Blog 4

The production of power is ensured by the material means in which the “laborer” gains from their labor. The power at hand is the wage in which they provide the labor for. The person behind the power of the wage is not the wage earner, but the person in charge of the reproduction. Doesn’t seem fair that the person who is not physically enduring the tediousness of the labor (in order to create “their” commodity). The wage earner has no say in these wages-they are set be people who ar. The people in charge of dictating the wage come up an amount will the intentions of making as much with spending the least. Therefore, the conditions and amount provided to those earning these wages is more times than not unfair and much less than they deserve. There are few things at stake, in the regulator of the wage must take consider in determining this wage earners life style. Ironic how someone who is born into the luxury of dictating the lifestyle of others without having to lift a finger and therefore have an understanding of what this person is entitled to. Instead the controller and distributor of the wage-earned by the commodity which is provided by and therefore completely controlled by the hands of the laborer. Who is the real person in power here? Down not seem to point in the direction of the one providing the physical, “man power” in the line of production of the commodity granting the ones in charge the money that feeds their power.

The reproduction of skills of labor power is provided by the capitalist regime through on the spot training upon arrival to the jobsite. Through a senior co-worker and an employee handbook. But prior to their arrival those destined to work in the laboring field learn other useful skills like those of high-class backgrounds. In addition to their studies in math, science, language etc. they are taught to obey and follow order. This is the most useful skill acquired by the labor worker in the capitalist education system. “The reproduction of labor power requires not only a reproduction of skills, but also at the same time a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order” (1337).

According to Althusser the study of ideology consists of two main things. One, is it is a reflection of the last resort of history’s of social formations and the class struggles which develop in them (1348). He claims ideology has no history since it is based on the, “now” which cannot be studied in general terms, since there is no “general” only absolute and only absolutely right NOW. The German Ideology is-that the concept is an enigma, dream manufactured by those with power and it involved the alienation of those who are the laborers. Althusser agrees that ideology does not have a history of its own and the history is the class struggle between the haves and have not’s, as read in the communist manifesto. Ideology is a Representation of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence.

The material existence of Ideology, is someone’s representation in the world based on what they have to show-ie a nice house, car, clothes, kids in good schools etc. This image can often reflect a version of the individual and what they think society expects from them. Material wealth is an imaginary relation to the conditions of their existence. Someone may be driving a brand new car, with rims, tints and a very loud sound system. Meanwhile they have a quarter tank of gas and thousands of loans to pay off.

The same applies to the educated, sometimes over-educated individuals-whether or not they are truly passionate about what is is they are studying or they are continuing their education to prove to whomever they are educated and desirable.

For a capitalist state to have control over its people and their labor they have to use the repressive and ideological state apparatuses. Althusser describes the state as a “machine of repression” and  cites violence as the major distinction between the repressive state apparatuses and the ideological state apparatuses. The RSA mode of coercion is through violence and gives several examples of RSA’s including the government, army, police and prisons. This violence is enacted through repression, sometimes physical repression, in prisons for example. I would also say fear is biggest part of this violence. Fear of breaking laws or going against these institutions ideologies and the possible consequences is what represses and keeps citizens docile. Although, these institutions are considered somewhat independent from each other, for Althusser, they work together as one in the RSA. This is a major difference from the ISA which exists in pluralities. I’m still a little confused about this. I’m assuming that despite the police, army, or government being distinctive institutions they all push the same ideas using violence. Also, the ISAs, on the surface, may not be pushing the same ideology.

The ISA exerts control with the use of ideologies and exists in many different realms. For example, the family, the church, schools, trade unions, and culture. The ISA is practiced in private domain and RSA in public. This made sense, since the ISAs involve quite intimate parts of a persons life and is part of how they define themselves. RSAs work best with distance and being seen as the more powerful force. These ISAs seem to operate through fear too. Fear of disappointing your family or God, fear of being an outsider of within your culture or union. Althusser does explain there is no purely ideological apparatus. Schools and churches also use violence to functions, including expulsions and punishments. Within RSAs ideology works second to violence and is presented through the supposed values of these institutions. I had a class where we discussed ideology and how the entire Declaration of Independence is just a document filled with rhetorical ideologies. Even during movements like Black Lives Matter, tons of people come out in staunch support of the police, emphasizing their values. Even when people go against RSAs it’s always a matter of them not upholding the values they were created to uphold. For Althusser, that’s the whole point of these apparatuses, they aren’t meant to serve the larger state but the dominate power, the hegemony. In order for the ruling class to keep their power they must control first the ISAs and then the RSA. He uses this argument to explain how education is now the dominate ISA which reminded me of the earlier Eagleton we did, where he documented how when the church lost its power this control was sought through literature

