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a whole, which, in the region of ideology, means that the class struggle 'passes through' what Althusser has called the ideological state apparatuses. | In adopting the term ideological state apparatus, I intend to underline certain aspects which I believe to be crucial (apart of course from the reminder that ideologies are not made up of 'ideas' but of practices):
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1. Ideology does not reproduce itself in the general form of a Zeitgeist (i.e. the spirit of the age, the 'mentality' of an epoch, 'habits of thought', etc.) imposed in an even and homogeneous way on 'society' as a kind of space pre-existing class struggle: 'The ideological state apparatuses are not the realization of ideology in general. . .' |
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2. '. . . nor even the conflict-free realization of the ideology of the ruling class', which means that it is impossible to attribute to each class its own ideology, as if each existed 'before the class struggle' in its own camp, with its own conditions of existence and its specific institutions, such that the ideological class struggle would be the meeting point of two distinct and pre-existing worlds, each with its own practices and its 'world outlook', this encounter being followed by the victory of the 'stronger' class, which would then impose its ideology on the other. In the end this would only multiply the conception of Ideology as Zeitgeist by two. 1 |
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3. 'The ideology of the ruling class does not become the ruling ideology by the grace of God . . .', which means that the ideological state apparatuses are not the expression of the domination of the ruling ideology, i.e. the ideology of the ruling class (God knows how the ruling ideology would achieve its supremacy if that were so!), but are the site and the means of realization of that domination: '. . . it is by the installation of the ideological state apparatuses in which this ideology [the ideology of the ruling class] is realized and realizes itself, that it becomes the ruling ideology . . .' |
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4. But even so, the ideological state apparatuses are not pure instruments of the ruling class, ideological machines simply reproducing the existing relations of production: '. . . this installation [of the ideological state apparatuses] is not achieved all by itself; on the contrary, it is the Stake in a very bitter and continuous class struggle . . .' 2 which means that the ideological state apparatuses constitute simultaneously and contradictorily the site and the ideological conditions of the transformation of the relations of production (i.e. of revolution in the Marxist-Leninist sense). Hence the expression 'reproduction/ transformation'. |
I can now take one more step in the study of the ideological conditions of the reproduction/transformation of the relations of production, by
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