'The Controversity'

Back soon...

Busy...Impossible to attend the next Amnesty meeting..According to an email the following issue will be discussed and how to take action along with the fundraising and event ideas...No comment from me for the moment...I could not possibly fit it in with this schedule...

For more info and details on this and other human rights issues..AND HOW TO TAKE ACTION...please visit http://www.amnesty.org/

Oil companies and the Nigerian government must clean up the oil industry in the Niger Delta

Hundreds of thousands of people are affected by oil pollution in the Niger Delta. Particularly the poorest and those who rely on traditional livelihoods such as fishing and agriculture.

The human rights implications are serious, under-reported and have received little attention from the government of Nigeria or the oil companies. The problems have been exacerbated by a lack of information.

Oil spills, waste dumping and gas flaring (gas is separated from oil and, in Nigeria, most of it is burnt as waste) are endemic in the Niger Delta. This pollution, which has affected the area for decades, has damaged the soil, water and air quality.

Communities in the Niger Delta frequently do not have access to even basic information about the impact the oil industry has on their lives – even when they are the “host” community.

Both the government of Nigeria and Shell – the main oil company operating on land in the Niger Delta – have a responsibility to clean up oil operations and come clean about the human impact of the oil industry in the Niger Delta.

Amnesty International is calling on the government of Nigeria and the new Chief Executive of Shell to clean up the oil industry and come clean on the impacts that oil pollution has on the rights of the people of the Niger Delta.

In particular, we are asking Shell’s new Chief Executive, during his first 100 days in charge, to disclose information on the impact of Shell’s operations in Nigeria and to make a public commitment to cleaning up Shell’s operations in the Niger Delta. Mr. Peter Voser takes up his post as Shell’s Chief Executive on 1 July 2009.

----------------------------------------------------

Document - Nigeria: Shell’s response to Amnesty International’s report Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta is disappointing
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

PUBLIC STATEMENT

AI Index:

Nigeria: Shell’s response to Amnesty International’s report Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Deltais disappointing

In reaction to Amnesty International’s report of 30 June 2009, Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta, Shell has made a number of email statements to the media. Amnesty International takes this opportunity to set the record straight.

Shell has stated that Amnesty International “forgets that about 85% of the pollution from [Shell] operations comes from attacks and sabotage”.

Amnesty International disputes this statement:

Sabotage is only an issue in relation to one form of oil industry pollution - oil spills. As Amnesty International’s report points out, there are many other ways that the oil industry has caused pollution and harmed the environment in the Niger Delta over the past half century. These include discharge of waste, dredging of creeks and rivers, disposal of drilling waste, seismic activities and road construction that has blocked water systems. Sabotage is not a factor in any of these forms of pollution or environmental damage.

The proportion of oil spills caused by sabotage, as opposed to corrosion and equipment failure, cannot be determined because the causes of oil spills in the Niger Delta have not been subject to any independent assessment or verification. In many cases the oil company has significant influence on determining the cause of a spill – even when a regulatory representative is present. As the company is liable for compensation payments if the spill is found to be due to corrosion or equipment failure, the practice of allowing companies so much control over the designation of oil spill causes creates a deeply troubling conflict of interest. Amnesty International’s report provides examples of cases where Shell claimed the cause of a spill was sabotage, but this claim was subsequently called into question by other investigations or the courts.

For example, in the case of a major oil spill at Batan in Delta State in 2002, Shell wrote to the Governor of Delta State claiming the spill was caused by sabotage. The letter was written two days beforethe oil spill investigation was done. Moreover, video footage of the investigation – and the follow-up by a local non-governmental organisation – does not correspond with Shell’s statements on causality. Independent investigation shows the cause of the spill to be equipment failure. The video is available on Amnesty International’s web site.

Court actions in Nigeria have also challenged Shell’s assertions on sabotage. For example, in Shell v Isaiah (1997) the Appeal Court stated:

“{it was} convinced that the defence of sabotage was an afterthought. The three defence witnesses were agreed on one thing, that is that an old tree fell on and dented the shell pipe … How could this have metamorphosed into an act of cutting the pipe by an unknown person? What is more, there is no evidence whatsoever in proof that the pipeline was ‘cut by hacksaw’.”

It is generally acknowledged that the majority of the oil spills prior to the mid-1990s were due to infrastructure problems. For example, most of the oil spilt by Shell (the major operator on land) between 1989 and 1994 was, by their own admission, due to corrosion or operational problems. Of the volume spilt, only 28 per cent was attributed to sabotage. In 2007 Shell’s estimates had risen to 70 per cent. In response to Amnesty International’s report, the figure now given by Shell has increased to 85 per cent (for pollution). While Amnesty International acknowledges that sabotage and vandalism are serious problems, Shell has provided no support for its contention that there has been a threefold increase in sabotage in the last fifteen years.

Shell does not believe Amnesty International has reflected the complexity of the situation.

The report released by Amnesty International focuses on some of the root causes of the complex conflict situation in the Niger Delta. These include: the impact of half a century of pollution and environmental damage on the people of the delta; the lack of effective accountability and redress for harm to the environment and human rights; and a lack of transparency and information in relation to the impacts of the oil industry. These factors have been key drivers of conflict and poverty in the Niger Delta.

Shell repeatedly refers to the complexity of the situation in the Niger Delta. It seems to be a stock response of Shell to use complexity as a way to avoid responsibility. Shell blames the communities and militants for oil spills, and then blames them again for not allowing access to clean up. However this is only partof the picture. Shell’s own poor practice is also a fundamental part of the problem. Moreover, the communities’ actions – while not condoned by Amnesty International – have emerged after years of Shell’s poor practice, including failure to prevent and clean up pollution, and a lack of transparency in investigation of oil spills and payment of compensation.

For example,at Kira Taiin Ogoniland, where anoil spill occurred on 12 May 2007, the community told Amnesty International that Shell had accepted that corrosion was the cause of the spill – but the company had not properly cleaned up or paid compensation. Amnesty International subsequently obtained the investigation report, which was signed by five Shell representatives, as well as the regulatory agency and the community. This confirmed the community’s account. However, when Amnesty International representatives took the case to Shell they were told it was a case of sabotage, notwithstanding the official investigation report. Amnesty International subsequently asked for evidence to back up why Shell changed the finding of the investigation. We did not receive this information.

When Amnesty International visited them, the community at Kira Tai had no idea Shell had changed the cause of the spill, and they were still waiting for compensation. When Shell talks about needing to understand the complex nature of the situation in the Niger Delta, the company must face up to the fact that it is this kind of behaviour that feeds community distrust and anger, and in turn fuels conflict.

Inpointing to complexity and the actions of other actors Shell is simply shifting the spotlight off its own bad practice and failures. In reality this exacerbates the problems of the Niger Delta.

Shell has said Amnesty International’s report does not contain ‘new insights’.

Continued abuses of human rights must be addressed. By calling for “new insights”, Shell appears to be trying to deflect attention away from existing evidence. This includes:

Shell’s failure to ensure adequate action to prevent pollution and damage to human rights. For years Shell has engaged in practices that have been damaging to the environment and people – for example pipelines were not adequately maintained, and waste products were released into the environment.

Shell’s failure to adequately clean up and remediate contaminated land and water.

Shell’s lack of transparency within the systems for joint investigation of oil spills and payment of compensation to victims

Shell’s failure to disclose information. Although some information was disclosed to Amnesty International, communities in the Niger Delta frequently do not have access to even basic information about the impacts of the oil industry on their lives.

Shell’s poor practices in community engagement, which fuels conflict.

Shell is aware of many of these issues. Amnesty International’s report makes a number of recommendations to both the government of Nigeria and the oil companies to address the problems outlined. Shell must clean up its operations in the Niger Delta - in every sense of the phrase.

Amnesty International does not hold Shell solely responsible for the environmental pollution and damage, and its human impacts, in the Niger Delta. There has clearly been a significant government failure over decades. Moreover, as acknowledged above and in the organization’s recent report, the actions of communities and armed groups are now a significant part of the problem of pollution.

Shell says it wants to look to the future.

The way forward involves accountability and redress for the past. A lack of accountability for past abuses is, effectively, impunity. Moreover, unless and until oil-related pollution and environmental damage are addressed, the people of the Niger Delta cannot look to the future. They have to live with Shell’s past – its legacy of environmental and human rights harms.

Shell does not believe that Amnesty International has adequately reflected the security threat facing the oil industry in the Niger Delta.

The oil industry in the Niger Delta does indeed faces major security threats. Amnesty International’s report describes the Niger Delta as one of the most unsafe oil production areas in the world, where armed groups and gangs have increasingly engaged in kidnapping of oil workers and their relatives, including children, and attacks on oil installations.This is a serious problem that urgently needs to be addressed appropriately.

However, addressing insecurity in this complex environment requires a multifaceted approach – addressing root causes of problems, as well as the symptoms. The use of force by the government of Nigeria in response to threats to the oil industry in the Niger Delta, has all too frequently led to serious human rights abuses by both the Nigerian security forces and the armed groups operating in the Niger Delta. This exacerbates rather than addresses problems.

Insecurity in the Niger Delta is not only a problem of armed violence – it is a problem of abuse of human rights, lack of accountability, lack of transparency, corruption and serious government neglect. In some respects conflict and armed violence are symptoms as much as causes of the human rights tragedy of the Niger Delta.

Shell states that Amnesty International did not engage in open dialogue with them when preparing our report.

Amnesty International met with Shell twice to present our findings and interview the company:

The first meeting was on 1 April 2008 in Port Harcourt in Niger Delta, where Amnesty researchers presented our findings to Shell and asked questions.

The second meeting was on 15 September 2008 in The Hague, Netherlands, at Shell’s headquarters. Amnesty International sent Shell questions in writing in advance of this meeting. Shell declined to answer most of the questions.

Amnesty International also sent Shell the first draft of all the relevant sections of the report including all cases referring to Shell for comment. We received a response; however it did not address the substantive issues in the report. We further sent to Shell a second draft of the report, again requesting their response. We did not receive any substantive response on the issues raised in the report. The few relevant comments we received were included in the report.

Shell’s statement the Amnesty International did not engage in open dialogue but rather “came to Port Harcourt to confront [Shell] with questions” is both inaccurate and represents a fundamental misunderstanding about the role of Amnesty International. Shell, in each dialogue we have had with them on this report, appears to want to have general conversations about the issues, so long as we do not focus on specific questions about their operations in the Niger Delta. Amnesty International has had many discussions with Shell on the Niger Delta and the human rights issues over the years. Such discussions are too frequently, in our experience, a way for companies to maintain ‘engagement’ while avoiding meaningful action to address corporate failures and bad practice.

Shell does not believe Amnesty International has adequately acknowledged the company’s contribution to Nigeria’s economy and community development in the Niger Delta.

Amnesty International’s report acknowledges that Shell has made some positive contributions in Nigeria, including provision of employment. However, we have pointed out to Shell that, in human rights terms, positive action in one area does not absolve any actor of responsibilities for human rights harms elsewhere. Human rights abuses cannot be ‘offset’.

***

In short, Amnesty International finds Shell’s response to the organization’s recent report, Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta, disappointing. Shell appears to want to talk about the complex issues in the Niger Delta as if they were an onlooker – but do not acknowledge that the company’s operations are a contributing factor.

I am busy studying and cannot post other content for now...As I've mentioned my readings,writings and preperations for my essays are taking most of my time. I feel really lucky and just very happy to be here. So I think I should make the most of it and give it my all. Everything is going to be ok.

Here is a cake receipe for the readers who drop by. I always remember Queen Marie Antionnete,historical figure of the French Revolution era's supposid famous quote:'If they don't have bread,let them eat cake' Cake is good,hahah watch the calories and make sure to have a balanced diet. Also,drink plenty of water and excercise . Remember that it is not ideally good to eat a lot of cake

Will be back with more controversity !

Ingredients
1 (10 inch) angel food cake 1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed 1 (5 ounce) package non-instant chocolate pudding mix 1 (1.55 ounce) bar milk chocolate
Directions
Tear Angel food cake into bite size pieces into a 9x13 inch cake pan (preferably glass).

Prepare chocolate pudding as directed on package. Gently spread over the top of cake pieces, spreading to edges of pan.
Carefully spread whipped topping over chocolate pudding, spreading to edges of pan and taking care not to mix with pudding.
Using a cheese grater or vegetable peeler, grate chocolate bar over the whipped topping.
Chill until ready to serve, at least one hour.

