In his celebrated 1970 essay, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," French Marxist Louis Althusser explores the ways in which social institutions shape individual consciousness in order to propagate the existing social system. The work was intended as a Structural Marxist critique of both capitalist and Soviet oppression - a guide for revolutionaries to better identify and overthrow the subtle and dispersed chains that theoretically bound them.
Yet Althusser's ideas are not only useful for Thayer Street-Marxists and oblivious Modern Culture and Media students. Even those who support, more or less, a liberal democratic society should take heed of his analysis. A failure to appreciate the concepts engaged by Althusser's critique will mean, just as Althusser predicted, the downfall of liberal democracy.
Althusser's analysis of ideological state apparatus is both crucial to understanding the dynamics of social systems and, for our purposes, relatively simple to understand. Roughly, Althusser asserts that no political, economic or cultural system can survive without instilling its members with the belief that it is the best and most natural system that should be practiced and maintained. Citizens receive this belief from ideological apparatus with investments in the current system - the mainstream capitalist media, the state-run education system, religious authorities and parents who have been similarly educated by the system's ideology.
This is not a simple matter of sinister brainwashing, but rather a primary law of societal development. A society that did not make its members believe that it should be preserved would inevitably be changed by future generations. The relatively stable societies that have grown out of millennia of social upheaval would thus naturally be the ones that did the best job of passing on widespread belief in their merits.
This is a fundamental evolutionary principle applied to human societies. No living species could long endure which did not pass on its genes to its young. In the same way, citizens of liberal democracies receive the "genes" for believing in and passing on this system through ideological apparatuses. Liberal democratic institutions perpetuate the ideology of liberal democracy, so that they can persevere through the coming generations and eventually pass this same ideology along to new children.
Yet despite the elemental importance of Althusser's observations, the United States seems to have lost interest in passing on its ideology to the next generation. Children receive educations in conspicuous consumption (Paris Hilton), in racism (Don Imus) and in corruption (the U.S. government), among other destructive values. Meanwhile, the essentials of liberal democracy - engaged citizenship, social responsibility to justice, an understanding of the operations of our political and economic systems - are ignored in both schools and the public sphere.
Some may argue that this phenomenon in fact reflects the true propagation of American priorities, the banal and evil capitalist ideology that Althusser observed. Whether or not one holds to that assertion, it is impossible to deny that these values do not bode well for either a liberal democratic or a Marxist future. Instead, future generations ignorant not only of political and economic theory, history and civics, but ignorant of their own ignorance, will likely pursue a more irresponsible, cynical and dangerous form of capitalism, governed by apathetic pseudo-democracy. This is a frightening future we are perhaps already beginning to see in our own time.
If the United States wants to avert this dystopic scenario, it must appreciate the importance of ideological state apparatuses in shaping the consciousness of coming generations. This means, above all, that our government must finally take seriously the public education system, which is undergoing a shameful and disastrous national systemic failure.
Yet this imperative does not mean merely raising abysmal graduation rates and producing inspired students invested in the system. The United States must also reintroduce the teaching of civics - the instruction on the mechanics, philosophy and importance of engaged liberal democratic citizenship - to public schools. During this year's unusually extended Democratic primary season, how many of us have been surprised to learn how little we actually knew about the American democratic system - the variety of primary voting systems, the "Texas Two-Step " or those pesky superdelegates?
Naturally, civics classes should not be exclusively laudatory - liberal democracy requires the instruction, in fact the celebration, of critical social, political and economic analyses. Devoted Marxists may reject these initiatives as simply more bourgeois indoctrination. Yet they should recognize that the absence of civics instruction is merely another form of brainwashing - one in which students are denied knowledge of our social system while the established elites pull the strings from the shadows. A more educated and engaged populace should be an improvement, indeed an imperative, in the eyes of both liberal democrats and Structural Marxists. The only people who benefit from public ignorance are those who control and exploit knowledge. Reflect for a moment: how many elected officials enroll their children in public schools?
Of course, I recognize the contradiction of this argument - my own desire for liberal democracy may in fact just be an effect of the ideology I absorbed over my life. Yet even recognizing this possibility does not mitigate this imperative. Whether one subscribes to liberal democracy, Structural Marxism, Islamism, anarcho-syndicalism or most any other political program, all honest ideologues should desire an engaged and educated citizenry.
The only perspectives that profit from the current system are those that benefit from ignorance. The United States must reinvest seriously in public education, with a renewed inclusion of civics, in order to pass on the ideological genes of liberal democracy to the next generation. To neglect this necessity is to sacrifice the essential component of any successful system, and to fail as a society.
Jacob Schuman '08 once heard someone say the word "positionality" in MCM class. He has not been the same since.
