Louis Althusser (1918–1990)

Editorially, the existence of this volume is almost pointless. It of course contains Althusser's famous (and excellent) Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, but as has been established by the publishing of On the Reproduction of Capitalism - curiously six years before this collection - that is a mere fragment of a much larger and more succinct project. Filling out the rest of the pages are some essays on completely disparate topics taken from, again, other texts Verso had already show more published like Lenin and Philosophy and Essays in Self Criticism. This is, for a publishing house who seemingly pride themselves on their library of anti-capitalist literature, an incredibly ironic and near-unforgivable attempt and milking cash out of a famous essay chapter that they have already published with different cover art on multiple ocassions. Given the esotericism of the other chapters, this doesn't work as an introduction to Althusser either, and given the relative difficulty of the famous chapter and its removal from important context, I have absolutely no idea why this exists. For lack of a better term, this is a blatant cash-cow release from Verso. Do not indulge them by purchasing this text. Pirate it, or read the full texts that these chapters are siphoned from. Two stars purely for the quality of the chapters themselves, of course, and because this was technically the book that got me intrigued as to Althusser's thought, but I quickly realised that it does not actually merit that reaction. show less

A Brief Note on the "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" Essay

Recently, I had reason to return to this important essay. I found its revision of the old marxist materialism cum 'economism' surprisingly compelling. But certainly not in the way our author intended. Althusser, with Lacan and Deleuze, have all become the 'master-thinkers' of post-marxism. The impossibility of revolution in any economically advanced nation has brought us to this impasse. It is my contention that Marxism show more today is but another Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) that explains and (therefore) controls suffering. I know, our author, and his readers, all thought very differently...

"Ideology has a material existence", Althusser tells us. And certainly this is an advance over cold war orthodox marxism. ideology is no longer merely in minds, it is out here in bodies and institutions and their activities. With Althusser, ideology becomes a material force. Why is this important? Control the ideology of individuals and institutions and you control their behavior. Instead of thinking of individuals as causes, we now think of them as effects. They are all made (i.e., produced and reproduced) within the various ISA's. This process of control/production our author calls interpellation. ISA's, btw, are never to be confused with the Repressive State Apparatus. It consists of the Government, Police, Military, etc. ISA's consist of the Church, Family, Education, and so on.

The hope, the dream, of readers of this essay, was that by going into the universities (the Gramscian 'long march' through the institutions), leftist intellectuals could snatch interpellation from the ruling class and use it to revolutionize the ruled. It has been over 40 years since this essay first appeared. The ineffectiveness of the project is easy to see. Our scholars have become but another clerisy; explaining suffering, but powerless to change it. I give four stars because of the advance that Althussers understanding of ideology represented in its time.

After reading this essay I came away feeling that what historically is (and has been) called "Freedom" is little more than the arguments that (elements of) the ruling strata has with itself. And that in the end, all these new (post-marxist) movements that the liberals and soi-disant 'leftists' so enthuse over, such as vegetarianism and ecology and sex revolution, are so privileged because they in no way attack property. In this way they are not really any different from the role religion traditionally has had. Whether you are busy getting your life 'right' with God, with Tantra, with Mother Nature, or with Cauliflower, it threatens property relations not at all. And this is why these various positions (and there are many others) are so easily supported by factions within the ruling strata. It is exactly as Colonel Ireton indicated at the Putney Debates so long ago, everything is always said and done with an eye towards (protecting) property. Everything. The ISA's of our author are but another way to theoretically come to terms with the varied ramifications of this inescapable fact in ever-changing circumstances.

And certainly the situation has changed! Ireton was speaking at a time (1647, during the English Civil War) when most forms of property were fixed (land, housing) and one strove to pass it on intact to future generations. Yes, certainly Ireton was aware of nascent capital relations. In his replies to the Levellers he strives to win over the bustling market towns and their guilds and manufacturers to his position. But in Ireton's conception of property there is so little movement! It was the restlessness of Capital that would destroy ye olde landowners and their world far better than the levellers had ever imagined. It is this restlessness that produces not only new means of production and new relations of production, but also new forms of labor too. And the new worker, the ever-new workers need ever new forms of ideology in their ever changing circumstances. This explains the necessity of the proliferation of leftish 'new movements' while the old USSR was going through its decades long death throes. And it also suggests that in the decades (perhaps centuries) long process of globalization the theory of ISA's will find much more to explain...

