Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. He used the basis of Marxism to developed his own ideas of ISA’s.
Marx believed that the state was a ‘machine’ of repression, which enabled 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. This repressive element of the state is what Althusser calls the State Apparatus and consists of the government, the administration, the army, the police, the
courts, the prisons, etc. In addition to this, the state also consists of Ideological State Apparatuses which are a number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions, such as religion, education, the family, media, culture, etc.
What is the difference between the State Apparatus (SA) and the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA)? First, there is only one SA, but a plurality of ISAs. Secondly, the SA belongs to the public domain and the ISA to the private. And most importantly, the SA functions by violence, whereas the ISA functions by ideology. The ISAs are often the site of class struggle because the class in power cannot lay down the law in the ISAs as easily as it can in the SA, not only because the former ruling classes are able to retain strong positions there for a long time, but also because the resistance of the exploited classes is able to find means
and occasions to express itself there, either by the utilization of their contradictions, or by conquering combat positions in them in struggle.
The reproduction of the relations of production is secured by the legal-political and ideological superstructure. It is secured by the exercise of state power in the SA and the ISAs. The role of the repressive SA consists essentially in securing by force the political conditions of the reproduction of relations of production which are in the last resort relations of exploitation. The SA also secures by repression the political conditions for the action of the ISAs. The ISAs largely secure the reproduction specifically of the relations of production, behind a ‘shield’ provided by the repressive SA. The ISA which has been installed in the dominant position in mature capitalist social formations as a result of a violent political and ideological class struggle against the old dominant ISA (the Church) is the educational ideological apparatus. The mechanisms which reproduce the exploitative relations of production are concealed by a universally reigning ideology of the school.
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