Althusser on Capitalist Ideology and State Apparatuses
Vložit
- čas přidán 27. 06. 2019
- You have a choice between status quo and status quo; featuring French Theorist Louis Althusser and cameos by Zizek, Pink Floyd and South Park. I got Althusser's essay from Zizek's anthology, Mapping Ideology (amzn.to/37epOQC).
If you like the work there's more at spoti.fi/3f0OIXD and / plasticpills
As many have said, and because I don't... didn't... know how to level sound properly, the music is too loud relative to voice in some parts. In lieu of deleting this video, I have uploaded closed captions so please try those. SORRY.
the eerie music in the middle made this feel a little like a Ludovico treatment
Maybe it's just me, but I didn't notice anything wrong with the music level. I actually liked it just fine. Perhaps some will notice it and others, like me, won't; but I would definitely say you shouldn't even have been thinking of deleting this over something which I wouldn't even have thought about if I hadn't read the comments. I know you added closed captions in lieu of, but I didn't need them. Great video.
Video is great as it is;
I wouldn't throw away a Rolls-Royce 'cos it's got a dent in it.
What BS , god forbid we attempt to teach our children self control how to read and how to write, cooperate with a larger group. Given the outcomes I have seen in my career in education the mission you describe doesn't seem to catch hold.
I have seen what you talking about but in socialist systems. Having worked with thousands of Americans I can tell you the independent thinking is not the rare commodity you argument makes out. If you want to see n oppressive school system it socialism and communism.
And I would point out how ironic it is to blame capitalism. the school system in America government mandated State enforced entity.
Capitalism allows people to go their own way pursue there own interests to be your own boss.
I understood a lot of this from an early age. When I was around 10, my family sat watching a news report about truants. One of the truants said "schools are like prisons. They use bells to tell you what to do and where you should be". My old man interjects: "you better get used to it kid, because most factories use bells for the same kind of things". Even at ten years old, I understood that school was just a way to get kids to think in a certain way, behave and comply with authority. To indoctrinate them ready for their future working environment. Even the way that the wealthier 'respectable' kids were given minor positions of authority, was mirroring the managerial and professional positions they'd eventually fill post school.
Even the architecture is similar.
Found you via Reddit. Awesome content! When I saw the size of your channel after watching this, I was shocked. You deserve more! I’m subbed.
Thanks for the vote of confidence friend. I'm not very good at marketing it but I figure if the ideas are resonant enough it'll get around eventually.
Always wanted to use "criminally underrated" under a video. I guess this is the time and place :)
@@PlasticPills , no you never will :( Otherwise We would have a different system already.
But please continue, if one more watches and awakens it is a gain
Which subreddit?
@@PlasticPills can u plzz tell how ideology works in literature..plzzzzzzzzzz...one short answer plxx
That brutal editing of Zizek to be saying the opposite of what he says would be applauded by him
You weren't supposed to notice!
@@PlasticPills pure ideology, sniff 🤧
Yo this is excellent! Very well put together, sounds arguments with contemporary examples and some entertainment sprinkled in. Keep it up!
No clue why you havent blown up yet...(the answer is in the core problem your channel analyzes). This is top notch.... Ill keep liking and commenting to help lord algorithm out....
I really enjoy your videos. I struggle when it comes to theory but you break it down into such digestible chunks that I walk away with a ton of knowledge and end up looking at the world throughout many different lenses. So, thank you.
Your channel is so fantastic I have been bingeing all of your videos and sharing them with everyone. Great work!
Love this channel. It resonates well with me. Clear and to the point. Thank you.
This is one of the greatest channels on all youtube, so many anwers and the level of subscribers only reassures the idea of how deep drowned we are as society, lost in capitalism.
Such a good channel, surprised why only 28K subscribers, all is clear, thank you really useful and clear content! Watched just 3 minutes and realized it is worth to subscribe to this channel!
Liked! This video really helps me to understanding my college material😭. The additional clips really entertaining too and made me paying attention till the end!! Thank you for the effort!