Directions

Tear Angel food cake into bite size pieces into a 9x13 inch cake pan (preferably glass).
Prepare chocolate pudding as directed on package. Gently spread over the top of cake pieces, spreading to edges of pan.
Carefully spread whipped topping over chocolate pudding, spreading to edges of pan and taking care not to mix with pudding.
Using a cheese grater or vegetable peeler, grate chocolate bar over the whipped topping.
Chill until ready to serve, at least one hour

My main aim in reading a text,viewing a film,documentary or image should be to discover the workings of politics,ideology or a further racial,sexual,psychological,economical or social dimension brought to the readers attention through creative practice. I asked myself once:'what is the aim behind creative practice?'. I found that many of my favorite writers,film makers or artists had strong beliefs on social and cultural matters. They aim to share a perspective of their lives and realities. In a sense,they do just what everyone else in social and cultural sphere does:They enagage in politics and thus ideology. However,I find that these two terms are different. The more stronger 'IDEOLOGY' is possibly the most interesting for me. I want to read further on how an ideology is acquired in society,what role it plays in our lives and the effect it has on the creative work. Therefore,the theorists I have read so far have given me great insight on the nature of politics and ideology and on what I have read in novels and viewed in other mediums. I call this a 'political unconscious' both on the part of the artist and the reader/viewer of the work. Also,as someone aware of this,as an individual,how do I determine the direction of interpretations,in so far as,I am also a political entity which comes to a point of forming my own intentions and bringing on certain meanings for the work itself. Therefore,this must have a significance on my reseach .So,I continue with my skimming through IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES as it is a very important piece of writing for my purposes. The dreaded month of December which I will pass through writing my final essays draws closer by the day. This is why it is imperative that I focus on my readings...To have the required knowledge to write on the texts etc thoroughly and clearly.

This is the main reason I cannot write on anything particularly different in content at the moment. It is a critical few weeks where I must focus on my studies...Having said this,I look onto my statistics,which informs me that many readers still pass by,I thank them for providing me with a stage upon to have my say on anything whatsoever that I think or feel. I love the idea of having an opportunity to get my voice heard and carried through...via the internet connections,which connect us,the new creative masses of ideological warfare
IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES,LOUIS ALTHUSSER:A REMINDER (2)

O N T H E R E P R O D U C T I O N O F T H E R E L A T I O N S
O F P R O D U C T I O N

I can now answer the central question which I have left in suspense for many long pages: how is the reproduction of the relations of production secured?

In the topographical language (Infrastructure, Superstructure), I can say: for the most part,[12] it is secured by the legal-political and ideological superstructure.

But as I have argued that it is essential to go beyond this still descriptive language, I shall say: for the most part, it is secured by the exercise of State power in the State Apparatuses, on the one hand the (Repressive) State Apparatus, on the other the Ideological State Apparatuses.

What I have just said must also be taken into account, and it can be assembled in the form of the following three features:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12. For the most part. For the relations of production are first reproduced by the materiality of the processes of production and circulation. But it should not be forgotten that ideological relations are immediately present in these same processes.

page 149

1. All the State Apparatuses function both by repression and by ideology, with the difference that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression, whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology.

2. Whereas the (Repressive) State Apparatus constitutes an organized whole whose different parts are centralized beneath a commanding unity, that of the politics of class struggle applied by the political representatives of the ruling classes in possession of State power, the Ideological State Apparatuses are multiple, distinct, 'relatively autonomous' and capable of providing an objective field to contradictions which express, in forms which may be limited or extreme, the effects of the clashes between the capitalist class struggle and the proletarian class struggle, as well as their subordinate forms.

3. Whereas the unity of the (Repressive) State Apparatus is secured by its unified and centralized organization under the leadership of the representatives of the classes in power executing the politics of the class struggle of the classes in power, the unity of the different Ideological State Apparatuses is secured, usually in contradictory forms, by the ruling ideology, the ideology of the ruling class.

Taking these features into account, it is possible to represent the reproduction of the relations of production[13] in the following way, according to a kind of 'division of labour'.

The role of the repressive State apparatus, insofar as it is a repressive apparatus, consists essentially in securing by force (physical or otherwise) the political conditions of the reproduction of relations of production which are in the

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13. For that part of reproduction to which the Repressive State Apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatus contribute.

page 150

last resort relations of exploitation. Not only does the State apparatus contribute generously to its own reproduction (the capitalist State contains political dynasties, military dynasties, etc.), but also and above all, the State apparatus secures by repression (from the most brutal physical force, via mere administrative commands and interdictions, to open and tacit censorship) the political conditions for the action of the Ideological State Apparatuses.

In fact, it is the latter which largely secure the reproduction specifically of the relations of production, behind a 'shield' provided by the repressive State apparatus. It is here that the role of the ruling ideology is heavily concentrated, the ideology of the ruling class, which holds State power. It is the intermediation of the ruling ideology that ensures a (sometimes teeth-gritting) 'harmony' between the repressive State apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatuses, and between the different State Ideological Apparatuses.

We are thus led to envisage the following hypothesis, as a function precisely of the diversity of ideological State Apparatuses in their single, because shared, role of the reproduction of the relations of production.

Indeed we have listed a relatively large number of ideological State apparatuses in contemporary capitalist social formations: the educational apparatus, the religious apparatus, the family apparatus, the political apparatus, the trade-union apparatus, the communications apparatus, the 'cultural' apparatus, etc.

But in the social formations of that mode of production characterized by 'serfdom' (usually called the feudal mode of production), we observe that although there is a single repressive State apparatus which, since the earliest known Ancient States, let alone the Absolute Monarchies, has been formally very similar to the one we know today, the number of Ideological State Apparatuses is smaller and their

page 151

individual types are different. For example, we observe that during the Middle Ages, the Church (the religious ideological State apparatus) accumulated a number of functions which have today devolved on to several distinct ideological State apparatuses, new ones in relation to the past I am invoking, in particular educational and cultural functions. Alongside the Church there was the family Ideological State Apparatus, which played a considerable part, incommensurable with its role in capitalist social formations. Despite appearances, the Church and the Family were not the only Ideological State Apparatuses. There was also a political Ideological State Apparatus (the Estates General, the Parlement, the different political factions and Leagues, the ancestors or the modern political parties, and the whole political system of the free Communes and then of the Villes ). There was also a powerful 'proto-trade union' Ideological State Apparatus, if I may venture such an anachronistic term (the powerful merchants' and bankers' guilds and the journeymen's associations, etc.). Publishing and Communications, even, saw an indisputable development, as did the theatre; initially both were integral parts of the Church, then they became more and more independent of it.

In the pre-capitalist historical period which I have examined extremely broadly, it is absolutely clear that there was one dominant Ideological State Apparatus, the Church, which concentrated within it not only religious functions, but also educational ones, and a large proportion of the functions of communications and 'culture'. It is no accident that all ideological struggle, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, starting with the first shocks of the Reformation, was concentrated in an anti-clerical and anti-religious struggle; rather this is a function precisely of the dominant position of the religious ideological State apparatus.

The foremost objective and achievement of the French

page 152

Revolution was not just to transfer State power from the feudal aristocracy to the merchant-capitalist bourgeoisie, to break part of the former repressive State apparatus and replace it with a new one (e.g., the national popular Army) but also to attack the number-one Ideological State Apparatus: the Church. Hence the civil constitution of the clergy, the confiscation of ecclesiastical wealth, and the creation of new ideological State apparatuses to replace the religious ideological State apparatus in its dominant role.

Naturally, these things did not happen automatically: witness the Concordat, the Restoration and the long class struggle between the landed aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie throughout the nineteenth century for the establishment of bourgeois hegemony over the functions formerly fulfilled by the Church: above all by the Schools. It can be said that the bourgeoisie relied on the new political, parliamentary-democratic, ideological State apparatus, installed in the earliest years of the Revolution, then restored after long and violent struggles, for a few months in 1848 and for decades after the fall of the Second Empire, in order to conduct its struggle against the Church and wrest its ideological functions away from it, in other words, to ensure not only its own political hegemony, but also the ideological hegemony indispensable to the reproduction of capitalist relations of production.

That is why I believe that I am justified in advancing the following Thesis, however precarious it is. I believe that the ideological State apparatus which has been installed in the dominant position in mature capitalist social formations as a result of a violent political and ideological class struggle against the old dominant ideological State apparatus, is the educational ideological apparatus.

This thesis may seem paradoxical, given that for everyone, i.e. in the ideological representation that the bourgeoisie

page 153

has tried to give itself and the classes it exploits, it really seems that the dominant ideological State apparatus in capitalist social formations is not the Schools, but the political ideological State apparatus, i.e. the regime of parliamentary democracy combining universal suffrage and party struggle.

However, history, even recent history, shows that the bourgeoisie has been and still is able to accommodate itself to political ideological State apparatuses other than parliamentary democracy: the First and Second Empires, Constitutional Monarchy (Louis XVIII and Charles X), Parliamentary Monarchy (Louis-Philippe), Presidential Democracy (de Gaulle), to mention only France. In England this is even clearer. The Revolution was particularly 'successful' there from the bourgeois point of view, since unlike France, where the bourgeoisie, partly because of the stupidity of the petty aristocracy, had to agree to being carried to power by peasant and plebeian 'journées révolutionnaires ', something for which it had to pay a high price, the English bourgeoisie was able to 'compromise' with the aristocracy and 'share' State power and the use of the State apparatus with it for a long time (peace among all men of good will in the ruling classes!). In Germany it is even more striking, since it was behind a political ideological State apparatus in which the imperial Junkers (epitomized by Bismarck), their army and their police provided it with a shield and leading personnel, that the imperialist bourgeoisie made its shattering entry into history, before 'traversing' the Weimar Republic and entrusting itself to Nazism.

Hence I believe I have good reasons for thinking that behind the scenes of its political Ideological State Apparatus, which occupies the front of the stage, what the bourgeoisie has installed as its number-one, i.e. as its dominant ideological State apparatus, is the educational apparatus, which

page 154

has in fact replaced in its functions the previously dominant ideological State apparatus, the Church. One might even add: the School-Family couple has replaced the Church-Family couple.

Why is the educational apparatus in fact the dominant ideological State apparatus in capitalist social formations, and how does it function?

For the moment it must suffice to say:

1. All ideological State apparatuses, whatever they are, contribute to the same result: the reproduction of the relations of production, i.e. of capitalist relations of exploitation.

2. Each of them contributes towards this single result in the way proper to it. The political apparatus by subjecting individuals to the political State ideology, the 'indirect' (parliamentary) or 'direct' (plebiscitary or fascist) 'democratic' ideology. The communications apparatus by cramming every 'citizen' with daily doses of nationalism, chauvinism, liberalism, moralism, etc, by means of the press, the radio and television. The same goes for the cultural apparatus (the role of sport in chauvinism is of the first importance), etc. The religious apparatus by recalling in sermons and the other great ceremonies of Birth, Marriage and Death, that man is only ashes, unless he loves his neighbour to the extent of turning the other cheek to whoever strikes first. The family apparatus . . . but there is no need to go on.

3. This concert is dominated by a single score, occasionally disturbed by contradictions (those of the remnants of former ruling classes, those of the proletarians and their organizations): the score of the Ideology of the current ruling class which integrates into its music the great themes of the Humanism of the Great Forefathers, who produced the Greek Miracle even before Christianity, and afterwards

page 155

the Glory of Rome, the Eternal City, and the themes of Interest, particular and general, etc. nationalism, moralism and economism.

4. Nevertheless, in this concert, one ideological State apparatus certainly has the dominant role, although hardly anyone lends an ear to its music: it is so silent! This is the School.

It takes children from every class at infant-school age, and then for years, the years in which the child is most 'vulnerable', squeezed between the family State apparatus and the educational State apparatus, it drums into them, whether it uses new or old methods, a certain amount of 'know-how' wrapped in the ruling ideology (French, arithmetic, natural history, the sciences, literature) or simply the ruling ideology in its pure state (ethics, civic instruction, philosophy). Somewhere around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children are ejected 'into production': these are the workers or small peasants. Another portion of scholastically adapted youth carries on: and, for better or worse, it goes somewhat further, until it falls by the wayside and fills the posts of small and middle technicians, white-collar workers, small and middle executives, petty bourgeois of all kinds. A last portion reaches the summit, either to fall into intellectual semi-employment, or to provide, as well as the 'intellectuals of the collective labourer', the agents of exploitation (capitalists, managers), the agents of repression (soldiers, policemen, politicians, administrators, etc.) and the professional ideologists (priests of all sorts, most of whom are convinced 'laymen').

Each mass ejected en route is practically provided with the ideology which suits the role it has to fulfil in class society: the role of the exploited (with a 'highly-developed' 'professional', 'ethical', 'civic', 'national' and a-political consciousness); the role of the agent of exploitation (ability to

page 156

give the workers orders and speak to them: 'human relations'), of the agent of repression (ability to give orders and enforce obedience 'without discussion', or ability to manipulate the demagogy of a political leader's rhetoric), or of the professional ideologist (ability to treat consciousnesses with the respect, i.e. with the contempt, blackmail, and demagogy they deserve, adapted to the accents of Morality, of Virtue, of 'Transcendence', of the Nation, of France's World Role, etc.).

