Where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels posited a thinly-sketched theory of ideology as a system of falsehoods serving the ruling class [citation needed], Althusser draws upon the works of later theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to proffer a more elaborate redefinition of the theory.
Althusser extends this topographical paradigm by stating that the infrastructural economic base is endowed with an "index of effectivity" which enables it to ultimately determine the functioning of the superstructure.
As such, the benign forms of social repression affect the judicial system, where ostensibly public contractual language is invoked in order to govern individual and collective behaviour in society.
Ideological state apparatuses (ISA), according to Althusser, use methods other than physical violence to achieve the same objectives as RSA.
In terms of psychology they could be described as psychosocial, because they aim to inculcate ways of seeing and evaluating things, events and class relations.
Instead of expressing and imposing order, through violent repression, ISA disseminate ideologies that reinforce the control of a dominant class.
In Althusser's view, a social class cannot hold state power unless, and until, it simultaneously exercises hegemony (domination) over and through ISA.
[3]: 155 The first thesis tenders the familiar Marxist contention that ideologies have the function of masking the exploitative arrangements on which class societies are based.
Individual subjects are presented principally as produced by social forces, rather than acting as powerful independent agents with self-produced identities.
As a further example, Althusser depicts Christian religious ideology, embodied in the Voice of God, instructing a person on what his place in the world is and what he must do to be reconciled with Christ.
[3]: 166 Althusser draws the point that in order for that person to identify himself as a Christian, he must first already be a subject; that is, by responding to God's call and following His rules, he affirms himself as a free agent, the author of the acts for which he assumes responsibility.
"[4] A critique of Althusser's concepts in this essay, and the more broad based Gramscian inspired turn in postwar Marxism since the Second World War has been provided by Vivek Chibber, arguing instead that 'resignation' is the driving force behind worker's lack of militancy during periods of capitalist dominance, de-emphasising the role placed on ideology by Althusser and like-minded academics.