I've checked out a lot of ur content here.The clarity this video carries is uniquely impressive and much better than other videos I must insist!
This channel deserves way more views
Your videos are fantastic. Thank you for making them.
Approved my exposition THANKS to this guy! There are not content like this everywhere! And I looked! Dude idk how to THANK U for your work! You gave excellent examples these where the kind of teaching I needed!
Thank you for this video! I loved how you explain everything very clear.
im so glad i found this channel like a week ago
Just found you, really digging the content man! Watched 3 in a row just now
bro just wanna say been watched a couple of your videos and they are of great quality, and GOOD trap music!!
Just discovered your channel through reddit. Awesome video!
Same, just started following r/CriticalTheory, mind blown!
This is great. I haven't read Althusser but I made a whole playlist on education that makes many of the same points.
This is really high-quality, loved it!
Got linked to this by a Professor for our unit on Marxism theory. Super well put together video here, spliced in with nice visual elements, clips, and jokes. Made this really entertaining to watch versus just reading Althusser's dry theory.
If you (or ur prof, heh) are looking at Marxist theory definitely check out the video I put out today, it's much higher quality than this one👍
Always quality content from this channel
That was not my experience regarding school. I feel sorry for those that had that experience during their time in school, wherever , whenever.
Great video! My only complaint is that the music levels are louder than you are in a lot of the video, which makes it difficult to hear/concentrate on what you're saying.
Thanks for the feedback, still working at the technical stuff as that's all new to me; I noticed this one particularly sucks on phone speakers
Extremely well made popular explanation. I've read most of Marx and the original essay by Althusser and I still found it insightful so bravo
In a time where questioning seems life threatening with the presence of AI, and this is at a very subconscious level (maybe we just pretend it is unconscious to keep working on spectacles to counter act the tragedy), I admire your work and dedication.
I am not exaggerating when I say this, this is one of the best videos I’ve ever seen in my life
Don’t forget the cynical twist of modern ideology: believing through not believing
~”School is about much more than skills training. The ideology of submitting yourself, along with your peers, in obedience to the authority, is instantiated in the layout of the physical space itself” 9:35
That's some good shit man, keep it up!
I have an exam in 2 hours but jesus fuck, I think I'm in love w you. You deserve so so so much more recognition. Thank you for this!!! ❤️
great content, really enjoyable material lol
Best explanation of this subject that I've seen.
Great channel
10:36 maybe all these places are like this because its the most best way for an audience to view an event
I remember a guy from England said “when we are kids we are told we will never be king or queen, and as a result we grow up resentful, and hence why we have free healthcare”
Excellent lecture. Many thanks.
Interesting that Althusser's model here has a lot in common with what the likes of Curtis Yarvin would call The Cathedral, a decentralised consensus forming apparatus that maintains the status quo.
An oblique and nebulous status quo is such a prominent part of capitalism that everyone across the spectrum can easily identify it
Thanks. You're an excellent teacher.
Ideology is not simply speaking well or badly! Been to school much? Sorry, couldn't resist. Love your content. Your handle on Lacan is the best I've heard on CZcams. 😀
Great informative video
There is a "step" in some religions where an adherent (normally a teen) has to commit (or not) to the belief system. Bar mitzvah (judaism) and confirmation (catholic) are two such steps. Maybe we should create a step in democracy or capitalism as actually practiced where the adherents must make a conscious choice to stick with it. If nothing else, this would at least suggest that alternatives are possible, and perhaps encourage some to examine what they are actually signing-up for.
That's what I like about Left-tube. Bigger channels with a large audience(ZeroBooks in this case) share other small but also good channels with awesome content and nice aesthetic. I hope you will get more subs and views in the near future. And thanks again for the work you put in your videos.
Thanks Digi. Still getting my hands dirty but I don't know how much lefttube cares for what I'm doing. All I do is make the videos I would want watch on CZcams.
Phantastic!!!
To imagine we would have the same energy as sport fans when it comes to politics
This is good, my college Marxist philosophy class is essentially this video in a nutshell.