Of course, many of these contrasting Virtues (modesty, resignation, submissiveness on the one hand, cynicism, contempt, arrogance, confidence, self-importance, even smooth talk and cunning on the other) are also taught in the Family, in the Church, in the Army, in Good Books, in films and even in the football stadium. But no other ideological State apparatus has the obligatory (and not least, free) audience of the totality of the children in the capitalist social formation, eight hours a day for five or six days out of seven.

But it is by an apprenticeship in a variety of know-how wrapped up in the massive inculcation of the ideology of the ruling class that the relations of production in a capitalist social formation, i.e. the relations of exploited to exploiters and exploiters to exploited, are largely reproduced. The mechanisms which produce this vital result for the capitalist regime are naturally covered up and concealed by a universally reigning ideology of the School, universally reigning because it is one of the essential forms of the ruling bourgeois ideology: an ideology which represents the School as a neutral environment purged of ideology (because it is . . .lay), where teachers respectful of the 'conscience' and 'freedom' of the children who are entrusted to them (in complete confidence) by their 'parents' (who are free, too,

page 157

i.e. the owners of their children) open up for them the path to the freedom, morality and responsibility of adults by their own example, by knowledge, literature and their 'liberating' virtues.

I ask the pardon of those teachers who, in dreadful conditions, attempt to turn the few weapons they can find in the history and learning they 'teach' against the ideology, the system and the practices in which they are trapped. They are a kind of hero. But they are rare and how many (the majority) do not even begin to suspect the 'work' the system (which is bigger than they are and crushes them) forces them to do, or worse, put all their heart and ingenuity into performing it with the most advanced awareness (the famous new methods!). So little do they suspect it that their own devotion contributes to the maintenance and nourishment of this ideological representation of the School, which makes the School today as 'natural', indispensable-useful and even beneficial for our contemporaries as the Church was 'natural', indispensable and generous for our ancestors a few centuries ago.

In fact, the Church has been replaced today in its role as the dominant Ideological State Apparatus by the School. It is coupled with the Family just as the Church was once coupled with the Family. We can now claim that the unprecedentedly deep crisis which is now shaking the education system of so many States across the globe, often in conjunction with a crisis (already proclaimed in the Communist Manifesto ) shaking the family system, takes on a political meaning, given that the School (and the School Family couple) constitutes the dominant Ideological State Apparatus, the Apparatus playing a determinant part in the reproduction of the relations of production of a mode of production threatened in its existence by the world class struggle.

page 158

O N I D E O L O G Y

When I put forward the concept of an Ideological State Apparatus, when I said that the ISAs 'function by ideology', I invoked a reality which needs a little discussion: ideology.

It is well known that the expression 'ideology' was invented by Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy and their friends, who assigned to it as an object the (genetic) theory of ideas. When Marx took up the term fifty years later, he gave it a quite different meaning, even in his Early Works. Here, ideology is the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group. The ideologico-political struggle conducted by Marx as early as his articles in the Rheinische Zeitung inevitably and quickly brought him face to face with this reality and forced him to take his earliest intuitions further.

However, here we come upon a rather astonishing paradox. Everything seems to lead Marx to formulate a theory of ideology. In fact, The German Ideology does offer us, after the 1844 Manuscripts, an explicit theory of ideology, but . . . it is not Marxist (we shall see why in a moment). As for Capital, although it does contain many hints towards a theory of ideologies (most visibly, the ideology of the vulgar economists), it does not contain that theory itself, which depends for the most part on a theory of ideology in general.

I should like to venture a first and very schematic outline of such a theory. The theses I am about to put forward are certainly not off the cuff, but they cannot be sustained and tested, i.e. confirmed or rejected, except by much thorough study and analysis.

page 159

Ideology has no History

One word first of all to expound the reason in principle which seems to me to found, or at least to justify, the project of a theory of ideology in general, and not a theory of particular ideologies, which, whatever their form (religious, ethical, legal, political), always express class positions.

It is quite obvious that it is necessary to proceed towards a theory of ideologies in the two respects I have just suggested. It will then be clear that a theory of ideologies depends in the last resort on the history of social formations, and thus of the modes of production combined in social formations, and of the class struggles which develop in them. In this sense it is clear that there can be no question of a theory of ideologies in general, since ideologies (defined in the double respect suggested above: regional and class) have a history, whose determination in the last instance is clearly situated outside ideologies alone, although it involves them.

On the contrary, if I am able to put forward the project of a theory of ideology in general, and if this theory really is one of the elements on which theories of ideologies depend, that entails an apparently paradoxical proposition which I shall express in the following terms: ideology has no history.

As we know, this formulation appears in so many words in a passage from The German Ideology. Marx utters it with respect to metaphysics, which, he says, has no more history than ethics (meaning also the other forms of ideology).

In The German Ideology, this formulation appears in a plainly positivist context. Ideology is conceived as a pure illusion, a pure dream, i.e. as nothingness. All its reality is external to it. Ideology is thus thought as an imaginary construction whose status is exactly like the theoretical status of the dream among writers before Freud. For these writers, the dream was the purely imaginary, i.e. null,

page 160

result of 'day's residues', presented in an arbitrary arrangement and order, sometimes even 'inverted', in other words, in 'disorder'. For them, the dream was the imaginary, it was empty, null and arbitrarily 'stuck together' (bricolé ), once the eyes had closed, from the residues of the only full and positive reality, the reality of the day. This is exactly the status of philosophy and ideology (since in this book philosophy is ideology par excellence ) in The German Ideology.

Ideology, then, is for Marx an imaginary assemblage (bricolage ), a pure dream, empty and vain, constituted by the 'day's residues' from the only full and positive reality, that of the concrete history of concrete material individuals materially producing their existence. It is on this basis that ideology has no history in The German Ideology, since its history is outside it, where the only existing history is, the history of concrete individuals, etc. In The German Ideology, the thesis that ideology has no history is therefore a purely negative thesis, since it means both:

1. ideology is nothing insofar as it is a pure dream (manufactured by who knows what power: if not by the alienation of the division of labour, but that, too, is a negative determination);

2. ideology has no history, which emphatically does not mean that there is no history in it (on the contrary, for it is merely the pale, empty and inverted reflection of real history) but that it has no history of its own.

Now, while the thesis I wish to defend formally speaking adopts the terms of The German Ideology ('ideology has no history'), it is radically different from the positivist and historicist thesis of The German Ideology.

For on the one hand, I think it is possible to hold that ideologies have a history of their own (although it is determined in the last instance by the class struggle); and on the other, I think it is possible to hold that ideology in general

page 161

has no history, not in a negative sense (its history is external to it), but in an absolutely positive sense.

This sense is a positive one if it is true that the peculiarity of ideology is that it is endowed with a structure and a functioning such as to make it a non-historical reality, i.e. an omni-historical reality, in the sense in which that structure and functioning are immutable, present in the same form throughout what we can call history, in the sense in which the Communist Manifesto defines history as the history of class struggles, i.e. the history of class societies.

To give a theoretical reference-point here, I might say that, to return to our example of the dream, in its Freudian conception this time, our proposition: ideology has no history, can and must (and in a way which has absolutely nothing arbitrary about it, but, quite the reverse, is theoretically necessary, for there is an organic link between the two propositions) be related directly to Freud's proposition that the unconscious is eternal, i.e. that it has no history.

If eternal means, not transcendent to all (temporal) history, but omnipresent, trans-historical and therefore immutable in form throughout the extent of history, I shall adopt Freud's expression word for word, and write ideology is eternal, exactly like the unconscious. And I add that I find this comparison theoretically justified by the fact that the eternity of the unconscious is not unrelated to the eternity of ideology in general.

That is why I believe I am justified, hypothetically at least, in proposing a theory of ideology in general, in the sense that Freud presented a theory of the unconscious in general.

To simplify the phrase, it is convenient, taking into account what has been said about ideologies, to use the plain term ideology to designate ideology in general, which I have just said has no history, or, what comes to the same thing, is eternal, i.e. omnipresent in its immutable form

page 162

throughout history ( = the history of social formations containing social classes). For the moment I shall restrict myself to 'class societies' and their history.

Ideology is a 'Representation ' of the Imaginary Relationship
of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence

In order to approach my central thesis on the structure and functioning of ideology, I shall first present two theses, one negative, the other positive. The first concerns the object which is 'represented' in the imaginary form of ideology, the second concerns the materiality of ideology.

T H E S I S I. Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.

We commonly call religious ideology, ethical ideology, legal ideology, political ideology, etc., so many 'world outlooks'. Of course, assuming that we do not live one of these ideologies as the truth (e.g. 'believe' in God, Duty, Justice, etc. . . .), we admit that the ideology we are discussing from a critical point of view, examining it as the ethnologist examines the myths of a 'primitive society', that these 'world outlooks' are largely imaginary, i.e. do not 'correspond to reality'.

However, while admitting that they do not correspond to reality, i.e. that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do make allusion to reality, and that they need only be 'interpreted' to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of that world (ideology = illusion/allusion ).

There are different types of interpretation, the most famous of which are the mechanistic type, current in the eighteenth century (God is the imaginary representation of the real King), and the 'hermeneutic ' interpretation, inaugurated by the earliest Church Fathers, and revived by

page 163

Feuerbach and the theologico-philosophical school which descends from him, e.g. the theologian Barth (to Feuerbach, for example, God is the essence of real Man). The essential point is that on condition that we interpret the imaginary transposition (and inversion) of ideology we arrive at the conclusion that in ideology 'men represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in an imaginary form'.

Unfortunately, this interpretation leaves one small problem unsettled: why do men 'need' this imaginary transposition of their real conditions of existence in order to 'represent to themselves' their real conditions of existence?

The first answer (that of the eighteenth century) proposes a simple solution: Priests or Despots are responsible. They 'forged' the Beautiful Lies so that, in the belief that they were obeying God, men would in fact obey the Priests and Despots, who are usually in alliance in their imposture, the Priests acting in the interests of the Despots or vice versa, according to the political positions of the 'theoreticians' concerned. There is therefore a cause for the imaginary transposition of the real conditions of existence: that cause is the existence of a small number of cynical men who base their domination and exploitation of the 'people' on a falsified representation of the world which they have imagined in order to enslave other minds by dominating their imaginations.

The second answer (that of Feuerbach, taken over word for word by Marx in his Early Works) is more 'profound', i.e. just as false. It, too, seeks and finds a cause for the imaginary transposition and distortion of men's real conditions of existence, in short, for the alienation in the imaginary of the representation of men's conditions of existence. This cause is no longer Priests or Despots, nor their active imagination and the passive imagination of their victims. This cause is the material alienation which reigns

page 164

in the conditions of existence of men themselves. This is how, in The Jewish Question and elsewhere, Marx defends the Feuerbachian idea that men make themselves an alienated (= imaginary) representation of their conditions of existence because these conditions of existence are themselves alienating (in the 1844 Manuscripts : because these conditions are dominated by the essence of alienated society -- 'alienated labour ').

All these interpretations thus take literally the thesis which they presuppose, and on which they depend, i.e. that what is reflected in the imaginary representation of the world found in an ideology is the conditions of existence of men, i.e. their real world.

Now I can return to a thesis which I have already advanced: it is not their real conditions of existence, their real world, that 'men' 'represent to themselves' in ideology, but above all it is their relation to those conditions of existence which is represented to them there. It is this relation which is at the centre of every ideological, i.e. imaginary, representation of the real world. It is this relation that contains the 'cause' which has to explain the imaginary distortion of the ideological representation of the real world. Or rather, to leave aside the language of causality it is necessary to advance the thesis that it is the imaginary nature of this relation which underlies all the imaginary distortion that we can observe (if we do not live in its truth) in all ideology.

To speak in a Marxist language, if it is true that the representation of the real conditions of existence of the individuals occupying the posts of agents of production, exploitation, repression, ideologization and scientific practice, does in the last analysis arise from the relations of production, and from relations deriving from the relations of production, we can say the following: all ideology rep-

page 165

resents in its necessarily imaginary distortion not the existing relations of production (and the other relations that derive from them), but above all the (imaginary) relationship of individuals to the relations of production and the relations that derive from them. What is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real reIations in which they live.

If this is the case, the question of the 'cause' of the imaginary distortion of the real relations in ideology disappears and must be replaced by a different question: why is the representation given to individuals of their (individual) relation to the social relations which govern their conditions of existence and their collective and individual life necessarily an imaginary relation? And what is the nature of this imaginariness? Posed in this way, the question explodes the solution by a 'clique'[14], by a group of individuals (Priests or Despots) who are the authors of the great ideological mystification, just as it explodes the solution by the alienated character of the real world. We shall see why later in my exposition. For the moment I shall go no further.

T H E S I S I I: Ideology has a material existence.