Antonio Gramsci expands and elaborates on the intellectual within society, its omnipresence, and its utility within a Marxist conception history. He makes the bold assertion, which defies common sense, if you’ve got any, that everyone is an intellectual. However, he discerns two types of intellectuals that are in existence: organic and traditional. The former is the product of every social group that comes into existence with an essential function according to their relation to the means of production (1138). Gramsci terms them “intellectuals” because they craft, for that social group, a reality precipitate of its economic, social, and political functions, while fortifying the group’s homogeneity (1138). Each social group has an intellectual function, whether it be the knight’s craft of war or the cobbler’s craft of shoe-making. Traditional intellectuals are those usually invoked by connotation: wiry glasses, disheveled hair, and a trenchant glare transfixed on the ether. Deemed beyond social function, these intellectuals profit from a lineage of close relation to the dominant social groups (1139). Ecclesiastics are exemplary of traditional intellectuals that have enjoyed such historical vitality, first with the aristocrats then with the bourgeoisie, that they are able to present themselves as “autonomous and independent of the dominant social group” and, therefore, from their material origins (1139).  In reality, according to Marxists, each man (and woman) contributes and sustains a peculiar ideology. This is true for everyone, in some way shape or form, beyond their professional capacity. Gramsci states this eloquently: “homo faber cannot be seperated from homo sapiens” (1140).

Alright, now that Gramsci has made everyone feel special, the term intellectual has lost its denotative function in the Marxist dialogue. However, Gramsci has effectually shifted the paradigm from intellectual/non-intellectual to organic intellectual/traditional intellectual. The latter allows him to explore the use of intellectuals within the hegemonic superstructure (1142). Traditional intellectuals, conferred with an “objectivity” of ideology, have two hegemonic functions. They are responsible for the ideological confirmation of the dominant social group’s agenda for society that is supported by the spontaneous consent of the masses, which is caused by a historically conditioned prestige. They are also responsible for the apparatus of state coercive power that is ready to stymie those crises during which masses do not consent to the dominant group’s prestige. Their first function operates within the private sphere of society (1142). By way of illustration, philosophers, in liberal societies, uphold the sanctity of private property that thus legitimates the power dynamic of bourgeois hegemony.  Their second function is derivative of their first function; however, it manifest itself in the public sphere (1142). By way of illustration, philosophers, assuming the sanctity of private property, establish a conception of justice that enforces the inalienability of property. An ethical system is then constructed surrounding these ideas of property and justice. A bourgeois state apparatus is thus condoned to draft laws that punish impingement of those liberal principles. Nineteenth-century labor met the brutal and blunt edge of this “justice” during strikes. Police would bash heads and bruise bodies to enforce liberal society’s notion of public peace.

In his essay, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, Louis Althusser explores how citizens are controlled by their “State” for the purpose of producing and reproducing of labor power. Althusser states that there are two main types of “apparatus” of the State that are used to keep citizens in check: the “repressive state apparatus” and the “ideological state apparatuses”. While both apparatuses are implemented for the same intended ends, their methods and structure are quite different.

The repressive state apparatus mainly consists of the police, the courts, prisons, the federal government, and the army – essentially any entity that controls citizens through the use of force, to even the possible extent of violence. Althusser states, “the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while function secondarily by ideology,” (1342). The repressive state apparatus does not exist merely to enforce for the sake of enforcing, but rather to instill the values and ideology of the State onto its citizens. Meanwhile, the ideological state apparatuses are, “a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions,” (1341). These institutions include the school, the church, the typical family etc. – institutions whose prime function is to essentially brainwash citizens into adopting the State’s ideology. Contrasting from the repressive state apparatus, the ideological state apparatuses, “function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression,” (1342). As a result, citizens become submissive not through violence, but by avoiding scorn and humiliation.