Low key the fact that a Marxist philosophy course is restricted to just this aspect of that broad field is itself a manifestation of the processes this video discusses. I suggest independent study of Marx, uni courses are inevitably hamstrung by several factors including the social position of the professor themselves (but not only that)
@@nickpayne4724 well said: if you aren't learning about Marx' theories on the contradictions of capitalism and historical materialism, you're being taught a pacified version of Marx!
Damn Marxist universities and lobsters. LOL. That's cool, though. The whole class was centered around ideology?
Of course the education system is bastardizing marks because they want all the little good students to be Marxist and not be critical of Marx... this entire channel is basically the same thing promoting uncritical perspectives of Mars to promote Marxist materialism which is f****** wrong
@@DevastationMtrsports lol no
Found you through philosopher Peter Rollins. Love it.
Interesting, just looked him up. Was it a link or a CZcams recommendation? I did once have a passing interest in negative theology
@@PlasticPills he mentioned you on his last 2 podcasts. The Fundamentalists. He's great. I love your stuff!
Thanks so much Robin! We're all kindred travellers.
I loooove all your videos- what’s your background? Where did you get this fab critical theory background? The aesthetics are also slick :)
Got this recommendation by my aesthetic teacher, Its awesome.
Was that Echos by Floyd? I love your vids. You did a decent job on the Lacan vids that I saw. A tad existentialist, maybe, but apt.
that's Another Brick In The Wall by Floyd, not Echoes
Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher ... Zizek - Film Studies ... John Vervaeke - Meaning Crisis ... Daniel Schmachtenberger - Feeding Moloch .... Foucault, Fanon, C.W. Mills
Saw the D&G video first, then came to this one. Excellent channel! Do you have any theories (or know of anyone who has theorized about) how/why anti-capitalist ideas/media/culture are allowed to exist?
Because they are easily co-opted. Capitalism thrives on crises, and the only real threat would be massive direct action on national scales. Unfortunately we can vent on CZcams to get that sweet catharsis so we are shit outta luck.
Frankly they aren't allowed to exist. They're fought tooth and nail. Only the working class vanguard really keeps our class's historical memory alive, fights for a true cognition of society and history via our own publications. Until we have succeeded in revolution, the education system and media (controlled by capitalists) will do everything in their power to hide and destroy our knowledge and substitute ideology in its place. Some day, what is called "Marxism" will just be economics, philosophy, historiography, etc.
@@nickpayne4724 maybe someday is here...only that idea is solely in the service of capital.
Mark Fisher talks about this in Capitalist Realism: the idea that capitalism has captured anti-capitalist rhetoric in a way that just reinforces the status quo: media lets you consume anti-capitalism in a controlled manner, we try just to mitigate capitalism's worst effects, often through a very individual lens or through consumerism. People have what he calls reflexive impotence: we see the flawed nature of the system yet we can't see effective change. This dissonance ends up affecting our mental health.
I love this.
Great video! Thanks! ♥♥
This video is so god damn good.
thanks for showing me this channel homie
@@2tvtv More than happy to do so.
Great video , outstanding work
Would like to say on the school purpose
You could read althusser's contemporary Foucault's book regarding discipline and punish
He has more clearly expanded on the discipline system acting in the most unmanifested ways.
Hi, man. Im from Brazil and i want to suggest the book Pedagogy of the oppressed, by brazilian educator Paulo Freire.
Congratulations!!
We are very fond of it in the USA!
I really enjoy your content, but I do agree with some of the comments, the music is too loud. Try to check that before uploading it to YT
Brilliant. Just Brilliant.
Thank you for answering questions I had been pondering for a while. I thought we needed more funding for education. Now I see that we need educational reformation.
Great video 👍
I've always interpreted the passage "the meek shall inherit the earth" as the inevitability of a worker controlled earth lol
As easy as it can be - but not easier. Good examples!
Awsm informative video bro.......
am loving your videos, amasing work in trying to get hard topics in a understandable way. I just just have one critique, the music is too high
Keep it up!
