop behind them. And since this entire functioning of ISAs and ideology materialized in their rituals and practices has lots of gaps and imperfections and they themselves become sites of ideological class struggle, with the chance of subversion due to intensification of class struggle, there is the repressive state apparatus too. In case of religion, it was the religious inquisitors; in case of law, there are magistrates and machinery of enforcement, etc. Thus, the subjects obey and recognize that ‘this is how it is and it shall be’ and ‘all is well, the way it is’ and say: “so be it!” It is actually a proof of the fact that it is not really so but it has to be so.
This is how the reproduction of the capitalist production relations are ensured on a daily basis, in the consciousness of the individuals who are members of different classes, hold different positions in production, administration and society in general.
Althusser points out that the individual is interpellated again and again by different ideologies. First by the familial ideology; when it is interpellated by the religious ideology, it is already a familial subject; when it is interpellated by legal ideology, it is already a familial and religious subject, and so on. However, when it is interpellated by the proletarian ideology, it might take him/her outside the various bourgeois ideologies. Proletarian ideology or the Marxist-Leninist ideology is an exception because it is reworked and transformed by the Marxist science which involves a decentring and elimination of the Subject, with which all subjects have a speculary relation of mutual recognition and a guarantee of nirvana of some kind. However, if the communist party ceases to study and implement and develop the Marxist science and falls prey to some alien bourgeois ideology like economism, cult of personality, etc., then the communist party too becomes circumscribed by bourgeois ideology.
As mentioned earlier, a subject becomes a criss-cross of interpellation by many ideologies and sometimes it also becomes a source of conflict and contradiction between the imperatives of different ideologies. Althusser points out that every social formation functions on ideology. However, this statement is problematic as it assumes that ideologies have existence prior to class society. In fact, this was one of the central points of controversies when Althusser came up with his concept of ideology. Althusser argues that ideology, as opposed to scientific knowledge, existed even in the classless society. Anything that did not represent scientific knowledge was in effect ideology. With the emergence of class society, ideology was determined by class struggle and subordinated to it. The breach or rupture in the functioning of ideology takes place precisely due to the dynamics of class struggle.
However, this idea, that ideology predates class society, can have any meaning only in an extremely restricted sense. Only possible sense in which it will make sense is that any idea that was not scientific, or was ignorant or limited, could be termed as ideology. Even the naïve ignorance of the primitive man could be classified as ideology! However, in a class society ideology cannot be reduced to ignorance. It is a systematic world-view that presents a fetishistic vision of the relations of the subject to its real conditions of existence. Therefore, Althusser’s argument that “every social formation functions on ideology just as ‘gasoline engines run on gasoline’” is not wholly accurate and can make sense in a very strictly limited context. In essence, not every incorrect idea (for instance, ignorance of the primitive man) can simply be reduced to ideology and in order to understand the true nature of ideology, one has to understand the aspect of class struggle, a priori. One cannot introduce the variable of class struggle post festum and then say that once introduced this variable begins to determine the functioning of ideology. This is an important problem in Althusser’s theorization.
Althusser points out that legal ISA has a very important role because it is this that directly ensures the reproduction of the relations of production in the ‘consciousness’ of the subjects and also ensures the regulation of the functioning of production and production relations. The ISAs are part of the superstructure and as such ensure the reproduction of the production relations behind the shield of the RSAs and with the possibility of resorting to the RSAs. Without this guarantee and possibility, the ISAs would not make any sense. RSAs belong mainly to the political superstructure whereas the ISAs belong to the ideological superstructure. However, as the ISAs reproduce the relations of production in the consciousness of subjects who themselves are the agents of production, this reproduction of production relations is ensured in the functioning of the production relations themselves. Thus, Althusser argues, the exteriority of the superstructure to the base is largely exercised in the form of interiority. This is broadly a correct argument which cautions against falling into a mechanical understanding of the metaphor of base and superstructure.
Whereas the ISAs directly intervene in the reproduction of the relations of production in the consciousness of the subject, who are also the agents of production, in order to ‘make them go without a cop behind them’ (for example, the ideological belief that ‘capitalists are necessary for production’, ‘worker must have a work ethic’, ‘the duty of workers’, the pride of the worker’, etc.), the RSAs which belong to the political superstructure do not intervene directly in the functioning of the production relations and the production itself unless and until the ISAs fail, the production itself stops, for example, when there is a strike, a revolt, representing the absolute disrespect of authority. Once that happens, the institutions of RSAs, like the army, the police, etc. step in to ‘restore order’.
RSAs are much more centralized and organized and directly under control of the ruling classes. They provide a material guarantee, a shield, to the conditions of functioning of the ISAs. ISAs on the other hand, assume the function of reproduction of the relations of production in the consciousness of the subject on a daily basis, though they are not as centralized and organized as the RSAs are and also not under direct strict control of the ruling class. This renders them more hegemonic but also creates gaps and lacks in their functioning, make them prone to subversion by a proletarian ideology, which often happens due to the intensification of class struggle. Thus, ISAs are internally contradictory and are more pronouncedly site of class struggle in the ideological sense.
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These are some fragmentary critical notes towards a preliminary investigation of Althusser’s concept of ideology. Needless to say, much deeper analysis of the concept is required in order to arrive at a complete summation of the positives and negatives of the Althusserian concept. However, it is important to note that Althusser, in his attempt to underline the specificity of ideological state apparatus in reproduction of capitalist relations of production, also refers to Gramsci’s concept of ‘civil society’, its relations with the state (the political society) and its significance in the reproduction of the hegemony of the bourgeois ideology among the masses. There is no doubt that Althusser’s concept of ideology has many elements which are important for our understanding of capitalism and its reproduction. However, most of the positive elements appear to be extension and development of the fragmentary insights provided by Marx and Engels on the subject and wherever there is a deviation from those cues, problems begin to appear, as we saw above in our critical notes on certain elements of Althusserian concept.
This essay is certainly not the last word on the subject and it modestly restricts itself to some scattered thoughts in the process of preliminary investigation of Althusser’s theory of ideology. Hopefully, we will delve deeper into certain aspects of this theory in the future. The task is to deepen our understanding as communist revolutionaries, of the questions of ideology, the centrality of which cannot be emphasized more.