I have already touched on this thesis by saying that the 'ideas' or 'representations', etc., which seem to make up ideology do not have an ideal (idéale or idéelle) or spiritual existence, but a material existence. I even suggested that the ideal (idéale, idéelle) and spiritual existence of 'ideas' arises exclusively in an ideology of the 'idea' and of ideology, and let me add, in an ideology of what seems to have 'founded' this conception since the emergence of the sciences, i.e. what

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14. I use this very modern term deliberately. For even in Communist circles, unfortunately, it is a commonplace to 'explain' some political deviation (left or right opportunism) by the action of a 'clique'.

page 166

the practicians of the sciences represent to themselves in their spontaneous ideology as 'ideas', true or false. Of course, presented in affirmative form, this thesis is unproven. I simply ask that the reader be favourably disposed towards it, say, in the name of materialism. A long series of arguments would be necessary to prove it.

This hypothetical thesis of the not spiritual but material existence of 'ideas' or other 'representations' is indeed necessary if we are to advance in our analysis of the nature of ideology. Or rather, it is merely useful to us in order the better to reveal what every at all serious analysis of any ideology will immediately and empirically show to every observer, however critical.

While discussing the ideological State apparatuses and their practices, I said that each of them was the realization of an ideology (the unity of these different regional ideologies -- religious, ethical, legal, political, aesthetic, etc. -- being assured by their subjection to the ruling ideology). I now return to this thesis: an ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices. This existence is material.

Of course, the material existence of the ideology in an apparatus and its practices does not have the same modality as the material existence of a paving-stone or a rifle. But, at the risk of being taken for a Neo-Aristotelian (NB Marx had a very high regard for Aristotle), I shall say that 'matter is discussed in many senses', or rather that it exists in different modalities, all rooted in the last instance in 'physical' matter.

Having said this, let me move straight on and see what happens to the 'individuals' who live in ideology, i.e. in a determinate (religious, ethical, etc.) representation of the world whose imaginary distortion depends on their imaginary relation to their conditions of existence, in other words, in the last instance, to the relations of production

page 167

and to class relations (ideology = an imaginary relation to real relations). I shall say that this imaginary relation is itself endowed with a material existence.

Now I observe the following.

An individual believes in God, or Duty, or Justice, etc. This belief derives (for everyone, i.e. for all those who live in an ideological representation of ideology, which reduces ideology to ideas endowed by definition with a spiritual existence) from the ideas of the individual concerned, i.e. from him as a subject with a consciousness which contains the ideas of his belief. In this way, i.e. by means of the absolutely ideological 'conceptual' device (dispositif ) thus set up (a subject endowed with a consciousness in which he freely forms or freely recognizes ideas in which he believes), the (material) attitude of the subject concerned naturally follows.

The individual in question behaves in such and such a way, adopts such and such a practical attitude, and, what is more, participates in certain regular practices which are those of the ideological apparatus on which 'depend' the ideas which he has in all consciousness freely chosen as a subject. If he believes in God, he goes to Church to attend Mass, kneels, prays, confesses, does penance (once it was material in the ordinary sense of the term) and naturally repents and so on. If he believes in Duty, he will have the corresponding attitudes, inscribed in ritual practices 'according to the correct principles'. If he believes in Justice, he will submit unconditionally to the rules of the Law, and may even protest when they are violated, sign petitions, take part in a demonstration, etc.

Throughout this schema we observe that the ideological representation of ideology is itself forced to recognize that every 'subject' endowed with a 'consciousness' and believing in the 'ideas' that his 'consciousness' inspires in him

page 168

and freely accepts, must 'act according to his ideas', must therefore inscribe his own ideas as a free subject in the actions of his material practice. If he does not do so, 'that is wicked'.

Indeed, if he does not do what he ought to do as a function of what he believes, it is because he does something else, which, still as a function of the same idealist scheme, implies that he has other ideas in his head as well as those he proclaims, and that he acts according to these other ideas, as a man who is either 'inconsistent' ('no one is willingly evil') or cynical, or perverse.

In every case, the ideology of ideology thus recognizes, despite its imaginary distortion, that the 'ideas' of a human subject exist in his actions, or ought to exist in his actions, and if that is not the case, it lends him other ideas corresponding to the actions (however perverse) that he does perform. This ideology talks of actions: I shall talk of actions inserted into practices. And I shall point out that these practices are governed by the rituals in which these practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological apparatus, be it only a small part of that apparatus: a small mass in a small church, a funeral, a minor match at a sports' club, a school day, a political party meeting, etc.

Besides, we are indebted to Pascal's defensive 'dialectic' for the wonderful formula which will enable us to invert the order of the notional schema of ideology. Pascal says more or less: 'Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.' He thus scandalously inverts the order of things, bringing, like Christ, not peace but strife, and in addition something hardly Christian (for woe to him who brings scandal into the world!) -- scandal itself. A fortunate scandal which makes him stick with Jansenist defiance to a language that directly names the reality.

I will be allowed to leave Pascal to the arguments of his

page 169

ideological struggle with the religious ideological State apparatus of his day. And I shall be expected to use a more directly Marxist vocabulary, if that is possible, for we are advancing in still poorly explored domains.

I shall therefore say that, where only a single subject (such and such an individual) is concerned, the existence of the ideas of his belief is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject. Naturally, the four inscriptions of the adjective 'material' in my proposition must be affected by different modalities: the materialities of a displacement for going to mass, of kneeling down, of the gesture of the sign of the cross, or of the mea culpa, of a sentence, of a prayer, of an act of contrition, of a penitence, of a gaze, of a hand-shake, of an external verbal discourse or an 'internal' verbal discourse (consciousness), are not one and the same materiality. I shall leave on one side the problem of a theory of the differences between the modalities of materiality.

It remains that in this inverted presentation of things, we are not dealing with an 'inversion' at all, since it is clear that certain notions have purely and simply disappeared from our presentation, whereas others on the contrary survive, and new terms appear.

Disappeared: the term ideas.

Survive: the terms subject, consciousness, belief, actions.

Appear: the terms practices, rituals, ideological apparatus.

It is therefore not an inversion or overturning (except in the sense in which one might say a government or a glass is overturned), but a reshuffle (of a non-ministerial type), a rather strange reshuffle, since we obtain the following result.

Ideas have disappeared as such (insofar as they are endowed with an ideal or spiritual existence), to the precise

page 170

extent that it has emerged that their existence is inscribed in the actions of practices governed by rituals defined in the last instance by an ideological apparatus. It therefore appears that the subject acts insofar as he is acted by the following system (set out in the order of its real determination): ideology existing in a material ideological apparatus, prescribing material practices governed by a material ritual, which practices exist in the material actions of a subject acting in all consciousness according to his belief.

But this very presentation reveals that we have retained the following notions: subject, consciousness, belief, actions. From this series I shall immediately extract the decisive central term on which everything else depends: the notion of the subject.

And I shall immediately set down two conjoint theses:

1. there is no practice except by and in an ideology;

2. there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.

I can now come to my central thesis.

Ideology Interpellates Individuals as Subjects

This thesis is simply a matter of making my last proposition explicit: there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects. Meaning, there is no ideology except for concrete subjects, and this destination for ideology is only made possible by the subject: meaning, by the category of the subject and its functioning.

By this I mean that, even if it only appears under this name (the subject) with the rise of bourgeois ideology, above all with the rise of legal ideology,[15] the category of the

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15. Which borrowed the legal category of 'subject in law' to make an ideological notion: man is by nature a subject.

page 171

subject (which may function under other names: e.g., as the soul in Plato, as God, etc.) is the constitutive category of all ideology, whatever its determination (regional or class) and whatever its historical date -- since ideology has no history.

I say: the category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same time and immediately I add that the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it ) of 'constituting ' concrete individuals as subjects. In the interaction of this double constitution exists the functioning of all ideology, ideology being nothing but its functioning in the material forms of existence of that functioning.

In order to grasp what follows, it is essential to realize that both he who is writing these lines and the reader who reads them are themselves subjects, and therefore ideological subjects (a tautological proposition), i.e. that the author and the reader of these lines both live 'spontaneously' or 'naturally' in ideology in the sense in which I have said that 'man is an ideological animal by nature'.

That the author, insofar as he writes the lines of a discourse which claims to be scientific, is completely absent as a 'subject' from 'his' scientific discourse (for all scientific discourse is by definition a subject-less discourse, there is no 'Subject of science' except in an ideology of science) is a different question which I shall leave on one side for the moment.

As St Paul admirably put it, it is in the 'Logos', meaning in ideology, that we 'live, move and have our being'. It follows that, for you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary 'obviousness' (obviousnesses are always primary): it is clear that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc. . . .). Like all obviousnesses, including those that make a word 'name a thing' or 'have a meaning' (therefore including

page 172

the obviousness of the 'transparency' of language), the 'obviousness' that you and I are subjects -- and that that does not cause any problems -- is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect.[16] It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are 'obviousnesses') obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot fail to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of crying out (aloud or in the 'still, small voice of conscience'): 'That's obvious! That's right! That's true!'

At work in this reaction is the ideological recognition function which is one of the two functions of ideology as such (its inverse being the function of misrecognition -- méconnaissance ).

To take a highly 'concrete' example, we all have friends who, when they knock on our door and we ask, through the door, the question 'Who's there?', answer (since 'it's obvious') 'It's me'. And we recognize that 'it is him', or 'her'. We open the door, and 'it's true, it really was she who was there'. To take another example, when we recognize somebody of our (previous) acquaintance ((re )-connaissance ) in the street, we show him that we have recognized him (and have recognized that he has recognized us) by saying to him 'Hello, my friend', and shaking his hand (a material ritual practice of ideological recognition in everyday life -- in France, at least; elsewhere, there are other rituals).

In this preliminary remark and these concrete illustrations, I only wish to point out that you and I are always already subjects, and as such constantly practice the rituals of ideological recognition, which guarantee for us that we

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16. Linguists and those who appeal to linguistics for various purposes often run up against difficulties which arise because they ignore the action of the ideological effects in all discourses -- including even scientific discourses.

page 173

are indeed concrete, individual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects. The writing I am currently executing and the reading you are currently[17] performing are also in this respect rituals of ideological recognition, including the 'obviousness' with which the 'truth' or 'error' of my reflections may impose itself on you.

But to recognize that we are subjects and that we function in the practical rituals of the most elementary everyday life (the hand-shake, the fact of calling you by your name, the fact of knowing, even if I do not know what it is, that you 'have' a name of your own, which means that you are recognized as a unique subject, etc.) -- this recognition only gives us the 'consciousness' of our incessant (eternal) practice of ideological recognition -- its consciousness, i.e. its recognition -- but in no sense does it give us the (scientific) knowledge of the mechanism of this recognition. Now it is this knowledge that we have to reach, if you will, while speaking in ideology, and from within ideology we have to outline a discourse which tries to break with ideology, in order to dare to be the beginning of a scientific (i.e. subject-less) discourse on ideology.

Thus in order to represent why the category of the 'subject' is constitutive of ideology, which only exists by constituting concrete subjects as subjects, I shall employ a special mode of exposition: 'concrete' enough to be recognized, but abstract enough to be thinkable and thought, giving rise to a knowledge.

As a first formulation I shall say: all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17. NB: this double 'currently' is one more proof of the fact that ideology is 'eternal', since these two 'currentlys' are separated by an indefinite interval; I am writing these lines on 6 April 1969, you may read them at any subsequent time.

page 174

This is a proposition which entails that we distinguish for the moment between concrete individuals on the one hand and concrete subjects on the other, although at this level concrete subjects only exist insofar as they are supported by a concrete individual.

I shall then suggest that ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way that it 'recruits' subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or 'transforms' the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: 'Hey, you there!'[18]

Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was 'really' addressed to him, and that 'it was really him who was hailed' (and not someone else). Experience shows that the practical telecommunication of hailings is such that they hardly ever miss their man: verbal call or whistle, the one hailed always recognizes that it is really him who is being hailed. And yet it is a strange phenomenon, and one which cannot be explained solely by 'guilt feelings', despite the large numbers who 'have something on their consciences'.

Naturally for the convenience and clarity of my little theoretical theatre I have had to present things in the form of a sequence, with a before and an after, and thus in the form of a temporal succession. There are individuals walking along. Somewhere (usually behind them) the hail rings out: 'Hey, you there!' One individual (nine times out

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18. Hailing as an everyday practice subject to a precise ritual takes a quite 'special' form in the policeman's practice of 'hailing' which concerns the hailing of 'suspects'.

page 175

of ten it is the right one) turns round, believing/suspecting/knowing that it is for him, i.e. recognizing that 'it really is he' who is meant by the hailing. But in reality these things happen without any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing.

I might add: what thus seems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the street), in reality takes place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems therefore to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, 'I am ideological'. It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing). Which amounts to saying that ideology has no outside (for itself), but at the same time that it is nothing but outside (for science and reality).