There are many other differences between the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatuses. First, while there is only one repressive state apparatus, there are many ideological state apparatuses, which spread across many facets of culture. This is because “ideological” is more in sync with the culture of citizens – schools teach students what and how to think (otherwise known as “know-how”), while churches preach to the masses what to believe in. Ultimately, the two forms of apparatus bleed together by controlling citizens through fear. Repressive state apparatuses such as the police and the army force citizens into submitting to the State’s ideology through the threat of violence; likewise, an ideological state apparatus such as the Church (Althusser notes it as the most prominent one) will induce fear into citizens through threat of ostracism. More so, the repressive state apparatus belongs to the “public domain” (1341), which makes sense when considering that the repressive state apparatus is the State itself. By contrast, the ideological state apparatuses belong to the “private domain” (1342), which essentially includes the churches, schools, and trade unions.

For those of you with an extra 20 mins and commensurate mental energy, you might enjoy reading this takedown of Althusser’s “ideology” by Michael Berube. The post is very useful for us for its many links to other authors/texts we’ve read or will read (Saussure, Freud, Lacan, Gramsci) and especially for its comparison of the overlapping arguments of Gramsci on “hegemony” and Althusser on “ISAs.”

We won’t have time to linger on Gramsci tomorrow, but I did want to make sure you don’t get the wrong impression of the general drift of Gramsci’s argument.  We got far afield thinking about hard-to-categorize cases and/or movement between “traditional” and “organic” categories (e.g., Cornell West being a prof at Princeton, Harvard, and Union Theological but also being a “jazz freedom fighter” who “speaks truth to power” in behalf of the multitude). But I want to emphasize that Gramsci is primarily thinking about a central practical and theoretical problem for Marxism: how a working class comes to know itself as a working class and thereby gain political agency.

One can be an exploited worker, in other words, without thinking of one’s self as such, or certainly thinking of one’s self as part of a unified group that might flex its collective muscle at the polls or in the streets. Gramsci’s theory of a “hegemony” cemented by “intellectuals” emphasizes the “organic intellectual” by way of expanding what we mean by “intellectual” to encompass, especially, those who arise from an insurgent class (the bourgeoisie in the late 18thC, the working class in Gramsci’s time and ours), know how to speak its language, and help construct its sense of self.  Gramsci himself fits this profile. So this is what an organic intellectual looks like, more or less.

In one of my own research areas, the literature and culture of the Depression Era, one finds a myriad of writers and other cultural workers playing this role. I’ll leave you with two vivid examples, both aligned, for a time at least, with the Communist party in the US in the period:

Mike Gold was a son of Jewish Ukranian immigrants who wrote the best-seller Jews Without Money and was a widely read advocate of “proletarian literature,” work produced by working-class writers.  Here’s an excerpt from one of his definitions of the type:

A new writer has been appearing; a wild youth of about twenty-two, the son of working-class parents, who himself works in the lumber caps, coal mines, and steel mills, harvest fields and mountain camps of American. He is sensitive and impatient. He writes in jets of exasperated feeling and has not time to polish his work. He is violent and sentimental by turns. He lacks self confidence but writes because he must—and because he has a real talent.

He is a Red but has few theories. It is all instinct with him. His writing is no conscious straining after proletarian art, but the natural flower of his environment. He writes that way because it is the only way for him. His “spiritual” attitudes are all mixed up with tenements, factories, lumber camps and steel mills, because that is his life. He knows it in the same way that one of Professor Baker’s students know the six ways of ending a first act” (“Go Left, Young Writer” 188-9).

