Althusser: The "End of Ideology" Ideology

Aside from the furor over theoretical anti-humanism, nothing has generated as much controversy as Althusser's contention that ideology is a fundamental component of all human societies rather than a temporary aberration to be overcome with the triumph of socialism.

I am not going to steer clear of the crucial question: historical materialism cannot conceive that even a communist society could ever do without ideology , be it ethics, art or "world outlook." Obviously it is possible to foresee important modifications in its ideological forms and their relations and even the disappearance of certain existing forms or a shift of their functions to neighbouring forms; it is also possible (on the premise of already acquired experience) to forsee the development of new ideological forms (e.g., the ideologies of "the scientific world outlook" and "communist humanism") but in the present state of Marxist theory strictly conceived, it is not conceivable that communism, a new mode of production implying determinant forces of production and relations of production, could do without a social organization of production, and corresponding ideological forms. (Althusser 1969, 232)

There can be no end of interpellation, Althusser maintains, for that would entail the end of human society as well. However, as Althusser also clearly indicates in this passage, the necessity of ideological practice does not imply the legitimacy of any particular system of interpellation in any particular social formation. Even less can it be construed as an implicit argument for the continued viability of the bourgeois ideology of possessive individualism, although it is the basis on which any explanation of the latter's viability must rest.

The rather obvious nature of these conclusions indicates that the real objections to Althusser's repudiation of an "end of ideology" must be sought elsewhere. For most critics the philosophical stakes have little if any relation to the consistency much less the explanatory power of Al-

thusser's theory of ideology; instead, the theory is attacked on grounds that are ideological or political. E. P. Thompson, for example, calls Althusser's description of the subjective experience of individual men and women as ideological "the ugliest thing that he has ever done" (Thompson 1978, 174). Jacques Rancière contends that Althusser's defense of the science/ideology distinction fails to recognize that "the relation of science to ideology is one not of rupture but of articulation" and constitutes a "complete distortion of the ideological struggle" in the interests of "the wisdom of the Central Committee" and "bourgeois academic discourse" (Rancière 1985, 116). In both of these cases, the crucial objection to Althusser's position is presented in terms of the "spontaneous philosophy" of an "alienated" subject—either the individual (Thompson) or the working masses (Rancière)—and, more precisely in terms of "praxis," the union of theory and practice embodied in the subjects of history.

Althusser explicitly rejects the identity of theoretical and political practice. Indeed, his whole work has demonstrated the problematic nature of every attempt to conflate the two. Philosophies of praxis, Althusser argues, set out to absorb politics and theory into a third concept that subsumes and mystifies them both. While this strategy may occasionally have a useful polemical effect, for example, when directed against economism or idealism, it is incapable of producing scientific concepts since the projected third concept, praxis, inevitably slides into an ethical philosophy of history, either a call to action or a rationalization of previous successes or failures. For Althusser, the working-class movement consists of a "fusion" of two distinct entities, an experience of exploitation and a theory of that exploitation. The two are not identical: it is not by Marxism that the proletariat discovers that it is exploited; however, it is by Marxism that it learns the mechanisms and the modalities of its exploitation.

Behind the clamor for an "end of ideology" there is always the idea of alienation. Strictly speaking, alienation is not a social but an ontological category predicated on a human essence, or, as Etienne Balibar puts it, a "primitive transparency" to be recovered with the end of ideology (Balibar 1974, 226). The category of alienation lacks the specificity demanded of a scientific concept: individuals can be alienated in private property, the state, labor, the family, religion, and so on, yet the term itself does not facilitate the analytical investigation of these different forms. Instead, as Robin Blackburn and Gareth Stedman Jones (1972, 378) have remarked, employing the term ideology prejudices the

issue by assuming some underlying homology between these different alienations.

For Althusser, the proletariat (a term whose pertinence we have yet to examine) is not out to realize its essence—only to better its existence and put an end to its exploitation. To do so, of course, requires action, and action can take place only through ideology, that is, the form of a social subject. However, the chances of successful action are considerably improved by objective knowledge of the conjuncture, and the political value of Marxism follows from the fact that it makes action based on knowledge possible. Thus, while theory and practice are never identical for Althusser, they are never totally separable either; theory is the critical guide of practice and practice is the unceasing critique of theory. Althusser's thesis that all practice takes place in ideology does not mean that practice is somehow inferior to theory. The "question of political action" does not disappear, Althusser explains; what disappears is the notion that political action is determined by "the omnipotence of 'transcendence,' that is by the liberty of 'man' [rather than] by quite different conditions: by the state of the class struggle, by the state of the labor movement, by the ideology of the labor movement . . . and by its relation to Marxist theory, by its mass line" (Althusser 1976, 53-54).