That ending though bro.... wow
This is excellent
So very late to the Pills party but hoping there is a deeper dive into Althusser somewhere
Ideology may not in its entirety be made up in some back room, but it is certainly discussed in those back rooms about how to go about shaping and propagating that certain Ideology. Bernays and all.
the game theory says take what you need now and don't think about the future or vary from the norm
I wanted to ask if I could use any of your content for short form content? I thoroughly enjoy your content and just want to expose people to it.
These videos are fucking brilliant and I love them
Love ur hairstyle!
Very well made video!
I struggle with some questions about this topic tho. It's clear that education, as it is now, is a way of preserving the neoliberal status quo. So is the legal system and most of the media. However, what would be the solution? You made a great list of things that restrict us for seemingly sensible reasons, which rich people can easily avoid. But what if we all broke these rules? How would living together look like without the modern state apparatus? What would ensure that the old hierarchy won't come back? I just think about some situations (which may look silly), where people behaving inappropriately causes much distress. Like you go to the cinema and a bunch of guys keep talking and flashing their phones. Education would tell them that it's wrong (which may or may not be of any effect), but what would a ruleless society do? Should I talk to them not to do it? Or just accept it? Why would their way of going to cinema be superior to my enjoyment? Or we would have a fistfight and the loser shuts up?
another interesting point that could be made: we live in the age of information, and yet the /evolved to be curious or they would die out/ people are as ignorant as ever; it is hard to find a child that is not curious, and it is equally hard to find an adult that is; arguably, the system that force feeds "knowledge" (random, useless facts without any context) might be partly to blame for this
Wow this video rocks.
Is Ideology the collective unconscious protecting its ego from Lacan's "the real"?
Do you have something about higher ed and ideology?
Bro, love the content, love it, But the music man........
My bad... was a phase. Might rerelease a few of these from quarantine 😷
Good video
After I became a vegan animal rights activist, ideology became a very prominent thing to me. Zizeck has pointed out that when you fight ideology, it is first fought in yourself. To other people it LOOKS like you are directing violence to yourself, because they understand the ideology as an integral, natural part of us. But actually, you are rejecting the part in you that was directed by ideology.
Many people see my boicott of animal products as a "violence" to myself. A uncomfortable ascetisism that works against my "nature" and interests to fit in. While in fact, I have just rejected an unjustified ideology, and started by rejecting it in myself.
To not consume hedonistically is seen as a selfdirected violence.
To not dominate the "weaker" species by comsuming them hedonistically is also seen as a self-directed violence.
But in reality, like in theory about ideology, boicotting animal products, seeing animals as my natural equals, defying social pressure, has been extremely liberating. I feel freer than ever, I also gained a lot of self respect, and widened my perspective and ability to be critical to all ideologies who seek to desperately keep the status quo, but also those who seek change.
I see capitalism and animal exploitation as intimately connected, now. They are ideologies that exploit limitlesslu, and rationalize it by the tree fallacious "it's natural, normal and neccecary". They excert social pressure to conform and consume, and are obsessed with "natural hierarchies" of deservingness of life and safety. None of them have rational basis, and the start of liberation from them is to reject them. And the place to start is in ourselves. Rational choices IS freedom.
" Most obvious of all, of course, are the many hours of overtly cultural and educational program scheduled daily on both TV and radio in Japan, not only on the several TV channels and radio frequencies that are operated by the Japanese government solely for educational purposes, but also on the even more numerous privately operated, purely commercial facilities. Having spent so much of their lives in on variety of schoolroom or another, the Japanese early acquire a wide spectrum of favorable conditioned reflexes to the outward forms and discipline of education that often last them the rest of their lives. For most of childhood they are told they must not play but study. Their home is the classroom, and the classroom is where they feel most at home. The result is that even after their formal schooling finally comes to an end with university graduation, many adult Japanese feel secretly guilty for the rest of their lives whenever they spend any substantial amount of time doing anything that is not ostensibly connected with studying or with some sort of formal schooling.