Spinoza explained this completely two centuries before Marx, who practised it but without explaining it in detail. But let us leave this point, although it is heavy with consequences, consequences which are not just theoretical, but also directly political, since, for example, the whole theory of criticism and self-criticism, the golden rule of the Marxist-Leninist practice of the class struggle, depends on it.

Thus ideology hails or interpellates individuals as subjects. As ideology is eternal, I must now suppress the temporal form in which I have presented the functioning of ideology, and say: ideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to making it clear

page 176

that individuals are always-already interpellated by ideology as subjects, which necessarily leads us to one last proposition: individuals are always-already subjects. Hence individuals are 'abstract' with respect to the subjects which they always already are. This proposition might seem paradoxical.

That an individual is always-already a subject, even before he is born, is nevertheless the plain reality, accessible to everyone and not a paradox at all. Freud shows that individuals are always 'abstract' with respect to the subjects they always-already are, simply by noting the ideological ritual that surrounds the expectation of a 'birth', that 'happy event'. Everyone knows how much and in what way an unborn child is expected. Which amounts to saying, very prosaically, if we agree to drop the 'sentiments', i.e. the forms of family ideology (paternal/maternal conjugal/fraternal) in which the unborn child is expected: it is certain in advance that it will bear its Father's Name, and will therefore have an identity and be irreplaceable. Before its birth, the child is therefore always-already a subject, appointed as a subject in and by the specific familial ideological configuration in which it is 'expected' once it has been conceived. I hardly need add that this familial ideological configuration is, in its uniqueness, highly structured, and that it is in this implacable and more or less 'pathological' (presupposing that any meaning can be assigned to that term) structure that the former subject to-be will have to 'find' 'its' place, i.e. 'become' the sexual subject (boy or girl) which it already is in advance. It is clear that this ideological constraint and pre-appointment, and all the rituals of rearing and then education in the family, have some relationship with what Freud studied in the forms of the pre-genital and genital 'stages' of sexuality, i.e. in the 'grip' of what Freud registered by its effects as being the unconscious. But let us leave this point, too, on one side.

page 177

Let me go one step further. What I shall now turn my attention to is the way the 'actors' in this mise en scène of interpellation, and their respective roles, are reflected in the very structure of all ideology.

An Example: The Christian Religious Ideology

As the formal structure of all ideology is always the same, I shall restrict my analysis to a single example, one accessible to everyone, that of religious ideology, with the proviso that the same demonstration can be produced for ethical, legal, political, aesthetic ideology, etc.

Let us therefore consider the Christian religious ideology. I shall use a rhetorical figure and 'make it speak', i.e. collect into a fictional discourse what it 'says' not only in its two Testaments, its Theologians, Sermons, but also in its practices, its rituals, its ceremonies and its sacraments. The Christian religious ideology says something like this:

It says: I address myself to you, a human individual called Peter (every individual is called by his name, in the passive sense, it is never he who provides his own name), in order to tell you that God exists and that you are answer able to Him. It adds: God addresses himself to you through my voice (Scripture having collected the Word of God, Tradition having transmitted it, Papal Infallibility fixing it for ever on 'nice' points). It says: this is who you are: you are Peter! This is your origin, you were created by God for all eternity, although you were born in the 1920th year of Our Lord! This is your place in the world! This is what you must do! By these means, if you observe the 'law of love' you will be saved, you, Peter, and will become part of the Glorious Body of Christ! Etc. . . .

Now this is quite a familiar and banal discourse, but at the same time quite a surprising one.

page 178

Surprising because if we consider that religious ideology is indeed addressed to individuals,[19] in order to 'transform them into subjects', by interpellating the individual, Peter, in order to make him a subject, free to obey or disobey the appeal, i.e. God's commandments; if it calls these individuals by their names, thus recognizing that they are always-already interpellated as subjects with a personal identity (to the extent that Pascal's Christ says: 'It is for you that I have shed this drop of my blood!'); if it interpellates them in such a way that the subject responds: 'Yes. it really is me! ' if it obtains from them the recognition that they really do occupy the place it designates for them as theirs in the world, a fixed residence: 'It really is me, I am here, a worker, a boss or a soldier!' in this vale of tears; if it obtains from them the recognition of a destination (eternal life or damnation) according to the respect or contempt they show to 'God's Commandments', Law become Love; -- if everything does happen in this way (in the practices of the well-known rituals of baptism, confirmation, communion, confession and extreme unction, etc. . . .), we should note that all this 'procedure' to set up Christian religious subjects is dominated by a strange phenomenon: the fact that there can only be such a multitude of possible religious subjects on the absolute condition that there is a Unique, Absolute, Other Subject, i.e. God.

It is convenient to designate this new and remarkable Subject by writing Subject with a capital S to distinguish it from ordinary subjects, with a small s.

It then emerges that the interpellation of individuals as subjects presupposes the 'existence' of a Unique and central Other Subject, in whose Name the religious ideology

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19. Although we know that the individual is always already a subject, we go on using this term, convenient because of the contrasting effect it produces.

page 179

interpellates all individuals as subjects. All this is clearly[20] written in what is rightly called the Scriptures. 'And it came to pass at that time that God the Lord (Yahweh) spoke to Moses in the cloud. And the Lord cried to Moses, "Moses!" And Moses replied "It is (really) I! I am Moses thy servant, speak and I shall listen!" And the Lord spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am that I am "'.

God thus defines himself as the Subject par excellence, he who is through himself and for himself ('I am that I am'), and he who interpellates his subject, the individual subjected to him by his very interpellation, i.e. the individual named Moses. And Moses, interpellated-called by his Name, having recognized that it 'really' was he who was called by God, recognizes that he is a subject, a subject of God, a subject subjected to God, a subject through the Subject and subjected to the Subject. The proof: he obeys him, and makes his people obey God's Commandments.

God is thus the Subject, and Moses and the innumerable subjects of God's people, the Subject's interlocutors-interpellates: his mirrors, his reflections. Were not men made in the image of God? As all theological reflection proves, whereas He 'could' perfectly well have done without men, God needs them, the Subject needs the subjects, just as men need God, the subjects need the Subject. Better: God needs men, the great Subject needs subjects, even in the terrible inversion of his image in them (when the subjects wallow in debauchery, i.e. sin).

One of my favorite films and since I did mention a Tarantino directed film next,here is one that I found online accidently while looking for the more recent 'Inglorious Basterds'(the dvd will be fine). It will be a good film to sort of get back into Postmodern mode of narrative with Tarantino being an innovative director to watch on this particiularly. I am sorting through,finding,viewing,watching a lot of material related to this genre as it is vital that I use other mediums which further support what I will be expressing in my writings. I would like to post PULP FICTION,while I am of course,busy busy busy with my studies. I hope to find time later to write on it.

...Will be back with more later...

PULP FICTION 1994

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVpwra1TJDY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ms_ZblbR4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJLOGRiV_WA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8MvB9LaQPY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnfSyxUFg3w&feature=fvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7n7UN45hz4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVGg7r2xm4k&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha_rmo7BuXk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHpbi1CSCAI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWwrOnQIVNM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSzjHJ-FdPY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7T52tsJfvQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLcJokN3D78&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSn1G018kak&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXiH6ueZTG8&feature=related

I have recently read a lot of literary theory which stems from the writings of Louis Althusser. He is one of the many theorists I am working on reading at the moment. I remember reading Ideological State Apparatuses something like 4-5 years ago which is a great work to familiarize yourself with his ideas. I am sleepless and reading and writing on various novels and of course sorting through and conprehending the very difficult theory is a very tiresome activity as well. Since I am reading such related work,I want to skim through and remind myself of Ideological State Apparatuses. This post is just for me I am further confirming that I don't have time to search for other content

IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUSES,LOUIS ALTHUSSER:A REMINDER (1)

Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses
(Notes towards
an Investigation)

O N T H E R E P R O D U C T I O N O F T H E C O N D I T I O N S
O F P R O D U C T I O N[1]

I must now expose more fully something which was briefly glimpsed in my analysis when I spoke of the necessity to renew the means of production if production is to be possible. That was a passing hint. Now I shall consider it for itself.

As Marx said, every child knows that a social formation which did not reproduce the conditions of production at the same time as it produced would not last a year.[2] The ultimate condition of production is therefore the reproduction of the conditions of production. This may be 'simple' (reproducing exactly the previous conditions of production) or 'on an extended scale' (expanding them). Let us ignore this last distinction for the moment.

What, then, is the reproduction of the conditions of production ?

Here we are entering a domain which is both very fam-

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. This text is made up of two extracts from an ongoing study. The sub-title 'Notes towards an Investigation' is the author's own. The ideas expounded should not be regarded as more than the introduction to a discussion.
2. Marx to Kugelmann, 11 July 1868, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1955, p. 209.

page 128

iliar (since Capital Volume Two) and uniquely ignored. The tenacious obviousnesses (ideological obviousnesses of an empiricist type) of the point of view of production alone, or even of that of mere productive practice (itself abstract in relation to the process of production) are so integrated into our everyday 'consciousness' that it is extremely hard, not to say almost impossible, to raise oneself to the point of view of reproduction. Nevertheless, everything outside this point of view remains abstract (worse than one-sided: distorted) -- even at the level of production, and, a fortiori, at that of mere practice.

Let us try and examine the matter methodically.

To simplify my exposition, and assuming that every social formation arises from a dominant mode of production, I can say that the process of production sets to work the existing productive forces in and under definite relations of production.

It follows that, in order to exist, every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and in order to be able to produce. It must therefore reproduce:

1. the productive forces,

2. the existing relations of production.

Reproduction of the Means of Production

Everyone (including the bourgeois economists whose work is national accounting, or the modern 'macro-economic' 'theoreticians') now recognizes, because Marx compellingly proved it in Capital Volume Two, that no production is possible which does not allow for the reproduction of the material conditions of production: the reproduction of the means of production.

The average economist, who is no different in this than

page 129

the average capitalist, knows that each year it is essential to foresee what is needed to replace what has been used up or worn out in production: raw material, fixed installations (buildings), instruments of production (machines), etc. I say the average economist = the average capitalist, for they both express the point of view of the firm, regarding it as sufficient simply to give a commentary on the terms of the firm's financial accounting practice.

But thanks to the genius of Quesnay who first posed this 'glaring' problem, and to the genius of Marx who resolved it, we know that the reproduction of the material conditions of production cannot be thought at the level of the firm, because it does not exist at that level in its real conditions. What happens at the level of the firm is an effect, which only gives an idea of the necessity of reproduction, but absolutely fails to allow its conditions and mechanisms to be thought.

A moment's reflection is enough to be convinced of this: Mr X, a capitalist who produces woollen yarn in his spinning-mill, has to 'reproduce' his raw material, his machines, etc. But he does not produce them for his own production -- other capitalists do: an Australian sheep farmer, Mr Y, a heavy engineer producing machine-tools, Mr Z, etc., etc. And Mr Y and Mr Z, in order to produce those products which are the condition of the reproduction of Mr X's conditions of production, also have to reproduce the conditions of their own production, and so on to infinity -- the whole in proportions such that, on the national and even the world market, the demand for means of production (for reproduction) can be satisfied by the supply.

In order to think this mechanism, which leads to a kind of 'endless chain', it is necessary to follow Marx's 'global' procedure, and to study in particular the relations of the circulation of capital between Department I (production of

page 130

means of production) and Department II (production of means of consumption), and the realization of surplus value, in Capital, Volumes Two and Three.

We shall not go into the analysis of this question. It is enough to have mentioned the existence of the necessity of the reproduction of the material conditions of production.

Reproduction of Labour-Power

However, the reader will not have failed to note one thing. We have discussed the reproduction of the means of production -- but not the reproduction of the productive forces. We have therefore ignored the reproduction of what distinguishes the productive forces from the means of production, i.e. the reproduction of labour power.

From the observation of what takes place in the firm, in particular from the examination of the financial accounting practice which predicts amortization and investment, we have been able to obtain an approximate idea of the existence of the material process of reproduction, but we are now entering a domain in which the observation of what happens in the firm is, if not totally blind, at least almost entirely so, and for good reason: the reproduction of labour power takes place essentially outside the firm.

How is the reproduction of labour power ensured?

It is ensured by giving labour power the material means with which to reproduce itself: by wages. Wages feature in the accounting of each enterprise, but as 'wage capital',[3] not at all as a condition of the material reproduction of labour power.

However, that is in fact how it 'works', since wages represents only that part of the value produced by the expendi-

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Marx gave it its scientific concept: variable capital.

page 131

ture of labour power which is indispensable for its reproduction: sc. indispensable to the reconstitution of the labour power of the wage-earner (the wherewithal to pay for housing, food and clothing, in short to enable the wage earner to present himself again at the factory gate the next day -- and every further day God grants him); and we should add: indispensable for raising and educating the children in whom the proletarian reproduces himself (in n models where n = 0, 1, 2, etc. . . .) as labour power.

