Brainwashing (01:51)

FREE PREVIEW

Brainwashing is a crude concept that suggests people have been lied to in order to influence them to behave a certain way.

Revolutionary Problem (06:34)

Lack of proletariat revolutionary energy is due to forces of the state, exhaustion, social polarization, and false consciousness. Class is defined in relation to the means of production. The bourgeoisie does not have a revolutionary problem.

Developing False Consciousness (02:37)

Rudimental explanations of false consciousness include control over means of mental production by the bourgeoisie. More sophisticated variants of ideology theory see reality as generating illusory ideas about itself. Further explanations conceive ideology to be something material and involving practices.

Marxist Theorists: Louis Althusser (02:00)

Althusser believes individuals are socially constructed by experiencing ideology within ideological state apparatuses. The function of ideological state apparatuses is social control through consent. The state is an organized expression of objective interest of the ruling class.

Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses (04:29)

Government information agencies, privately-owned media sources, trade unions, and education systems are examples of ideological state apparatuses in which individuals acquire a sense of self. The state exercises control through ideologically-conditioned consent and enforcement agencies known as repressive state apparatuses. The primary function of ideological and repressive state apparatuses is to reproduce the existing relations of production.

Althusser's Failures (01:57)

Althusser failed to resolve successfully the epistemological break with common sense, the relationship between the real objects of the world and knowledge, and whether or not science is ideologically permeated itself.

Marxists Theorists: Antonio Gramsci (03:42)

Gramsci's most important concept is hegemony. Capitalist states achieve hegemony-ideological dominance- through major institutions of civil society. The ruling class maintains hegemony by convincing people that ruling class ideas and values are simply common sense.

Revolution (05:18)

The struggle for revolution, according to Gramsci, takes two distinct forms: a war of position- creating an opposing civil society followed by a war of maneuver. Counter-hegemony is the struggle to create new and different cultural institutions. Traditional contribute to the ideological hegemony of the ruling class, whereas organic intellectual articulate through the language of culture.

Credits: Ideology: Marx, Althusser, and Gramsci (00:35)

Credits: Ideology: Marx, Althusser, and Gramsci