In five pages Althusser's ideas about Marxism, class struggle, and the media among others are examined and the limitations of his araguments are also discussed. There are six bibliographic sources cited.
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the gamut from Marxist to entirely anti-Marxist. There is so much diversity in his philosophy and yet he was well-regarded for the depth of his ideas and clearly he
was a brilliant man. Understanding his philosophy starts with understanding his ideas about ideology, which in essence is the heart of his philosophy. Althussers Notion of Ideology
Basically, Louis Althusser believed that society consists of economic, political and ideological practices (Vaknin, 2002). He further defines practice as "Any
process of transformation of a determinate product, affected by a determinate human labor, using determinate means (of production)" (Vaknin, 2002).
He believed that economic practice was the transformation of raw materials into finished products through some means of production (Vaknin, 2002). Political practice transforms social relations into finished products
through some means of production (Vaknin, 2002). This viewpoint however wasnt always popular since it rejected the idea of a mechanistic world view (Vaknin, 2002). In other words, in
this way it was a rejection of Marxist theory (Vaknin, 2002). Basically, he viewed Marxism as a science (Chandler, 2002).
He rejected Marxs Hegelian essentialism, which means he did not believe in reducing things to a single principle or a single essence (Chandler, 2002). He rejected this idea
in both economics and humanism (Chandler, 2002). Instead, he saw ideology itself as a determining force which was capable of shaping consciousness (Chandler, 2002). On the other hand,
there were aspects of Althusser which embraced structuralism, which relies more heavily on a historical and social analysis (Louis Althussers "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", 2002).