Remember that this quantity of value (wages) necessary for the reproduction of labour power is determined not by the needs of a 'biological' Guaranteed Minimum Wage (Salaire Minimum Interprofessionnel Garanti ) alone, but by the needs of a historical minimum (Marx noted that English workers need beer while French proletarians need wine) -- i.e. a historically variable minimum.

I should also like to point out that this minimum is doubly historical in that it is not defined by the historical needs of the working class 'recognized' by the capitalist class, but by the historical needs imposed by the proletarian class struggle (a double class struggle: against the lengthening of the working day and against the reduction of wages).

However, it is not enough to ensure for labour power the material conditions of its reproduction if it is to be reproduced as labour power. I have said that the available labour power must be 'competent', i.e. suitable to be set to work in the complex system of the process of production. The development of the productive forces and the type of unity historically constitutive of the productive forces at a given moment produce the result that the labour power has to be (diversely) skilled and therefore reproduced as such. Diversely: according to the requirements of the socio-technical division of labour, its different 'jobs' and 'posts'.

How is this reproduction of the (diversified) skills of

page 132

labour power provided for in a capitalist regime? Here, unlike social formations characterized by slavery or serfdom this reproduction of the skills of labour power tends (this is a tendential law) decreasingly to be provided for 'on the spot' (apprenticeship within production itself), but is achieved more and more outside production: by the capitalist education system, and by other instances and institutions.

What do children learn at school? They go varying distances in their studies, but at any rate they learn to read, to write and to add -- i.e. a number of techniques, and a number of other things as well, including elements (which may be rudimentary or on the contrary thoroughgoing) of 'scientific' or 'literary culture', which are directly useful in the different jobs in production (one instruction for manual workers, another for technicians, a third for engineers, a final one for higher management, etc.). Thus they learn know-how.

But besides these techniques and knowledges, and in learning them, children at school also learn the 'rules' of good behaviour, i.e. the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour, according to the job he is 'destined' for: rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination. They also learn to 'speak proper French', to 'handle' the workers correctly, i.e. actually (for the future capitalists and their servants) to 'order them about' properly, i.e. (ideally) to 'speak to them' in the right way, etc.

To put this more scientifically, I shall say that the reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order, i.e. a reproduction of submission to the ruling ideology for the

page 133

workers, and a reproduction of the ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression, so that they, too, will provide for the domination of the ruling class 'in words'.

In other words, the school (but also other State institutions like the Church, or other apparatuses like the Army) teaches 'know-how', but in forms which ensure subjection to the ruling ideology or the mastery of its 'practice'. All the agents of production, exploitation and repression, not to speak of the 'professionals of ideology' (Marx), must in one way or another be 'steeped' in this ideology in order to perform their tasks 'conscientiously' -- the tasks of the exploited (the proletarians), of the exploiters (the capitalists), of the exploiters' auxiliaries (the managers), or of the high priests of the ruling ideology (its 'functionaries'), etc.

The reproduction of labour power thus reveals as its sine qua non not only the reproduction of its 'skills' but also the reproduction of its subjection to the ruling ideology or of the 'practice' of that ideology, with the proviso that it is not enough to say 'not only but also', for it is clear that it is in the forms and under the forms of ideological subjection that provision is made for the reproduction of the skills of labour power.

But this is to recognize the effective presence of a new reality: ideology.

Here I shall make two comments.

The first is to round off my analysis of reproduction.

I have just given a rapid survey of the forms of the reproduction of the productive forces, i.e. of the means of production on the one hand, and of labour power on the other.

But I have not yet approached the question of the reproduction of the relations of production. This is a crucial question for the Marxist theory of the mode of production.

page 134

To let it pass would be a theoretical omission -- worse, a serious political error.

I shall therefore discuss it. But in order to obtain the means to discuss it, I shall have to make another long detour.

The second comment is that in order to make this detour, I am obliged to re-raise my old question: what is a society ?

I N F R A S T R U C T U R E A N D S U P E R S T R U C T U R E

On a number of occasions[4] I have insisted on the revolutionary character of the Marxist conception of the 'social whole' insofar as it is distinct from the Hegelian 'totality'. I said (and this thesis only repeats famous propositions of historical materialism) that Marx conceived the structure of every society as constituted by 'levels' or 'instances' articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure, or economic base (the 'unity' of the productive forces and the relations of production) and the superstructure, which itself contains two 'levels' or 'instances': the politico-legal (law and the State) and ideology (the different ideologies, religious, ethical, legal, political, etc.).

Besides its theoretico-didactic interest (it reveals the difference between Marx and Hegel), this representation has the following crucial theoretical advantage: it makes it possible to inscribe in the theoretical apparatus of its essential concepts what I have called their respective indices of effectivity. What does this mean?

It is easy to see that this representation of the structure of every society as an edifice containing a base (infrastruc-

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. In For Marx and Reading Capital, 1965 (English editions 1969 and 1970 respectively).

page 135

ture) on which are erected the two 'floors' of the superstructure, is a metaphor, to be quite precise, a spatial metaphor: the metaphor of a topography (topique ).[5] Like every metaphor, this metaphor suggests something, makes some thing visible. What? Precisely this: that the upper floors could not 'stay up' (in the air) alone, if they did not rest precisely on their base.

Thus the object of the metaphor of the edifice is to represent above all the 'determination in the last instance' by the economic base. The effect of this spatial metaphor is to endow the base with an index of effectivity known by the famous terms: the determination in the last instance of what happens in the upper 'floors' (of the superstructure) by what happens in the economic base.

Given this index of effectivity 'in the last instance', the 'floors' of the superstructure are clearly endowed with different indices of effectivity. What kind of indices ?

It is possible to say that the floors of the superstructure are not determinant in the last instance, but that they are determined by the effectivity of the base; that if they are determinant in their own (as yet undefined) ways, this is true only insofar as they are determined by the base.

Their index of effectivity (or determination), as determined by the determination in the last instance of the base, is thought by the Marxist tradition in two ways: (1) there is a 'relative autonomy' of the superstructure with respect to the base; (2) there is a 'reciprocal action' of the superstructure on the base.

We can therefore say that the great theoretical advantage of the Marxist topography, i.e. of the spatial metaphor of

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Topography from the Greek topos : place. A topography represents in a definite space the respective sites occupied by several realities: thus the economic is at the bottom (the base), the superstructure above it.

page 136

the edifice (base and superstructure) is simultaneously that it reveals that questions of determination (or of index of effectivity) are crucial; that it reveals that it is the base which in the last instance determines the whole edifice; and that, as a consequence, it obliges us to pose the theoretical problem of the types of 'derivatory' effectivity peculiar to the superstructure, i.e. it obliges us to think what the Marxist tradition calls conjointly the relative autonomy of the superstructure and the reciprocal action of the superstructure on the base.

The greatest disadvantage of this representation of the structure of every society by the spatial metaphor of an edifice, is obviously the fact that it is metaphorical: i.e. it remains descriptive.

It now seems to me that it is possible and desirable to represent things differently. NB, I do not mean by this that I want to reject the classical metaphor, for that metaphor itself requires that we go beyond it. And I am not going beyond it in order to reject it as outworn. I simply want to attempt to think what it gives us in the form of a description.

I believe that it is possible and necessary to think what characterizes the essential of the existence and nature of the superstructure on the basis of reproduction. Once one takes the point of view of reproduction, many of the questions whose existence was indicated by the spatial metaphor of the edifice, but to which it could not give a conceptual answer, are immediately illuminated.

My basic thesis is that it is not possible to pose these questions (and therefore to answer them) except from the point of view of reproduction.

I shall give a short analysis of Law, the State and Ideology from this point of view. And I shall reveal what happens both from the point of view of practice and production on the one hand, and from that of reproduction on the other.

page 137

T H E S T A T E

The Marxist tradition is strict, here: in the Communist Manifesto and the Eighteenth Brumaire (and in all the later classical texts, above all in Marx's writings on the Paris Commune and Lenin's on State and Revolution ), the State is explicitly conceived as a repressive apparatus. The State is a 'machine' of repression, which enables the ruling classes (in the nineteenth century the bourgeois class and the 'class' of big landowners) to ensure their domination over the working class, thus enabling the former to subject the latter to the process of surplus-value extortion (i.e. to capitalist exploitation).

The State is thus first of all what the Marxist classics have called the State apparatus. This term means: not only the specialized apparatus (in the narrow sense) whose existence and necessity I have recognized in relation to the requirements of legal practice, i.e. the police, the courts, the prisons; but also the army, which (the proletariat has paid for this experience with its blood) intervenes directly as a supplementary repressive force in the last instance, when the police and its specialized auxiliary corps are 'outrun by events'; and above this ensemble, the head of State, the government and the administration.

Presented in this form, the Marxist-Leninist 'theory' of the State has its finger on the essential point, and not for one moment can there be any question of rejecting the fact that this really is the essential point. The State apparatus, which defines the State as a force of repressive execution and intervention 'in the interests of the ruling classes' in the class struggle conducted by the bourgeoisie and its allies against the proletariat, is quite certainly the State, and quite certainly defines its basic 'function'.

page 138

From Descriptive Theory to Theory as such

Nevertheless, here too, as I pointed out with respect to the metaphor of the edifice (infrastructure and superstructure), this presentation of the nature of the State is still partly descriptive.

As I shall often have occasion to use this adjective (descriptive), a word of explanation is necessary in order to remove any ambiguity.

Whenever, in speaking of the metaphor of the edifice or of the Marxist 'theory' of the State, I have said that these are descriptive conceptions or representations of their objects, I had no ulterior critical motives. On the contrary, I have every grounds to think that great scientific discoveries cannot help but pass through the phase of what I shall call descriptive 'theory '. This is the first phase of every theory, at least in the domain which concerns us (that of the science of social formations). As such, one might and in my opinion one must -- envisage this phase as a transitional one, necessary to the development of the theory. That it is transitional is inscribed in my expression: 'descriptive theory', which reveals in its conjunction of terms the equivalent of a kind of 'contradiction'. In fact, the term theory 'clashes' to some extent with the adjective 'descriptive' which I have attached to it. This means quite precisely: (1) that the 'descriptive theory' really is, without a shadow of a doubt, the irreversible beginning of the theory; but (2) that the 'descriptive' form in which the theory is presented requires, precisely as an effect of this 'contradiction', a development of the theory which goes beyond the form of 'description'.

Let me make this idea clearer by returning to our present object: the State.

When I say that the Marxist 'theory' of the State available to us is still partly 'descriptive', that means first and fore-

page 139

most that this descriptive 'theory' is without the shadow of a doubt precisely the beginning of the Marxist theory of the State, and that this beginning gives us the essential point, i.e. the decisive principle of every later development of the theory.

Indeed, I shall call the descriptive theory of the State correct, since it is perfectly possible to make the vast majority of the facts in the domain with which it is concerned correspond to the definition it gives of its object. Thus, the definition of the State as a class State, existing in the repressive State apparatus, casts a brilliant light on all the facts observable in the various orders of repression whatever their domains: from the massacres of June 1848 and of the Paris Commune, of Bloody Sunday, May 1905 in Petrograd, of the Resistance, of Charonne, etc., to the mere (and relatively anodyne) interventions of a 'censorship' which has banned Diderot's La Réligieuse or a play by Gatti on Franco; it casts light on all the direct or indirect forms of exploitation and extermination of the masses of the people (imperialist wars); it casts light on that subtle everyday domination beneath which can be glimpsed, in the forms of political democracy, for example, what Lenin, following Marx, called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

And yet the descriptive theory of the State represents a phase in the constitution of the theory which itself demands the 'supersession' of this phase. For it is clear that if the definition in question really does give us the means to identify and recognize the facts of oppression by relating them to the State, conceived as the repressive State apparatus, this 'interrelationship' gives rise to a very special kind of obviousness, about which I shall have something to say in a moment: 'Yes, that's how it is, that's really true!'[6]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. See p. 158 below, On Ideology.

page 140

And the accumulation of facts within the definition of the State may multiply examples, but it does not really advance the definition of the State, i.e. the scientific theory of the State. Every descriptive theory thus runs the risk of 'blocking' the development of the theory, and yet that development is essential.

That is why I think that, in order to develop this descriptive theory into theory as such, i.e. in order to understand further the mechanisms of the State in its functioning, I think that it is indispensable to add something to the classical definition of the State as a State apparatus.

The Essentials of the Marxist Theory of the State

Let me first clarify one important point: the State (and its existence in its apparatus) has no meaning except as a function of State power. The whole of the political class struggle revolves around the State. By which I mean around the possession, i.e. the seizure and conservation of State power by a certain class or by an alliance between classes or class fractions. This first clarification obliges me to distinguish between State power (conservation of State power or seizure of State power), the objective of the political class struggle on the one hand, and the State apparatus on the other.