Postmodern nihilism, ultimately, is the result of the failure of the socialist revolutionary project to overcome capitalism. This failure is the root cause of the proliferation of theory in the academy. Given the inescapable fact of the dissatisfaction of people with/in capitalism, new ways, and ever new ways, had to be found to deal with this dissatisfaction. The multiplication of theoretical positions in the academy was one way; the antics of mass culture beyond the ivy tower was another. All of this was necessary; people always need explanations for their sacrifices and sufferings. - And they also need to forget or ignore the fact that these explanations change nothing at all.

The inability of socialism to overcome capitalism, not only through the USSR but in the streets of the advanced capitalist states, means that the battle for socialism must be fought on a different terrain than it was fought in the twentieth century. The question that now needs to be asked, the problem that now needs to be faced by marxists everywhere, is if all that is left of marxism is that it is nothing but another ideological position within theory manufacturing academia, how is marxism itself not another 'Ideological State Apparatus' that is enthused over by trend setting liberal cum leftists within and beyond the ruling strata?

It was the ceaseless movement of capital, not theory, that destroyed Ireton's beloved landowners. And I have come to believe that it is only the same relentless movement that will one day destroy Capitalism. show less

Whilst not being an intellectual power house (you could probably glean most of his insights from giving Pink Floyd’s The Wall another spin) Althusser certainly stands as a decent springboard for your own thought. Frankly the discussions of ideology were the least interesting, with Althusser’s discussions of the Subject/subject distinction (by being hailed by a policeman in the street, by being ‘picked out’ as it were, you are shown to always-already be inscribed as a subject within show more an ideological framework, your placement within the structure being forced upon you - Althusser dubs this process ‘interpellation’), of class struggle being the motor of history (contra humanist/petty-bourgeois attempts to portray Man as the maker of history, able to craft and transcend his position with the stuff/material of history, all utilised/co-opted as a smokescreen for ideological and economist purposes, even with thinkers such as Sartre who construe themselves as Marxist revolutionaries giving into these tendencies, unconsciously opening the door for a regressive kind of thought that throws up obstacles when it comes to a scientific knowledge of historical/dialectical materialism), however any and all of his discussions concerning God are incredibly weak and unconvincing, as he espouses a dull and unpalatable atheism that strikes one as markedly adolescent. His attempts to evade God as the Subject of history, as some philosophical concept as discardable as consciousness, substance, Reason etc. etc. are just bone headed, and I hope there’s an essay of his out there where he tackles ontotheology/the question of God more directly. Having now read a decent chunk of his Reading Capital I can confidently say that this is a far less nuanced and sophisticated output by Althusser, but I still had a blast working through it. It’s a real bummer that he strangled his wife though, and its terrible that he spent the rest of his life haunted by the fact that he was never convicted for it, that he could never assume responsibility for her death, even if it was ruled to have been due to hallucinations brought about by a new regiment of antipsychotics. Also my book started to fall apart due to this infernal fucking English heatwave, and I’ve had a hell of a time sticking it back together and sanding down the parts that stuck out - the Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses are out to get me folks, they’re shutting down free thought !!! show less

"[Althusser] is a professional philosopher who is also a prominent member of the [French Communist] Party without being committed to the official eclecticism. For Althusser, a complete Marxist philosophy remains an unfulfilled desideratum. Only the cornerstone of the building has been laid: the structure remains to be erected. For all its apparent modesty, this approach discloses a resolute determination to build a total system. Is it an accident that Althusser (like Antonio Gramsci a show more generation earlier) operates within a Catholic culture, as the theorist of a movement which for its adherents has become a substitute for the Church? At any rate the effective completion of his project points in the direction of an all-encompassing synthesis. Impressive in its way, there is nonetheless something scholastic about it. One wonders what Marx would have thought of it."(citations omitted) (1966) show less