Ideological State Apparatus

Formation of the concept

Althusser published 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes for an Investigation)' in 1970, in issue 151 of La Pensée. The essay was initially part of a larger unfinished work; the longer French text appeared posthumously as Sur la reproduction (PUF, 1995) and in English translation in 2014, while the first English version of the essay itself appeared in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays in 1971.

The problem of reproduction

The essay is embedded in the question of the reproduction of the conditions of production. The reproduction of labour power requires not only its skills but also its subjection to the ruling ideology, and the reproduction of the relations of production is secured 'for the most part' by the exercise of state power in both the Repressive State Apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatuses.

Composition and functioning

Althusser distinguishes the (Repressive) State Apparatus (government, administration, army, police, courts, prisons), which functions massively and predominantly by repression, from the Ideological State Apparatuses, which function massively and predominantly by ideology, while stressing that no apparatus is purely repressive or purely ideological. His empirical list of ISAs comprises the religious (the system of churches), educational (public and private schools), family, legal, political (including parties), trade-union, communications (press, radio, television) and cultural (literature, arts, sports) apparatuses; he noted that the list must be tested and reorganized and that its order carries no significance. These apparatuses belong largely to the 'private' domain, and he answers the objection by arguing that the public/private distinction is internal to bourgeois law and that what matters is how institutions function. The unity of this plurality is secured not by centralized organization but, usually in contradictory forms, by the ruling ideology, and the apparatuses are multiple, distinct and 'relatively autonomous'.

Theory of ideology

Althusser advances two theses on ideology: that it represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence, and that it has a material existence. Each ISA is the realization of an ideology, which always exists in an apparatus and its practices. The category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, and ideology interpellates (hails) individuals as subjects.

Disputes and distinctions

The ISA is not mere 'false consciousness' or brainwashing: ideology is not ideas one consciously holds but material practices performed within apparatuses, which make individuals into subjects who 'freely' act in ways conducive to reproducing capitalist relations. Althusser's position, as received, holds ideology to be trans-historical or 'eternal', an essential component of all social systems past and future; Žižek's summary follows from this: 'the thesis that the idea of the possible end of ideology is an ideological idea par excellence.' Althusser does not treat the ISAs as mere instruments of domination. They are also the site of class struggle: the class in power cannot lay down the law there as easily as in the repressive apparatus, and the resistance of the exploited classes can express itself through contradictions or by conquering positions within them. The ISA is often labelled 'Lacanian Marxism', or late structuralism read against Gramsci's theory of hegemony, but Althusser himself was a long-time member and sometimes critic of the French Communist Party, commonly described as a structural Marxist.