The ISA is there to manufacture acceptance and help reproduce the basic premise of a society. This is why Bill Gate's charity for example is merely part of a capitalist ISA. It's function is to morally offset the holocausts caused by global capitalism.
Yes BP destroys the environment of the Gulf of Mexico, yes the dictatorships and Sheikdoms have been propped up by western capitalism, yes children are forced to work and prostitute themselves in South East Asia, yes countries are invaded and hundreds and thousands are killed for the sake of commodities and for strategic advantage, yes billions live in penury while the Bransons and the Abramoviches consume and own the best, yes we will precipitate global warming rather than lose money.
But hey, take look at Bill Gates vaccination programme, isn't it neat?
I mean, there is an iceberg of privilege and immorality underneath that little point called nepotism. The argument against nepotism is merely an argument for better concealment. The establishment in the UK are excellent at hiding their wealth and concealing the head start their children get in life. The discomfort these people feel about nepotism is simply that it brings attention to these relatively concealed processes.
Of course the methods of concealment itself, once the whole of society has been programmed by ISAs don't have to be very subtle. It works on the principle of out of sight out of mind. Modest gates and overgrown hedges conceal tasteful and sprawling properties in the Surrey Hills. Well, perhaps not that tasteful.
And of course you wouldn't necessarily accuse, for example, Heseltine of nepotism, that's besides the point. It's not about the nepotism is it? It's about the long trail whereby young Heseltine arrives. Now that's the real problem with our society and yet we accept this, some of us, as naturally as if it were all just fine.
THAT, my friends, is the power of the ISA. We've all been through it's mills, we've all been through it and the ISA allows the establishment to hide in plain view.
Families, churches, charities, prisons, schools, universities, companies, operatic societies and trade unions are all part of the Ideological State Apparatus.
Yes BP destroys the environment of the Gulf of Mexico, yes the dictatorships and Sheikdoms have been propped up by western capitalism, yes children are forced to work and prostitute themselves in South East Asia, yes countries are invaded and hundreds and thousands are killed for the sake of commodities and for strategic advantage, yes billions live in penury while the Bransons and the Abramoviches consume and own the best, yes we will precipitate global warming rather than lose money.
But hey, take look at Bill Gates vaccination programme, isn't it neat?
I mean, there is an iceberg of privilege and immorality underneath that little point called nepotism. The argument against nepotism is merely an argument for better concealment. The establishment in the UK are excellent at hiding their wealth and concealing the head start their children get in life. The discomfort these people feel about nepotism is simply that it brings attention to these relatively concealed processes.
Of course the methods of concealment itself, once the whole of society has been programmed by ISAs don't have to be very subtle. It works on the principle of out of sight out of mind. Modest gates and overgrown hedges conceal tasteful and sprawling properties in the Surrey Hills. Well, perhaps not that tasteful.
And of course you wouldn't necessarily accuse, for example, Heseltine of nepotism, that's besides the point. It's not about the nepotism is it? It's about the long trail whereby young Heseltine arrives. Now that's the real problem with our society and yet we accept this, some of us, as naturally as if it were all just fine.
THAT, my friends, is the power of the ISA. We've all been through it's mills, we've all been through it and the ISA allows the establishment to hide in plain view.
Families, churches, charities, prisons, schools, universities, companies, operatic societies and trade unions are all part of the Ideological State Apparatus.
* * *
To most people in the establishment nepotism is a laughing matter. 'Oh come on.', you can hear them say. 'Everyone does it. The only reason they complain is that they are jealous. In any case if you can't cut the mustard you are soon found out. It's just the first step.'
Of course nepotism is a very long snail trial indeed. By the time a young toffee nosed whippersnapper - thinly disguised behind street credentials - is offered a leg up - he has already travelled a thousand miles.
He has been fed the best food as a child. He has been exposed to a richer cultural and intellectual environment - Handel is his, as well as the Beatles, Mahler, remixes and Drum and Bass.
But Althusser explained it better than anybody with inelegant originality. Ironically Anglo-American universities still discuss Althusser. They neuter French theory, label it as a failed intellectual experiment, and then inject it like a vaccine into their future public intellectuals.
Nevertheless, Althusser's is still a radical concept and easy to put into practice. The concept of the Ideological State Apparatus is not a toy for right wing intellectuals, it is an observation about how society works.
Simply put, there was such a thing as an Ideological State Apparatus in capitalist societies and the purpose of the Ideological State Apparatus was to 'reproduce the conditions of production.' Now when he says state he doesn't mean the public sector. He means the establishment, the powers that dominate society, the elite, the well-off the parasitical perpetrators who gather in PLCs and their other institutions to feed off surplus.
Alternatively, the ISA is just a way for civilisation to perpetuate itself. What's wrong with that? Well what's wrong with that is the fact that our civilisation is skewed and on this capitalist Animal Farm, we have been domesticated by the elite, for exploitation.
Let's get simple: The purpose of private schools is to ensure that the sons and daughters of the elite step into the shoes of their parents. The purpose of comprehensives is to ensure that the sons and daughters step into the shoes of their parents.
The process of education is very long because not only do the drones and the queen bees have to accept and expect their assigned roles, they also have to accept all the premises that this society is based on. They have to consent to be governed or to govern.
Newspapers are a perfect example of ISAs too. Their role is to work from established premises. To inform and persuade on the basis of a deep level of co-option. In this sense it is deeply ironic that a newspaper should question nepotism, even tongue in cheek. A newspaper like the Sun underpins one level of society. A newspaper like the Guardian tent pegs down another level of society.The Financial Times and the Economist overlapping with the Guardian.
Nepotism is just a very thin layer of icing. To focus on it , of course, is disingenuous. It is what happens before people get that last little boost, not the little boost itself.
The great thing about the ISA is that it does not determine who does what, it causes a trend in who does what. So it's not a case of stating, simplistically, that going to a private school will mean that you will inevitably become a business leader or prime minister; or that if you go to a comprehensive in the poorest part of Preston you will become a terrorist, unemployed or work in a shop. There is just a high probability that this will be so.