And Richard Wright, author of Native Son and Black Boy: the former is a blockbuster novel from 1940 focusing on a young black man who is accused of raping a white woman and is executed; the latter is a memoir, from which this quote is taken.  Wright here ruminates on the Communist Party’s attempts to make inroads in the black community in Chicago, observing that they have the right message but don’t have the “organicity” to capture the hearts and minds of poor blacks. This is a role that Wright will fulfill in many ways in his own work. Upon encountering Communist activists, Wright reflects:

I liked their courage, but I doubted their wisdom. The speakers claimed that Negroes were angry, that they were about to rise and join their white fellow workers to make a revolution. I was in and out of many Negro homes each day and I knew that the Negroes were lost ignorant, sick in mind and body. I saw that a vast distance separated the agitators from the masses, a distance so vast that the agitators did not know how to appeal to the people they sought to lead (Black Boy/American Hunger 294).

Once upon a time, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Age of Reason, the church was the dominant ideological state apparatus by which the bourgeois could control the masses, but, as Eagleton declares, the church’s influence was near to none or, at least, “in deep trouble” during the mid-victorian period and being replaced by another ISA (2140). In listing the ways in which the church had formed an efficient and all-encompassing ISA, Eagleton, perhaps consciously or not, echoes Louis Althusser, his contemporary, and his enumerations of the different ISAs, their audience, and the ways in which each functions. 

Both, Althusser and Eagleton, believe that an ideological apparatus replaced the church, but they disagree on which ISA succeeded in replacing it. Eagleton says Literature whereas Althusser argues that it was the School. Althusser asserts that the ISA of “Good Books” or literature is just as powerful as the church, the family, and other less influential and wide-reaching apparatuses than the School. Literature, according to Althusser, is a supplement to the dominant ideological apparatus of the School (1347). Indeed, literature is only a subject of the many which students are required to study, and Althusser suggests that even arithmetic and the sciences as subjects promote the ruling ideology (1346). Moreover, Althusser asserts that the School is essential to a well-functioning, meaning, controlled capitalist society because it can dictate who fits where in the social strata, whose body performs which labor; each level of education is relative to the type of work one does. Thus, the government can rule over the job market without ruling; whereas, Eagleton associates the effects of controlling and incorporating the working class to English literature (1347; 2141). As a result, I agree with Althusser in that the school is the dominant ISA. The obligation of going to school to be taught a government-mandated curriculum reduces the individual’s autonomy and subjects him to the State’s dominant ideologies, and such an implicit ISA succeeds in a capitalist society —allegedly laissez-faire — because it efficiently advertises itself as the road to unique thought and, as a result, manages to teach an essentially “voluntary” audience only one way to think (1347).

While I agree with Althusser on what is the current dominant ISA, Eagleton’s English is more analogous to the Church than the School, and, replaced a part of it that the latter could not and cannot. Each, the Church and Literature, serves an imaginary doctrine and transforms it into something palpable. They both tell consuming stories to achieve a smooth swallowing of their ideologies. They are “closed to rational demonstration.” (2141). Each succeeds in persuading people to accept the invitation into their fictional, but self-materialized worlds. Both have a nature of choice on the part of the member. In contrast, the School demands its audience “eight hours a day for five or six days out of the seven” (1347). Furthermore, due to its rational approach to teaching —where right is right and wrong is wrong — the School fails to create much of a fictional, dream-like world in which one is lost and which one believes to be as true as anything, and instead creates an allegedly “factual” world; allegedly factual because this world is only correct and universal in States governed by the same ideologies. They are not “absolute.” (2141).

The requirement of teaching conformity reminds me of a scene in the Dead Poets’ Society where the principal asks Robin Williams’ character, John Keating, a professor, what exactly was the demonstration outside in which a handful of students fell into stepping in unison after a little while of walking around the square. Professor Keating explains that it was an illustration of the dangers of conformity; he was teaching the students to think for themselves, believing that school is supposed to teach such lessons. The principal, outraged, demands that he stick to the curriculum and the system because it gets them into ivy leagues and it works. They are too young to think for themselves.

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If you walk in the shoes of a labor worker, life would be very differently perceived than the life of a businessman. The businessman probably has a more optimistic view on life, particularly the economic basis of life whereas the worker shows how hard it is economically. The worker isn’t in complete control since he/she only works on one part of the process and even then they don’t have a  voice on the product or the outcome of their work, they are told by the bigger boss on what to do. This leads to alienation and disconnection from not just work but other aspects in life. As Marx puts it, “…capitol is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society. To the out-cry as to the physical and mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of over-work, it answers: Ought these to trouble us since they increase our profits? But looking at things as a whole, all this does not.” Marx really gets into the eyes of a laborer who works through sweat and blood and in the end still be alienated.

