The general aim of this module is to bring together Marx and Spinoza on ideology and superstition, via a close reading of Althusser’s 1970 essay on Ideological State Apparatuses. The more specific aim of the module is to reveal and analyse the irreducible role of ideology and superstition in state structures, whatever their orientation. This irreducibility is a function of the imagination – of imaginary projections and identifications – as a constitutive feature of what Spinoza calls the multitude. The third and most fundamental aim of the module is to develop a critique of superstition as an obstacle to thought, but one that can never be entirely fulfilled.

Initially, the module will focus on Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism and test the hypothesis that the “rationality” of capitalism rests on a superstition regarding the value of commodities, and money in particular. Superstition, therefore, is not simply a matter of ideology as superstructure, but is embedded in the materiality of social relations.

The module will then question Marx’s assumption that, through the critique of political economy, the awakening of class-consciousness, and ultimately the proletariat’s control of the state apparatus, ideology and fetishism would eventually vanish. This will be done by turning to Althusser’s essay, which transforms Marx’s concept of ideology through the question of the reproduction of the capitalist conditions of production, and of labour in particular. To be sure, Marx had a point when he claimed that wages are indispensable to the reconstitution of the labour-power of the wage earner, and also indispensable for raising and educating the children in whom proletarians reproduce themselves as labour-power. But is that the only and whole answer? Althusser does not believe that it is, and his idea of the “ideological state apparatus” (ISA) is his attempt to supplement Marx’s answer.

This original concept, Althusser admits, owes much to Spinoza, and to his conception of superstition in particular. In order to command obedience, the state does not rely solely, or even primarily, on repression, intimidation, and coercion. It relies primarily on a form of soft power that draws on the imagination and a range of positive affects.
The module will therefore end by drawing on Spinoza’s own ambiguous assessment of superstition in the Theological-Political Treatise. Superstition, he claims, has its roots in the hope or fear we feel in the absence of certainty. As such, it is irrational and a threat to thought as a condition of our freedom. At the same time, Spinoza recognises that “nothing governs the multitude more effectively than superstition.”

Is superstition, then, a necessary mechanism for obedience as well as an obstacle to thought? Should the democratic state include, yet also limit, the power of superstition?