Means of production and labor are linked, production couldn’t append without them. In fact when making a product, a house for example we will need those two things. First the means of production most of the time they are privately owned instead of owned by the laborers. Those represent all the material you will need in order to make the production like the construction tools for a house. That leads us to the labor this is the only way to increase the value of what we have (like when we use bricks to build a house). Labor is measured in time, meaning that the more time we take to build some things in normal condition the more it increases is value.
The meaning of value can be mistaken with the price since generally Prices are proportional to the value. But, the value is more about the work (the labor) we need in order to produce an object. So that means that in order to give value to an object the time of production needs to be the longest in normal conditions since the labor is measured in time and the more labor you put into something, the more the value increases.
As I explained in the two prior answer, labor and value are related by the fact that in order to get more value you need a longer labor time. This is why the two of them are bonded.
Labor power can be seen as the only commodity that can increase the value of what we have. It is the abilities and the energy we have to put into work. For that we need to entertain and build our body and abilities. As in another side, the labor is more about the time off work we put into something.
The surplus values are really important since it is the result of the production, and so by the means of production and the labor. In the process of production, we are going to buy a commodity for example a house that we are going to rebuild with the means of production and the labor. This action will then increase the value and give us this surplus value. This is one of the things that created and entertain a huge gap between social classes. We might be led to believe that this process is an equal exchange in order to produce and separate surplus values in equal parts but it isn’t. The capitalist took the control of this process in order to gain more of the surplus values. The commodity of the beginning and all means of production are brought by the highest social class, the capitalist, and they get the biggest part of the surplus value. As all the work, the labor is put on by the working class, and we have seen that the surplus values come from the labor. We can see that at the end of the production the value added by the working class doesn’t really benefit them but make the high social class richer.
We can define a repressive State Apparatus as a way to control the population beaver and make sure they fallow the ideology. Established by the ruling class to make people act against their interests. Repressive State Apparatus can be seen as an institution controlling through fear. It applies this fear through the police, the courts, and the prisons. Indeed, we can see that Althusser calls it repressive since the repressive State Apparatus controls what people do by using force and restraint.
We can define an Ideological State Apparatus as the way the ruling class tends to enter the population mind to control their beaver and make sure they fallow the ideology. For that, they established ideology preventing status quo changes with school politics and mass media. We are taught from the beginning to stay in our place. By fulling people and making them think they have a choice, the ruling class is able to maintain the population from going out of the line. But in fact the choice a pretty similar.
The difference between Repressive and Ideological State Apparatuses is mostly in the way they are being applied. Ideological State Apparatuses is a way they have of entering our mind to train us. The first thing we learn with that is the fear of Repressive State Apparatuses those are mostly applied with force. There is also a difference in the time they are being applied ideological State Apparatuses comes first as the Repressive State Apparatuses come only if the ideological one didn’t work.
Shows and tournament is an Ideological state apparatuses which has existed for centuries, it is a way of keeping people in their place and preventing status quo changes. It makes people forget about their situation…
The definition of ideology we have now in the 20th century was reinforced through expected and approved behaviors. Before that it made is the first apparition as the Marxist idea, where an ideology was a way to reflect the interest of the ruling class and justify their high status that keep them in power. At first, ideology was internalized by everyone since it followed some knowledge of the Bible. Eventually, as the world grows even it they ad the freedom to choose the population was conditioned to follow this ideology that is not always beneficial for them. This is due to two principal things, people are conditioned by fear with the threats of violence: police; Court; prison. And school where we learn to obey and to internalize ideology by discipline priming us to be a non-confrontational and a productive “good citizen”.
In US politics, we can find a line dividing two distinct ideologies, the Liberal one and the conservative one. Even though there’s some resemblance between those two, depending on the person’s personality, there are big differences. First we can see that most of the time conservative ideology is followed by white catholic or people that suffer from the government’s rules. While liberal ideology is followed by Jews, African American, Latino or poor people that receive a significant share of government benefits. As we can see both of them have a distinct opinion on the governments conservative ideology believes that a large government poses a treat to individual liberty, so they prefer the government to be as small as possible. And in the other side liberal ideology believes government helps solve problems, so a bigger one could solve more and bigger ones. They also have different values. Conservatives value liberty, while liberals value equality. But the main difference between those two ideologies is their ways of seeing the government.
Althusser’s definition of ideology shows the importance of the various social apparatuses. Those apparatuses found in the society explain why people seemingly opted not to act in their best interest and always seems to turn on to supporting fascism.
We can see in the reading that, after Jim Crows was abolished and the civil rights came together Southern politicians that were segregationists, were desperate to save the Jim Crows from being completely abolished. In fact, especially in the south they kept the belief of separated races. At this time they needed a new way to separate the “races” what M. Alexander calls “the new Jim Crows”. That is when the language of “law and order” appeared. It was the perfect opportunity for the politicians, it look like they were fighting for the law and order in the U.S. But in reality, they were only using this language because it was a more political way to be racist. It also helped them creating a gap between the white and the black lower class.
Southern Strategy was built to inter people mind using for example the rhetoric. Southern Strategy is also used to separate people between ”races“ and more today. I think that the Southern Strategy as grown so much that it became a part of the political system. Not everybody uses it, since the country as evolved considerably. But segregation didn’t completely disappear from the U.S. And by maintaining a certain hate between people in difficulties (like for example the immigrants) and upper classes the Southern Strategy is able to maintain is placed and influence American politics.
To explain the fact that many people are sent to jail in the U.S today is deeply wrong, we firstly need to understand that as M. Alexander says in “the new Jim Crows” there was two reasons to the mass incarceration in the U.S. The first one, the commonly held believed, was deeply wrong compared to the actual truth that was covered by the disclosure of false information. M.Alexander explains that in fact the President Ronald Reagan announced the drug War in 1982, and that was before crack became an issue in poor black neighborhoods. This highlights the inconsistency of the commonly held belief, being that the explosion of mass incarceration in the U.S is due to the government’s endeavor to fight drug crime in poor minority neighborhoods. According to M. Alexander despite all the effort to stop Jim Crows from being abolished the War on drugs, leading to the mass incarceration was used by politicians as a proxy for a racist conspiracy to put blacks “back in their place”.
Due to segregation, a lot of people ended up seeing a link between racial disparities in the rates of incarceration and the rates of drugs. This is due to the fact that since the beginning of the Drugs war prisons and jails were over- flowing with black and brown drug offender. In fact, it is more likely for black men to be admitted to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men. We can also see that approximately 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records. And this can be found in black communities across all the U.S. But as I said earlier, this mass incarceration is not truly related to the Drugs War. M. Alexander explains that the lack of correlation between crime and punishment can be highlighted by studies showing that people of all colors, use and sell illegal drugs approximately at the same rates. And If there is a difference to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color. As a matter of fact, we can see that the rates of incarceration “cannot be explained by rates of drug crimes”.
The penal system used mass incarnation as a proxy to their segregation. As they needed a more political way to entertain a gap between what they called the races. Segregationists politician where so focused on this idea that they reached a point where no other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities than the U.S. Even South Africa at the height of apartheid imprisoned a tiny percentage of its black population. This makes me understand that even if Jim Crows was abolished, the American penal system managed to entertain a gap preventing the minorities from growing and getting their chance. All this hating has fed the American penal system to emerge “as a system of social control unparalleled in world history.”