Even though the worker is alienated, if it weren’t for the worker, the owner wouldn’t be in control and wouldn’t be successful. Marx gives an example saying that, “the slave-owner buys his labourer as he buys his horse. If he loses his slave, he loses capital that can only be resorted by new outlay in the slave-mart.” This shows how dependent owners are of workers. For example, Apple relies on factories to create their products and even though the workers aren’t in control of the product or the idea of it, if it weren’t for them there wouldn’t be any products to sell. The same goes for any other company as well. In this way, the worker is in a way in control for it’s because of his labor that there is a business and for it he gets paid. Marx points out that, “the establishment of a normal working-day is the result of centuries of struggle between capitalist and labourer.” What this means is that, despite the two being dependent on each other, the two do clash because of the difference of positions. The laborer is at the bottom because of economic difference and so there will always be a struggle.

Another thing I would like to point out is that even though while we live in a modern capitalist world, we still are very much still part of the past in our way of labor. As Marx puts it, “…thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees, i.e., is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his active life, his very capacity for work, for the price of the necessaries of life…” This shows that yes we have rights for labor workers and we pay them, workers are still much slaves to the system, they put in all their energy to work and get paid very little in return. They’re chained to their work and yet still alienated.

In conclusion, if it weren’t for the creator of a product there would be no company, however if it weren’t for the worker there would be no product. But there’s still divisions between the two, and the worker will still be alienated since he/she is only doing one part of the whole process whereas the owner is in control of everything.

Marxist’s idea of alienation can be applied to the contemporary world using the idea of process of production and set wages. By simply identifying the types of labor induced in productivity, and by not only paying attention to the workers in factories, but also looking to the distributors of a given product we get similar patterns toward the inauthentic interactions involved in the point of product exchange. The salesperson is asked to carry along the spirit and express the experience, without actually necessarily having a particular liking of it at all. It is a live advertisement. I wonder, though, if it is possible that the increased consumerism by today’s workers is a way to void this affective alienation by becoming connected to a product almost spiritually in order to relate it to the way that the product is advertised. Not that the workers then become “fortuitous” in any sort, but in fact that the workers invest in attempt that is not beneficial to the worker and instead helps the income of the producer.

Salespeople are figures shaped to convince and persuade an audience to buy products they have no relationship to, and is not included into the process of making the product, thereby does not themselves understand the framework of productivity. More often than not they have to present the “perfect” product they do not themselves own. However, companies are starting to realize that some accessibility should be granted to the distributor. This sort of detachment from a product can be detrimental to our wage because there now exists a society of increasing consumerism, with advertisements to the workers so they that they are not only the worker, they are too the consumer.

We make the factory function by producing their goods or distributing the product; we are as a union the mode of production. Our paychecks are a planned expense to the company, but we want what we can have, and so we still focus on the paycheck. Moreover, we are not only the mode of production for the companies, but we too are the consumers. I like the idea of using consumerism as an example of the Marxist theory and bring to light that over recent years, consumerism has reached its peak by focusing on the changing culture of consumerism especially toward products of technological advancement that is continuous.

“The only wheels political economy sets in motion are avarice and the war amongst the avaricious – competition” (pp.652).

Extra thought:
It would probably come strange to Marx the obsession that had evolved over consumerism across all classes that has become possible through engines like the media, an intelligently thriving business transaction. Even celebrities today have managed to convince people the brad is the experience. I think this can even relate to create brands of their name, enough to invest money, time, and other types of devotion. The idea that fandom and brands have a way of enact certain behaviors, like waiting all night on a line for a pair of Jordan sneakers or the iPhone 6S. The consumer is drawn to popularity and to the idea of owning a specific product not all can afford rather than its actual value of functionality, and they even come to believe that the quality is better than another’s because of the value price it is given. Brands evoke a sort experience that matches exactly what it advertises, but may just be imaginary.