" Japanese TV and radio both respond in two different ways to this lingering Pavlovian reflex of horror at enjoying oneself. Both media actually schedule a surprisingly large number of hours of formal education and cultural programs, which the viewer or listen can enjoy with a clear conscience, since they are plainly labeled educational. But both media also customarily deck out pure entertainment programs in educational garb, to lull their audiences into a false but comforting sense of relaxation: it is all right, they say in effect, to enjoy the following program because it is not really entertainment, it is actually education. relax, and study hard!"
-- _Japan's Modern Myth,_ Roy Andrew Miller, 1982
(Not quite 1984, but getting there.)
In a society dominated by fear and lies, the greatest act of rebellion is to love without condition and tell the truth regardless of circumstance. The question is... In a society dominated by fear, where everyone is taught how to fear and lie about enjoying it, and people spend their free time consuming conflict and fear on the tv... How can we learn to love?
First, I would say, it starts with turning off the sanctioned tv.
Look into Halemi Raj: Rule through compassion/humilty
This resembles zizek's: our fear of falling in love
Though you deserve millions of subscribers, I think we all know why nothing like that will ever be allowed to happen
have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution?
Its not an hour of leisure, it more like 30 mins when I did hs in America
How does differ from Foucault's analysis of normalizing and repressive power. Did Foucault modify Althusser's theory in a significant way?
Foucault actually wrote his analyses first. The main difference is probably that Althusser is focused on a psychoanalytic structure--how capitalism formulates what you want to believe about yourself, whereas Foucault's version is more about how institutions regulate individuals. This is oversimplified but the first is an inside-out and the latter is an outside-in.
In what book Althusser lays these concepts? I don't wanna read the wrong book. Anyone?
Thanks dawg
He names these concepts in the aptly named essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses."
8:11 📝
Man i love your content, and i say this as it may be useful to you, the music is too loud man.
I know I know, sorry, didn't really know what I was doing a year ago
What do you think about Zizek's position? I mean, as far as I understand he does not only see ideology as something impossed from the outside but as something already inside everyone of us. That sound way more pessimist. I believe that's why he takes off his glasses: ideology, then, it's not something you can take out because it is inside you. We should do it with a proper social theory or whatever (the glasses) however, like you said, wouldn't be that "glasses" already within the apparatus?
That is Althusser's position also--by the time you can understand ideology you're already profoundly within it.
Damned Hobbes
Hmm since you're obviously not an anarchocapitalist I'd like to see what your take on them is. They are usually of the opinion that the repressive and ideological appartuses you mentioned are constructions of the state. Capitalism as a historical set of institutions is treated by them as distinct from property rights and markets.
@@situational476 I appreciate the response. I'll preface this by saying my economic views align with anarchocapitalism, though I recognize certain flaws and limitations of its ethical-political program, and thus seek something that, to my mind, exists beyond both capitalism and communism (as I understand them).
As far as I can tell, the repressive apparatus is unavoidable. A society's governance requires enforcement of some norms. Private property is a norm, but so is collective property. I would distinguish ancap from feudalism in how the private armies are funded - voluntarily or via taxation. Consolidation of power is stymied by two conditions: no (artificial) barriers to entry and the right to free exit. Whether or not ancap security firms, or any form of law enforcement, will maintain these conditions is an open question. But I don't see how these problems solved by mere collective ownership of property.
Aren't those safeguards to protect capital the exact things Marx advocated for as the socialism that would be necessary to prefigure communism? As for government involvement in the money supply, there is some evidence to lend credence to the view that government in concert with monied interests, exacerbated financial crises to establish the Fed. The existence of the state makes it profitable to tank the money supply because of the possibility of renumeration via taxation under the guise of intervention, enabled by the monopolization of currency in the first place (as opposed to competing currencies). These conditions destabilize a nation's finance and increase moral hazard - the "interests of capital" are not served here, only the interests of the crisis engineers. Tho tbh I don't like the use of rhetoric like "interests of capital/labor" because I think class analysis glosses over a lot of nuance.
