In the pre-capitalist historical period it is
absolutely clear that there was one
dominant Ideological State Apparatus, which concentrated within it not only
religious functions, but also educational ones, and a large proportion of the
functions of communication and ‘culture’. It is no accident that all
ideological struggle, from the 16th to the 18th 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 Revolution was not just to transfer 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 a 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 19th 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 political hegemony, but also the ideological hegemony indispensable to the reproduction of capitalist relations of production.
The foremost objective and achievement of the French Revolution was not just to transfer 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 a 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 19th 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 political hegemony, but also the ideological hegemony indispensable to the reproduction of capitalist relations of production.
That is why I believe 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 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 plebian ‘journees revolutionaires’, something for which they paid 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 was even more striking, since it was behind a political ideological State apparatus in which the imperial Junkers (epitomized by Bismarck), their army and 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.
This thesis may seem paradoxical, given that for everyone, i.e. in the ideological representation that the bourgeoisie 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 plebian ‘journees revolutionaires’, something for which they paid 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 was even more striking, since it was behind a political ideological State apparatus in which the imperial Junkers (epitomized by Bismarck), their army and 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 State Ideological Apparatus, which
occupies the front stage, what the bourgeoisie has installed as its number-one,
i.e. as its dominant ideological State apparatus, is the educational apparatus,
which has replaced in its functions the previously dominant 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:
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 to this single result
in the way proper to it. The political apparatus by subjecting individuals to
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 neighbor to the extent of turning the other cheek to
whoever strikes first. The family apparatus .
. . but there is no need to go
on.
30 This concert is dominated by a single score, occasionally disturbed by contradictions (those remnants of the 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 the Glory of Rome, the Eternal City and the themes of Interest, particular and general, etc., nationalism, moralism and economism.
30 This concert is dominated by a single score, occasionally disturbed by contradictions (those remnants of the 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 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 a 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’ wrapping the ruling ideology (French, arithmetic, natural history, the sciences, literature) or simply ruling ideology in is pure state (ethics, civic instruction, philosophy). Somewhere around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children is 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 self-employment, or to provide, as well as the ‘intellectuals of the collective laborers, 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 all convinced ‘laymen).
Each mass ejected en route is practically provided with an ideology which suits the role it has to fulfill 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 give workers orders and speak to them: ‘human relations’), of the agents of repression ( ability to give orders and enforce obedience ‘without discussion,’ or the ability to manipulate the demagogy of the political leader’s rhetoric), or the professional ideologist (ability to treat consciousness 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 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 the capitalist Social formation, i.e. the relations of exploited to exploiters and exploiters to the 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, i.e. the owners of their children) open up for them the path to 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 utmost 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.
April, 1970
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’ wrapping the ruling ideology (French, arithmetic, natural history, the sciences, literature) or simply ruling ideology in is pure state (ethics, civic instruction, philosophy). Somewhere around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children is 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 self-employment, or to provide, as well as the ‘intellectuals of the collective laborers, 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 all convinced ‘laymen).
Each mass ejected en route is practically provided with an ideology which suits the role it has to fulfill 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 give workers orders and speak to them: ‘human relations’), of the agents of repression ( ability to give orders and enforce obedience ‘without discussion,’ or the ability to manipulate the demagogy of the political leader’s rhetoric), or the professional ideologist (ability to treat consciousness 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 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 the capitalist Social formation, i.e. the relations of exploited to exploiters and exploiters to the 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, i.e. the owners of their children) open up for them the path to 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 utmost 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.
April, 1970
THE JEWISH BANKER WHO FINANCED THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, & BOTH WORLD WARS
ReplyDeleteJacob Schiff proposed that the First World War be the war to end all wars, which became an international mantra after the war. The absolute end of all war heralded the Jewish Messianic Era in which the Jews would be "restored" to Palestine, where they would rule the world from Jerusalem. Jewish bankers deliberately created the First World War in order to artificially fulfill Jewish Messianic prophecy by staging the "Battle of Armageddon", by creating a World government run by Jews known as "The League of Nations", by "restoring" the Jews to Palestine, by destroying the Empires and Monarchies, by enslaving the Gentiles with Bolshevism, by placing the wealth of the World in Jewish hands, etc. etc. etc.
Schiff believed that the First World War fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 2:1-4, which states,
"1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. 3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."
*************
THE JEWISH ZIONIST/BOLSHEVIK MESSIAH:
“The mashiach [Jewish messiah] will bring about the political and spiritual redemption of the Jewish people by bringing us back to Israel and restoring Jerusalem (Isaiah 11:11-12; Jeremiah 23:8; 30:3; Hosea 3:4-5). He will establish a government in Israel that will be the center of all world government, both for Jews and gentiles (Isaiah 2:2-4; 11:10; 42:1). He will rebuild the Temple and re-establish its worship (Jeremiah 33:18). He will restore the religious court system of Israel and establish Jewish law as the law of the land (Jeremiah 33:15)…The world after the messiah comes is often referred to in Jewish literature as Olam Ha-Ba (oh-LAHM hah-BAH), the World to Come…In the Olam Ha-Ba, the whole world will recognize the Jewish G-d as the only true G-d, and the Jewish religion as the only true religion (Isaiah 2:3; 11:10; Micah 4:2-3; Zechariah 14:9).”
— From “Mashiach: The Messiah”, Judaism 101 —–
"The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah. It will attain world dominion by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship. In this New World Order the "children of Israel" will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the resources of the state. Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands."
--Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx, 'La Revue de Paris', p.574, June 1, 1928
“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid Galilee of its Arab population.”
— David Ben-Gurion (Founding Father of the State of Israel and First Israeli Prime Minister), from Ben-Gurion, a Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar (May 1948)
FORGET ABOUT THE JEWISH HOLOCAUST; THIS JEW IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS OF OVER 200,000,000 PEOPLE