On State and Ideology

Abstract

  This thesis clarifies the conception of ISAs (the ideological state apparatuses) which Louis Althusser introduced in his essay dealing with ideology. According to Althusser, ISAs are defined not so much by the extent of government concern as by their function: to certificate reproduction of capitalist relations of production. I have tried to elucidate the mechanism that the ISAs intervene with the process of the reproduction of capitalist relations of production. One of the distinctive features of the capitalist relations of production is to deprive direct-workers of their ability and power to control the whole process of production. This deprivation accompanies a strange contradiction : laborers are expected to acquire a number of skills but at the same time this also means laborers subjection to capitalist means of production and capitalist system of division of labor. The continuation of capitalist mode of production depends on keeping workers in such contradictive-exploitative conditions. That is, they have to be not only skillful workers but also faithful observants of bureaucratic hierarchy in capitalist organization or state apparatuses. We can also see that these conditions give the foundation of capitalist rule that leads to capitalist state that takes the advantage of the division of labor between spiritual labor and physical labor.

  Therefore, the main problem is the question of how ISAs contribute to secure reproduction of capitalist relation of production. ISAs act against individuals' body to produce practice governed by rituals : a corpus of disciplines or normative codes that are defined by each ISA. ISAs in capitalist social formation reproduce enormous practice, accumulation of which makes possible the agents of the normative labor power which the capitalist enterprise can exploit. ISAs not only define the series of routine customary acts performed by individuals which should be called practice, but also reproduce a spatio-temporality that is the matrix of capitalist relationship of production. Capitalist mode of production needs a historically specific spatio-temporality : time is dividable, calculable and accumulable, which allows workers to sell their time, and space has a kind of grid pattern in which the beings and things should be identifiable and kept under surveillance and the subject of calculation.

  In fact some ISAs, especially educational ISA reproduce such spatio-temporality : in school children are put in live demarcated space, regulative timetables and go through practices which enable them to find their own identity in groups or organization and organize themselves as calculable for their supervisors. They become accustomed to observe the order of a division of labor system in which the gap between spiritual labor and physical labor is inherent. School ISA represents the matrix of capitalist combination of knowledge and power, which results in capitalist rule.