State Apparatuses

Abstract

What is an apparatus, and more precisely, what is an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and what is a Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)? According to the classics of Marxism, the State is an Apparatus. In all its probability, Althusser borrows the term “apparatus” from Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. In Marx’s terms, “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie,” whereas Lenin says that “the state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and to the extend that class antagonism cannot be objectively reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.” In this regard, the State is defined as a repressive force which intervenes in the social field “on behalf of and in the interest of the ruling classes.” In Althusser’s understanding, this definition is not complete. Indeed, the State exists in apparatuses, and as such, it has no other meaning than the function of its power. But as such, “the Marxist classics treated the State as a more complex reality than the definition of it given in the ‘Marxist theory of the state.’”