Marxism: Althusser (Lexicon)

Question 1

The State

Answer 1

The State is a ‘machine’ of repression, which enables the ruling classes to ensure their domination over the working class, thus enabling the former to subject the latter to the process of surplus-value extortion (i.e. to capitalist exploitation)

Question 2

Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)

Answer 2

RSA consists of the army, the police, the judiciary, and the prison system. It operates primarily by means of mental and physical coercion and violence (latent and actual).
‘hard power’, i.e. a form of power that operates by means of violence

Question 3

Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)

Answer 3

ISAs belong to the private domain of society – to churches, schools, families, etc.

Instead of expressing and imposing order, through repression, the ISAs reinforce the rule of the dominant class, principally through ideology; people submit out of fear of social ridicule, rather than fear of legal prosecution or police violence

Question 4

Educational Ideological Apparatus

Answer 4

this is the system of public and private schools

educational system is one of the most important state apparatuses

Question 5

Ideology / ideologies

Answer 5

“Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”
“Ideology has a material existence”
–ideologies have the function of masking the exploitative arrangements on which class societies are based

ideology does not exist in the form of “ideas” or conscious “representations” in the “minds” of individuals. Rather, ideology consists of the actions and behaviors of bodies governed by their disposition within material apparatuses