We know that the State apparatus may survive, as is proved by bourgeois 'revolutions' in nineteenth-century France (1830, 1848), by coups d'état (2 December, May 1958), by collapses of the State (the fall of the Empire in 1870, of the Third Republic in 1940), or by the political rise of the petty bourgeoisie (1890-95 in France), etc., without the State apparatus being affected or modified: it may survive political events which affect the possession of State power.

page 141

Even after a social revolution like that of 1917, a large part of the State apparatus survived after the seizure of State power by the alliance of the proletariat and the small peasantry: Lenin repeated the fact again and again.

It is possible to describe the distinction between State power and State apparatus as part of the 'Marxist theory' of the State, explicitly present since Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire and Class Struggles in France.

To summarize the 'Marxist theory of the State' on this point, it can be said that the Marxist classics have always claimed that (1) the State is the repressive State apparatus, (2) State power and State apparatus must be distinguished, (3) the objective of the class struggle concerns State power, and in consequence the use of the State apparatus by the classes (or alliance of classes or of fractions of classes) holding State power as a function of their class objectives, and (4) the proletariat must seize State power in order to destroy the existing bourgeois State apparatus and, in a first phase, replace it with a quite different, proletarian, State apparatus, then in later phases set in motion a radical process, that of the destruction of the State (the end of State power, the end of every State apparatus).

In this perspective, therefore, what I would propose to add to the 'Marxist theory' of the State is already there in so many words. But it seems to me that even with this supplement, this theory is still in part descriptive, although it does now contain complex and differential elements whose functioning and action cannot be understood without recourse to further supplementary theoretical development.

The State Ideological Apparatuses

Thus, what has to be added to the 'Marxist theory' of the State is something else.

page 142

Here we must advance cautiously in a terrain which, in fact, the Marxist classics entered long before us, but without having systematized in theoretical form the decisive advances implied by their experiences and procedures. Their experiences and procedures were indeed restricted in the main to the terrain of political practice.

In fact, i.e. in their political practice, the Marxist classics treated the State as a more complex reality than the definition of it given in the 'Marxist theory of the State', even when it has been supplemented as I have just suggested. They recognized this complexity in their practice, but they did not express it in a corresponding theory.[7]

I should like to attempt a very schematic outline of this corresponding theory. To that end, I propose the following thesis.

In order to advance the theory of the State it is indispensable to take into account not only the distinction between State power and State apparatus, but also another reality which is clearly on the side of the (repressive) State apparatus, but must not be confused with it. I shall call this reality by its concept: the ideological State apparatuses.

What are the ideological State apparatuses (ISAs)?

They must not be confused with the (repressive) State apparatus. Remember that in Marxist theory, the State Apparatus (SA) contains: the Government, the Admin-

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. To my knowledge, Gramsci is the only one who went any distance in the road I am taking. He had the 'remarkable' idea that the State could not be reduced to the (Repressive) State Apparatus, but included, as he put it, a certain number of institutions from 'civil society ': the Church, the Schools, the trade unions, etc. Unfortunately, Gramsci did not systematize his institutions, which remained in the state of acute but fragmentary notes (cf. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, International Publishers, 1971, pp. 12, 259, 260-3; see also the letter to Tatiana Schucht, 7 September 1931, in Lettre del Carcere, Einaudi, 1968, p. 479. English-language translation in preparation.

page 143

istration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc., which constitute what I shall in future call the Repressive State Apparatus. Repressive suggests that the State Apparatus in question 'functions by violence' -- at least ultimately (since repression, e.g. administrative repression, may take non-physical forms).

I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions. I propose an empirical list of these which will obviously have to be examined in detail, tested, corrected and re-organized. With all the reservations implied by this requirement, we can for the moment regard the following institutions as Ideological State Apparatuses (the order in which I have listed them has no particular significance):

-- the religious ISA (the system of the different Churches),

-- the educational ISA (the system of the different public and
private 'Schools'),

-- the family ISA,[8]

-- the legal ISA,[9]

-- 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.).

I have said that the ISAs must not be confused with the (Repressive) State Apparatus. What constitutes the difference?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. The family obviously has other 'functions' than that of an ISA. It intervenes in the reproduction of labour power. In different modes of production it is the unit of production and/or the unit of consumption.
9. The 'Law' belongs both to the (Repressive) State Apparatus and to the system of the ISAs.

page 144

As a first moment, it is clear that while there is one (Repressive) State Apparatus, there is a plurality of Ideological State Apparatuses. Even presupposing that it exists, the unity that constitutes this plurality of ISAs as a body is not immediately visible.

As a second moment, it is clear that whereas the unified -- (Repressive) State Apparatus belongs entirely to the public domain, much the larger part of the Ideological State Apparatuses (in their apparent dispersion) are part, on the contrary, of the private domain. Churches, Parties, Trade Unions, families, some schools, most newspapers, cultural ventures, etc., etc., are private.

We can ignore the first observation for the moment. But someone is bound to question the second, asking me by what right I regard as Ideological State Apparatuses, institutions which for the most part do not possess public status, but are quite simply private institutions. As a conscious Marxist, Gramsci already forestalled this objection in one sentence. The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law, and valid in the (subordinate) domains in which bourgeois law exercises its 'authority'. The domain of the State escapes it because the latter is 'above the law': the State, which is the State of the ruling class, is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the precondition for any distinction between public and private. The same thing can be said from the starting-point of our State Ideological Apparatuses. It is unimportant whether the institutions in which they are realized are 'public' or 'private'. What matters is how they function. Private institutions can perfectly well 'function' as Ideological State Apparatuses. A reasonably thorough analysis of any one of the ISAs proves it.

But now for what is essential. What distinguishes the ISAs from the (Repressive) State Apparatus is the following

page 145

basic difference: the Repressive State Apparatus functions 'by violence', whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses' function 'by ideology '.

I can clarify matters by correcting this distinction. I shall say rather that every State Apparatus, whether Repressive or Ideological, 'functions' both by violence and by ideology, but with one very important distinction which makes it imperative not to confuse the Ideological State Apparatuses with the (Repressive) State Apparatus.

This is the fact that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while functioning secondarily by ideology. (There is no such thing as a purely repressive apparatus.) For example, the Army and the Police also function by ideology both to ensure their own cohesion and reproduction, and in the 'values' they propound externally.

In the same way, but inversely, it is essential to say that for their part the Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but only ultimately, this is very attenuated and concealed, even symbolic. (There is no such thing as a purely ideological apparatus.) Thus Schools and Churches use suitable methods of punishment, expulsion, selection, etc., to 'discipline' not only their shepherds, but also their flocks. The same is true of the Family. . . . The same is true of the cultural IS Apparatus (censorship, among other things), etc.

Is it necessary to add that this determination of the double 'functioning' (predominantly, secondarily) by repression and by ideology, according to whether it is a matter of the (Repressive) State Apparatus or the Ideological State Apparatuses, makes it clear that very subtle explicit or tacit combinations may be woven from the interplay of the (Re-

page 146

pressive) State Apparatus and the Ideological State Apparatuses? Everyday life provides us with innumerable examples of this, but they must be studied in detail if we are to go further than this mere observation.

Nevertheless, this remark leads us towards an understanding of what constitutes the unity of the apparently disparate body of the ISAs. If the ISAs 'function' massively and predominantly by ideology, what unifies their diversity is precisely this functioning, insofar as the ideology by which they function is always in fact unified, despite its diversity and its contradictions, beneath the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of 'the ruling class'. Given the fact that the 'ruling class' in principle holds State power (openly or more often by means of alliances between classes or class fractions), and therefore has at its disposal the (Repressive) State Apparatus, we can accept the fact that this same ruling class is active in the Ideological State Apparatuses insofar as it is ultimately the ruling ideology which is realized in the Ideological State Apparatuses, precisely in its contradictions. Of course, it is a quite different thing to act by laws and decrees in the (Repressive) State Apparatus and to 'act' through the intermediary of the ruling ideology in the Ideological State Apparatuses. We must go into the details of this difference -- but it cannot mask the reality of a profound identity. To my knowledge, 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. I only need one example and proof of this: Lenin's anguished concern to revolutionize the educational Ideological State Apparatus (among others), simply to make it possible for the Soviet proletariat, who had seized State power, to secure the future of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition to socialism.[10]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. In a pathetic text written in 1937, Krupskaya relates the history of Lenin's desperate efforts and what she regards as his failure.

page 147

This last comment puts us in a position to understand that the Ideological State Apparatuses may be not only the stake, but also the site of class struggle, and often of bitter forms of class struggle. The class (or class alliance) in power cannot lay down the law in the ISAs as easily as it can in the (repressive) State apparatus, not only because the former ruling classes are able to retain strong positions there for a long time, but also because the resistance of the exploited classes is able to find means and occasions to express itself there, either by the utilization of their contradictions, or by conquering combat positions in them in struggle.[11]

Let me run through my comments.

If the thesis I have proposed is well-founded, it leads me back to the classical Marxist theory of the State, while making it more precise in one point. I argue that it is necessary to distinguish between State power (and its possession by . . .) on the one hand, and the State Apparatus on the other. But I add that the State Apparatus contains

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. What I have said in these few brief words about the class struggle in the ISAs is obviously far from exhausting the question of the class struggle.
To approach this question, two principles must be borne in mind:
The first principle was formulated by Marx in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy : 'In considering such transformations [a social revolution] a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.' The class struggle is thus expressed and exercised in ideological forms, thus also in the ideological forms of the ISAs. But the class struggle extends far beyond these forms, and it is because it extends beyond them that the struggle of the exploited classes may also be exercised in the forms of the ISAs, and thus turn the weapon of ideology against the classes in power.
This by virtue of the second principle : the class struggle extends beyond the ISAs because it is rooted elsewhere than in ideology, in the Infrastructure, in the relations of production, which are relations of exploitation and constitute the base for class relations.

page 148

two bodies: the body of institutions which represent the Repressive State Apparatus on the one hand, and the body of institutions which represent the body of Ideological State Apparatuses on the other.

But if this is the case, the following question is bound to be asked, even in the very summary state of my suggestions: what exactly is the extent of the role of the Ideological State Apparatuses? What is their importance based on? In other words: to what does the 'function' of these Ideological State Apparatuses, which do not function by repression but by ideology, correspond?

As part of my Amnesty Human Rights watch I would like to post a documentary about the conflict situation and the struggle for basic human rights in North Korea with the refugee crisis. There was a screening of it at my university and I am so glad that I found it online to watch over again. I highly recommed that all watch. For further details please visit http://www.amnesty.org
----------------------
INFO

Directors: Jim Butterworth, Aaron Lubarsky, & Lisa Sleeth
Documentary. 2004. USA. 54 min. Korean, subtitled.

With its riveting footage of a secretive “underground railroad,” Seoul Train is a gripping documentary exposé into the life and death of North Koreans as they try to escape their homeland and China.

Seoul Train also delves into the complex geopolitics behind this growing and potentially explosive humanitarian crisis. By combining verité footage, personal stories and interviews with experts and government officials, Seoul Train depicts the flouting of international laws by major countries, the inaction and bureaucracy of the United Nations, and the heroics of activists that put themselves in harm’s way to save the refugees.

----------------------

Seoul Train

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3106006574810733031#

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3106006574810733031#docid=728362452327473863

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3106006574810733031#docid=712408891865534656

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3106006574810733031#docid=8200478660655924400

It has become certain now that I no longer find time to blog as I would like to. Readers following my blog should have noticed I have many things that I would love to have the opportunity to write on and share my ideas on this blog and while I look to my left,right and front of me on my desk covered in novels,theory books and literature related material I could not imagine a book review sunday. However,the past few months have been a huge increase in my reader statistics and the month of october being the most read
month ever. I thank all those passing by who read and occasionally comment.Reaching the 1,000th viewer in only one a month,I feel a need to keep posting on. Not only because of this but also because I feel I have a lot to share. I never do go a day without knowing what is going on around the world and visiting some alternative news sites,enviomental sites and places of activism as well as the many literary,cultural websites I've found along the way. So,while I definitely will not be able to provide my own views all I can manage for this blog is seriously some articles,campaigns, or just information on things I find important.

As I have continously been writing about THE WORLD WILDLIFE FUND is a great enviromental organization along with the hardline Greenpeace. I am a member of WWF,mainly because it does a great job of using the capitalist market and the system to actually help out. I do support Greepeace as well but the fact that WWF gets large companies who usually don't give a shit about anything to donate and help the cause...sometimes they do it for the PR of it but I figure since the main aim is to make a difference for the cause then this is a good way of going about business. However,my ideas do correspond to Greenpeace more. The fact that the percentage of success through wwf is the reason I have remained a loyal supporter. Also,WWF has specific other causes of interest which most other enviromental groups do not.

