Lenin and Philosophy and other essays by Louis Althusser

Author:Louis Althusser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Published: 2001-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

Notes towards an Investigation

On the Reproduction of the Conditions of Production1

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 familiar (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 it 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 ever 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. I must therefore reproduce:

1. The productive forces,

2. The existing relations of production.

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