Marxism is all about studying how ruling class dominates society. To dominate the ruling class is going to impose certain ideas on the people in such a manner that it appears to be true. It appears to be natural. Both Althusser's work on ideology and Gramsci's work on hegemony were attempts to understand how capitalism is reproduced. Both rejected what some Marxist scholars believed to be the fundamental economic determinism laying at the heart of Marx and Engel's work in The German Ideology.
Both Althusser, through his exposition of ideology, and Gramsci through his accounting of hegemony shared a deep commitment to understanding how capitalism is reproduced. Both argued that the reproduction of capitalism does not reside solely within the realms of repressive governments and workplaces. Where they differed was in their structuralist application to Marxian theorizing.
Althusser considers the Ideology as representing the imaginary relationship between individuals and real conditions of their existence. Gramsci looks at ideology as mediating between individuals and their social world. Where that ideology operates unconsciously constituting individuals into subjects. Put simply, Gramsci argued that ideology always presses a material existence that is promoted by the media by the state community organizations and family units. "This ideology is embedded and taught in the form of rules and rituals that materialize in the practices of individuals who hold to those value systems, beliefs, and ways of thinking".
Althusser modelled his thinking on Russian State Apparatuses, which are businesses, labour unions and business associations.
Althusser repurposed the term, apparatuses, to refer to how Western Legal and political conditions are reproduced through ideology in the service of capitalist exploitation. So, in the way he formulated two sets of apparatuses or institutional systems of domination:
- Repressive State Apparatuses or RSAs and the other
- Ideological State Apparatuses or ISAs.
First, ISAs are police, the army and other military organisations. They are political entities that are comprised of the state and most of its branches. RSAs alone maintain rule by force and operate to support capitalist class structures by repressing threats to those structures.
Now, the other side of apparatuses are much less understood but play just an important role in sustaining capitalist class structure. These or ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses). They include,
the religious ISA (the system of the different Churches), – the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private “Schools”), – the family ISA, – the legal ISA, – the political ISA (the political system, including the different Parties), – the trade-union ISA, – the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.), – the cultural ISA (Literature, the Arts, sports, etc.).
Unlike RSAs, ISAs operate less by force and politics and more through ideology. They encourage individuals to image, in certain ways, their place in and relationship within the societies in which they live. Although the distinction between the ISAs and RSAs slender. There is a difference between the two. Althusser argued that RSAs operate primarily by forces and secondarily by ideology, whereas ISAs primarily use ideology and secondarily use force. He noted that whereas there is only one RSA. There are numerous ISAs. Althusser believes that "no class can hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses".
Althusser's concept of Interpellation
Althusser formulated a concept called interpellation to distinguish how ideologies or ISAs work together. We believe something and then we act on it or practice it. But Althusser argued just the opposite. "We act on something and then we believe it". To Althusser's mind ideas, in and of themselves, have disappeared, while their existence is embedded in the actions or practices governed by rituals. These practices or rituals are defined by and ideological state apparatuses.
In Althusser's formulation, the individual is always already a subject, he is never autonomous, fully coherent, or actualized. Rather, human agency is an illusion, an ideological construction meant to further the agendas of capitalism. So, ISAs impose subjectivities for individuals but encourage those individuals to think that those subjectivities are self-generated. So, interpellation by ISAs operates in the service of instilling meaning systems within individuals that allow them to accept or celebrate capitalist exploitation.
Now Althusser's critic like Gramsci and other critics.
Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent
Manufacturing consent describes a very important aspect of the function of the mass media that is to serve the dominant hegemonic interests of powerful groups such as governments and global corporations. Of course, media overtly disseminate propaganda unless they are state-controlled or controlled by powerful economic interests. But, on the contrary Herman and Chomsky endorse Gramsci's theory of hegemony when they go about explaining how mass media are usually sympathetic to government policies and corporate decisions and how they tend to marginalize dissenting voices. Their central argument is that media produce consent among the public by reporting government concerns at face value and neglect to examine wider economic social and historical factors that shape international affairs. So, this mode of self-censorship is considered by the authors much more effective and granting consent to the words and actions of government and other power elites.
Now, the propaganda model proposed by Herman and Chomsky is made up of these five news filters that mass media deploy, whether consciously or unconsciously when they report on current affairs.
The first filter is the size ownership and profit orientation of mass media institutions. There was a time when a newspaper or small media corporations could be produced and distributed across a wide geographical extend at a manageable cast. That's not the case anymore, there are huge costs that are involved in establishing any mass media enterprise that's capable of achieving long-lasting success. And that necessarily means that smaller companies can not compete within existing ownership structures. In competition, large corporations are more than likely able to buy out the smaller firm for some exorbitant price or they will marginalize the small firm or they will just run the new guy out of business.
A second new filter is the advertising license to do business. Newspapers and media outlets depend on advertising companies. Advertising became by far the most effective source of the revenue for all kinds of media. Herman and Chomsky note that this dependency on advertising has the effect of forcing mass media institutions to tailor their material to affluent audiences.
The third filter by Herman and Chomsky in their propaganda model refers to the sourcing of mass media news. Taking information from sources that may be presumed to be credible reduces the capacity for investigative reporting. According to Herman and Chomsky, journalists prefer to rely on regular, familiar sources with which they have a good working relationship with.
The fourth news filter is called flak. Flak means negative response to a media statement or programme.
The fifth and final is the ideology of anti-Communism. Western ideologies of free-market capitalism are implicitly and explicitly regarded by mass media as superior to communism. As such, issues tend to be framed in terms of a dichotomized world of communism and anti-Communism.