Louis Althusser

Louis Althusser was a prominent French Marxist philosopher whose work significantly influenced 20th-century critical theory, particularly through his structuralist interpretation of Marxism. In his seminal essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (1970), Althusser introduced the concept of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) to explain how ideology functions within society to reproduce the conditions necessary for the continuation of the Regime of Accumulation. He argued that institutions like schools, churches, and media disseminate ideologies that shape individuals' beliefs and behaviors, effectively ensuring the reproduction of labor power and the perpetuation of existing social relations. By focusing on the subtle and pervasive means by which ideology reinforces the status quo, Althusser's work illuminates the mechanisms through which societies maintain and reproduce their underlying economic and class structures.

Terms Louis Althusser

Louis Althusser > Education, The State

Key Figures

Key Figure > A. L. Kitselman, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Albert Hofmann, Aldous Huxley, Eugene Ruyle, Jean Anyon, Johan Galtung, Louis Althusser, Timothy Leary, Vannevar Bush, William James

Quotes

"As Marx said, every child knows that a social formation which did not reproduce the conditions of production at the same time as it produced would not last a year.The ultimate condition of production is therefore the reproduction of the conditions of production. This may be ‘simple’ (reproducing exactly the previous conditions of production) or ‘on an extended scale’ (expanding them). Let us ignore this last distinction for the moment."

"It follows that, in order to exist, every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and in order to be able to produce. It must therefore reproduce:

1. the productive forces,
2. the existing relations of production."

"How is the reproduction of labour power ensured?

It is ensured by giving labour power the material means with which to reproduce itself: by wages. Wages feature in the accounting of each enterprise, but as ‘wage capital’,3 not at all as a condition of the material reproduction of labour power.

However, that is in fact how it ‘works’, since wages represents only that part of the value produced by the expenditure of labour power which is indispensable for its reproduction: sc. indispensable to the reconstitution of the labour power of the wage-earner (the wherewithal to pay for housing, food and clothing, in short to enable the wageearner to present himself again at the factory gate the next day – and every further day God grants him); and we should add: indispensable for raising and educating the children in whom the proletarian reproduces himself (in n models where n = 0, 1, 2, etc….) as labour power."

"However, it is not enough to ensure for labour power the material conditions of its reproduction if it is to be reproduced as labour power. I have said that the available labour power must be ‘competent’, i.e. suitable to be set to work in the complex system of the process of production. The development of the productive forces and the type of unity historically constitutive of the productive forces at a given moment produce the result that the labour power has to be (diversely) skilled and therefore reproduced as such. Diversely: according to the requirements of the sociotechnical division of labour, its different ‘jobs’ and ‘posts’."

Footnotes

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