If you go on WWF and sign up you can participate in campagins to get your voice heard on a wide range of issues from Climate Change,Rainforest destruction,Endangered Speicies and other enviromentally vital issues which must be discussed and firm action must be taken for risk of the dangers it may bring on the future. I urge readers,if you do have an interest and ambition to participate in them. The campaigns include sending emails to government officials,parliament,congress etc,signing petitions,writing and promoting enviromental issues and taking pledges on various matters. If not you can simply sign up to be at least a little informed on the enviromental world. For further information please visit http://www.wwf.org and http://www.wwf.org.uk

Here is the latest newsletter sent earlier in the week...I will be back soon but really I am very busy and fully concentrating on my main work.

>> Emergency Climate Action! – call for help to make Copenhagen count
>> Get ready for the Wave! – the London Wave on December 5 and the Mexican Wave today
>> Stand up for your river – a vital opportunity to support your local river
>> Success and thanks from Malaysia – your campaigning is getting good results
>> A small step forward for bluefin tuna – a glimmer of hope for endangered tuna
>> Save a billion trees! – we’ve partnered with Sky to help save Amazonian forests
>> PLUS win an eco-refurb worth £15,000, the YouTube generation, and other news

Emergency climate action needed!
Write to your MP today and ask them to speak to Gordon Brown. We need to show him that he has the public support to keep pushing global leaders at this week’s EU climate talks – WWF’s Vote Earth campaign has over 12,000 signatures already.

With less than 50 days until the Copenhagen climate summit, there are worrying signs that a lack of political nerve could prevent the world from achieving a strong and legally binding climate deal – with devastating effects for both people and nature.

This week’s EU climate talks are a key step on the road to an effective deal at Copenhagen in December – so please tell your MP to talk to Gordon Brown.

Don’t forget – you can still Vote Earth! Sign our call for a global climate deal

Get ready for the Wave in London!
On Saturday 5 December 2009, you are welcome to join us in London for the Wave. This will be a huge family-friendly event where you can join tens of thousands of people to send a strong signal to world leaders - that they need to do more at the critical UN climate talks in Copenhagen.

Here’s something cool to do right now…
It’s a serious issue, but we’re having fun doing a virtual Mexican Wave for the climate right now! Show you care about climate change by sending a video of yourself doing the Mexican Wave.

See yourself as part of the virtual Wave – and don’t forget to tell friends and family to do the same!

Last chance to ‘Stand Up For Your River’
You may not realise it – but your local river needs support. With only a quarter of our rivers of ‘good status’, the government needs to do more about cleaning up its act.

The Rt Hon. Hilary Benn is currently deciding the future of rivers in England and Wales and in December will publish plans detailing how all our rivers could be restored to health.

Join our growing number of river adopters and ensure the government doesn’t miss this unique opportunity to improve our rivers.

Success and thanks from Malaysia
Many thanks to all of you who kindly signed our petitions to strengthen the legal protection of Malaysian wildlife and marine turtles.

The latest from the WWF Malaysia office is that the Malaysian Natural Resources and Environment Minister has announced a new Act will be tabled during the next parliament sitting.

A great result and thanks again for taking action.

Latest on Atlantic bluefin tuna
After some years of campaigning pressure – which many of you have been part of – WWF welcomes the proposal to ban international trade in endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna.

WWF now appeals to CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) to vote for the trade ban proposal. The current management regime is a total failure and is inadequate to guarantee the recovery of this iconic species. Only a stop to global trade can give bluefin tuna the breather it so desperately needs.

Read more

Help save a billion trees in the Amazon
WWF and Sky have started a new ambitious campaign to save 1 billion trees in the Amazon – the project’s goal is to ultimately cover an area of over 3 million hectares in Brazil.

The Rainforest Rescue project is asking for public donations – just £10 could help save 500 trees, protecting part of the world’s biggest tropical rainforest along with the endangered animals – like jaguars, black caiman and pink river dolphins – that live there.

Sky will match your donations pound for pound, so please help and donate to save a billion trees for our future!

Win a £15,000 refurb! YouTube generation? Also in the news

Win a whole home refurb worth at least £15,000 with 10:10 and the Great British Refurb campaign.

The YouTube generation takes on climate change – watch Eddsworld, Custard Productions and Ted Crusty.
Oil slick hits thousands of marine animals

Fines fail to stop river polluters (The Times)

UK’s worst cycle lanes (Guardian)

Undoubtedly I have much to say and I am aware of meetings and events taking place at many Amnesty International centres on the matter and the other issues which must be discussed. Here is the current issue of urgency. Please visit http://www.amnesty.org on how to help take action and for the nearest Amnesty centre you.

I will be back with more. However,as I have mentioned my literary studies mean very long hours of reading,thinking and writing. For the moment I will provide the information and leave the rest to you.

Migrant workers treated as 'disposable labour' in South Korea

Visiting booth at Hwaseong detention centre, South Korea, November 2008.

21 October 2009

Please visit the following document:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA25/001/2009/en/8bc729f6-39d7-4ce9-aeab-86eea173451c/asa250012009en.pdf

Many migrant workers in South Korea are beaten, trafficked for sexual exploitation and denied their wages for long periods despite the introduction of rules to protect their rights, said Amnesty International in a report issued on Wednesday.

In the 98-page report, Disposable Labour: Rights of migrants workers in South Korea, Amnesty International documented how migrant workers often work with heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals without sufficient training or protective equipment and are at greater risk of industrial accidents, including fatalities, and receive less pay compared to South Korean workers.

“Migrant workers are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation largely because they cannot change jobs without their employer’s permission,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Programme Director. “Work conditions are sometimes so bad that they run away and consequently, lose their regular status and are then subject to arrest and deportation.”

South Korea was one of the first Asian countries to legally recognise the rights of migrant workers and granted them the same status as Korean workers with equal labour rights, pay and benefits.

However, five years on from the implementation of the Employment Permit System (EPS) that was meant to better protect the rights of migrant workers; many continue to face hardships and abuse.

In September 2008, there were an estimated 220,000 irregular migrant workers in the country.

The government of South Korea pledged to half this number by 2012, launching a massive and sometimes violent crackdown on migrant workers. Immigration officers and the police are accused of sometimes using excessive force against migrant workers and operating outside the law.

“Disposable Labour” documents how the South Korean government has not sufficiently monitored workplaces, with high numbers of accidents, inadequate medical treatment and compensation, and unfair dismissals.

Amnesty International interviewed migrant workers who described how their employers forced them to work long hours and night shifts, without overtime pay, and often had their wages withheld by their employers.

“Despite the advances of the EPS system, the cycle of abuse and mistreatment continues as thousands of migrant workers find themselves at the mercy of employers and the authorities who mistreat them knowing their victims have few legal rights and are unable to access justice or seek compensation for the abuse,” said Roseann Rife.

Amnesty International research shows that women are at particular risk of abuse. Several female workers recruited as singers in US military camp towns have been trafficked into sexual exploitation, including the sex industry, by their employers and managers.
Amnesty International spoke to trafficked women who said they had no choice but to remain in their jobs because they were in debt to their employer and did not know where to turn to for help. If the women ran away, they risked losing their legal status and being subject to deportation.

“These women are double victims, first they are trafficked and then they become “illegal” migrants under South Korean law when they attempt to escape from their exploitative situation,” said Roseann Rife.

Amnesty International calls on the government of South Korea:

to ensure that employers respect, protect and promote the rights of migrant workers through rigorous labour inspections so that the workplace is safe, training is provided and migrant workers are paid fairly and on time;
to protect and promote the rights of all female migrant workers and stamp out sexual harassment and sexual exploitation;
to allow irregular migrant workers to remain in South Korea while accessing justice and seeking compensation for abuses by employees;
to ensure that during immigration raids, immigration authorities adhere to South Korean law requiring them to identify themselves, present a warrant, caution and inform migrant workers of their rights, and provide those under their custody prompt medical treatment when needed or requested.

I will return to the topic I had set last week of climate change and human rights. Unfortunately due to my studies I will not be able to write very much on the subject and make my ideas heard to the increasing number of readers on my blog. However,I will do everything possible to keep you informed as my enviromental and human rights newsletters are arriving as usual. Please take action for necessary measures to be taken.

MORE COMING SOON...

For further information please urgently visit..

http://www.350.org/

http://www.350.org/files/materials/350_general_poster_ltr_compressed.pdf

Also please visit WORLD WILDLIFE FUND for more information on other enviromental issues and join PASSPORT for information on how to take action...latest campaign as follows..

On October 24, join people from all over the world in taking a stand for a safe climate future.

As an active, valued member of WWF's online community the end of this year will be a busy one for you.

This is because more than ever, we need your voice to make sure 2009 goes down in history as the year we stood up to the climate challenge!

Global Action Day!

This time round, we are helping our friends from 350.org and asking you to organize and/or participate in the Global Action Day on October 24.

To be a part of this global action simply place the number "350" at an iconic place in your community, then upload a photo of your event to the 350.org website. These images from around the world will be collected and delivered to the media and world leaders.

Why "350"? Where can you find actions near you? How can you upload photos?
Answer to these questions and more

Want to do more?
Check out our online guide to climate action

Or join the discussion around climate change (and get a chance to win a trip to the Copenhagen summit)

Save Talamone Bay in Italy

Told you it would be a busy time!

You see we also need your help in asking a local Italian authority to reconsider their plans and stop new marina developments at Talamone Bay: an historic Tuscan village situated near the outstanding Maremma Nature Reserve.

If these new developments go ahead, they will heavily undermine the critical stability of this world renowned ecosystem.

Take action now: send an email to the Mayor of Orbetello urging him to reconsider the new developments!

---------------------------------------

What does the number 350 mean?
350 is the most important number in the world—it's what scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Two years ago, after leading climatologists observed rapid ice melt in the Arctic and other frightening signs of climate change, they issued a series of studies showing that the planet faced both human and natural disaster if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 remained above 350 parts per million.

Everyone from Al Gore to the U.N.’s top climate scientist has now embraced this goal as necessary for stabilizing the planet and preventing complete disaster. Now the trick is getting our leaders to pay attention and craft policies that will put the world on track to get to 350.

Is 350 scientifically possible?
Right now, mostly because we’ve burned so much fossil fuel, the atmospheric concentration of co2 is 390 ppm—that’s way too high, and it’s why ice is melting, drought is spreading, forests are dying. To bring that number down, the first task is to stop putting more carbon into the atmosphere. That means a very fast transition to sun and wind and other renewable forms of power. If we can stop pouring more carbon into the atmosphere, then forests and oceans will slowly suck some of it out of the air and return us to safe levels.

Is 350 politically possible?
It’s very hard. It means switching off fossil fuel much more quickly than governments and corporations have been planning. Our best chance to speed up that process will come in December in Copenhagen, when the world’s nations meet to agree on a new climate treaty. Right now, they’re not planning to do enough. But we can change that—if we mobilize the world to swift and bold climate action, which is what we're planning to do on October 24th.

What is the day of action?
On October 24, the International Day of Climate Action will cover almost every country on earth, the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history.

There will be big rallies in big cities, and incredible creative actions across the globe: mountain climbers on our highest peaks with banners, underwater demonstrations in island nations threatened by sea level rise, churches and mosques and synagogues and ashrams engaged in symbolic action, star athletes organizing mass bike rides—and hundreds upon hundreds of community events to raise awareness of the need for urgent action.

Every event will highlight the number 350—and people will gather at some point for a big group photo depicting that all important message. At 350.org, we'll assemble all the photos for a gigantic, global, visual petition.

The thousands of events on October 24 will drive 350 and all that it represents into the human imagination, and change the negotiating environment as we head towards the crucial UN Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen in December of 2009. Copenhagen may well be the pivotal moment that determines whether or not we get the planet out of the climate crisis, and your actions on October 24 will help our leaders realize we need a real solution that pays attention to the science

How will this make a difference?
October 24 will put the focus where it needs to be: on the science and the citizens, not the special interests and the backroom deals.

On that day, people will send in thousands of images of citizens gathering at important places around the world—from the melting glaciers of Mt. Everest to the sinking beaches of the Maldives—displaying the number 350 in a creative way. 350.org will be getting those pictures and putting them on the big screens in Times Square and projecting them at the UN headquarters. We'll also be getting them into newspapers large and small on October 25th—the same newspapers that politicians all over the world use as a barometer of public opinion.

But more importantly, we'll be able to use them in the weeks before the huge UN Climate meeting in Copenhagen to remind our leaders that they need to take physical reality—and not political expediency—into account when they're making decisions about our collective future. 350 is a clear and specific goal (unlike vague demands to "stop global warming") that helps move the negotiations in the direction science and justice demand.

We'll also deliver copies of the images—and the stories that go with them—to national delegates and heads of state the world over. We'll make sure your voice is heard and this debate is re-framed in time to make a difference.

We're coordinating a distributed day of events for 24 October, uniting the world around a common call to climate action--and we're asking you to help.

Use the form below to register an event in your town, city, village, neighbourhood or community for October. Before you do, think about searching for an existing local action that you can join or help plan.

After filling out the fields below (or making any changes to your action) make sure to hit the "Post to 350.org" button at the bottom of the page.