The rest of your comment would follow from the premise that the state is necessary to capitalism, but as of yet I am not convinced. But I seek alternatives, so let me ask of you: what system either (1) does not require a repressive apparatus to enforce property norms (private/public) or (2) maintains the conditions against power (free entry and exit), and how does it accomplish either 1 or 2.
@@situational476 Lol I didn't realize fascism marketed itself as a "third way." I agree that so far there is no third way, but there might be something between fully private and fully communal ownership that isn't simply "capitalism with a welfare state." I've been mulling over the details in my head, and right now it looks something like worker cooperatives with revenue-shares that taper off after quitting/being fired but otherwise fully capitalistic outside the firm. I digress. Is capitalism/communism truly a dichotomy? If it is what do you call feudalism? Capitalism-lite? Once you concede that there are "versions" of capitalism you open up the possibility that capitalism's flaws can be overcome, and the failures of current capitalism do not immediately prove the correctness of communism. Same goes for saying communism historically had different forms; communism would then not be the arbiter of whether or not an economic system was correct, there would be some other subfactor within communist experiments that was more decisive than communism per se.
You gotta call a spade a spade. If it enforces norms with violence it is a repressive apparatus/state. I find it interesting that you think the communist community will all be 100% equally armed, and that no specialization/division of labor will occur. If an ancap society did the same thing, where everyone happened to be equally armed and policed themselves rather than relied on an outside entity, would that not be a repressive apparatus then? The organization of security production is distinct from the property norms being enforced. Also, the argument that it isn't a repressive apparatus because it can't be used to exercise class domination is assuming the conclusion. It is still up for debate whether or not it is likely that absolutely everyone will be equally armed, and whether or not all members of the community that ARE in fact part of the enforcement of norms will agree on which norms to enforce.
Also what is the threshold for collective ownership? The people involved in the specific labor of the firm? Does it extend to the janitors that clean the office of the firm? Everyone in the city impacted by the firm's existence? Everyone in the country? To what degree do they have meaningful choice in the actions of a firm? If a bunch of immigrants show up on shore do they suddenly get a vote as to what every firm is doing (regardless of whether or not their vote is meaningful in a sea of votes)?
So it seems like a contradiction that the things that Marx advocated for also happen to be what the interests of capital will do to preserve itself. That makes your statement about how Soviet Russia devolved from a dictatorship of the proletariat to another dictatorship of capital seem kind of ironic. You say a transition period is no longer needed but if it takes a generation to complete what is to say that that time delay won't introduce the same problems?
As for government engineering, there are quite a few ways that the government was directly responsible for the great depression and 2008 financial crisis, anything they did once the crisis was already underway proved meaningless, but they could have avoided setting them up in the first place. If you want more on this I suggest you look up Austrian Business Cycle Theory on the topic. I will briefly say that the Fed was established in 1913, and enacted various policies to lower the reserve requirement and interest rate, expanding the money supply via cheap credit. Only by 1927-1928 did they notice the problem, and only attempted to raise the interest rate from 3.5% to 6% (which was hilariously low considering what it was prior) but was meaningless since they had to buy back banker's acceptances. Then Hoover handled the situation in the worst possible way - increasing taxes, gov spending, and tariffs while encouraging wages to stay high. Prices start falling but not wages, so reducing labor hours and eventually unemployment were the result. Then there was other BS like the Federal Farm Board that acted as a cartel to keep food prices high, exacerbating the issue. And all the while bankers were protected from bank runs because of FDR's imposed banking holidays. Regardless of how you understand the events of the Depression, a general drop in prices caused by easy credit is literally only possible with a monopolized currency under a state where bankers are all held to uniform regulation. It creates a fragile system that can catastrophically go down all at once. And the extent and severity of crises has only gotten worse since the institution of the Fed, which was established specifically to avoid this situation. Between the Rothschilds and other politically connected magnates of the time, the fact that a lot of money was directly given to them by government and that they were in a position to buy back the majority of stocks after the market crashed strikes me as planned.
great video bro! but the music was just a little too loud and made it a little hard to focus on what u were saying
Damn!!! This video hit home, considering i live in a fascist country, india. Amazing video
So what can we do about it