The Essence of Ideology

The following scene from The Wire is in my estimation brilliant, not just because it reveals the functioning of the drug trade, but more importantly it reveals something essential about capitalist ideology.




As Bodie states, after a lesson on the fundamentally rigid hierarchy that characterizes both the chess board and the drug trade, that a "smart ass pawn" could not only make it through the game but get to be queen. This statement describes his own perspective of his situation: a lowly soldier in the drug war who believes that his intelligence and perseverance will ultimately see him through to the end. This idea, an awareness that the odds are stacked, that most of us wont get rich, coupled with a confidence that the odds do not apply to us, is the the fundamental ideology of capitalism. It is in a sense what Althusser meant when he wrote that ideology interpellates individuals as subjects, as much as we are aware of the historical conditions that define and limit our situation we believe that they do not apply to us, that we transcend them as a kingdom within a kingdom (to cite Spinoza, Althusser's point of reference).

Althusser thought that his applied to all ideology, but it seems to be in many ways specific to capitalist ideology. After all capitalist ideology disentengles power from any specific condition, all those motley ties; one does have to be descended from a particular family, a particular race, or background to have money. The only thing that characterizes the ruling class is money. There is no barrier that keeps us from changing our class position. Thus, we all fantasize that we will one day be rich: as the New York State lottery used to say, "It could happen to you."

Many progressives or leftists are constantly frustrated that the working class fails to vote their interest, supporting tax breaks, like the "death tax," that do not apply to them. I think that this is because they, or we, do not identify with our interests, our specific position, we identify with the fantasy. We are all the "smart ass pawn," the exception, the person who makes it rich, or to take an example closer to home, gets tenure in a job market that increasingly eliminates tenure track jobs for temporary or adjunct work. This makes it very difficult to construct politics that address systematic failures, like that of health insurance or the mortgage industry; most of us believe that such bad things happen only to others.

In case you are wondering how things turn out for Bodie (spoiler alert for those who have not seen Season Four).

Updated 6/30/25 

I have no idea why this post still gets traffic seventeen years later, but it does seem to. Perhaps because of that I did write an updated version which you can find here. 

Or read it below: 

 For the most part The Wire (2002-2008) has been embraced by educators for its realism, for the way that it shows in almost journalistic detail the effects of the war on drugs on inner city life, deindustrialization on the working class, and underfunded schools on children growing up in the projects. These are all aspects of life absent from television, and the show has been embraced for its ability to depict aspects of urban life that are invisible. However, there is one important scene from The Wire that is less a journalistic exploration of reality than a philosophical reflection of how people endure that, or any, reality. 

 In the third episode of the first season two, low level dealers in the Barksdale gang, Wallace and Bodie Broadus are dealing with a slow day by playing checkers with a chess set. Their supervisor, D’Angelo Barksdale sees them and mocks them for playing checkers with a chess set. He offers to teach them chess, the better game, explaining the functions of each piece. As he explains each piece, his audience, Bodie and Wallace, draw analogies to the Barksdale gang and their world. The King is compared to Avon Barksdale, the often invisible kingpin of the gang, and the queen is compared to Stringer Bell, his ruthless enforcer. It is when they get to pawns that things get interesting. D’Angelo insists that pawns are just that pawns, they are mainly sacrificed and “get capped early.” Bodie insists that a pawn could make it to other end of the board and become queen. D’Angelo points out that this is not the object of the game, and for the most part the pieces stay what they are, “the king stays king.” Bodie insists that a “smart ass pawn” could not only survive the gang, but rise through the ranks to become queen. 

When teaching I have used this scene to illustrate Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology. In his famous essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards and Investigation” Althusser argues that Marx’s theory of ideology, which only really received a cursory definition as the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, needed to be clarified and expanded. First, there is a matter of clarifying what ideology does, ideology reproduces the relations of production. It keeps people coming back to work each day. Second, there is a matter of how ideology functions, which Althusser defines in terms of two theses. 

The two theses are 

1) ideology represents an imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence and 

2) ideology interpellates individuals as subjects. 

Both of these theses can be illustrated with help of the scene from The Wire. D’Angelo explains that the game of chess is inherently hierarchical, the goal is to protect the king, and by extension this is the same way that the gang works. Underlings may risk arrest and violence selling on the streets, but high up leaders never risk their lives. Bodie has an imaginary relation to his real conditions of existence: his real conditions are to be a pawn in a violent and powerful organization aimed at protecting those at the top of the organization, but he sees a path to make it to the top. This imaginary relation is sustained by his belief that he is “a smart ass pawn” that he has the knowledge and ability to make it to the top. In other words, he is interpellated as a subject. In this case a subject is one who believes that their individual qualities, their knowledge and intentions, are more important in determining their fate and position than the institutions or structures that they situated in. These two theses, the imaginary relation and the idea of the subject are then corollaries of each other, two sides of the same relation. It is worth noting here that in season four of the show, Bodie comes to recognize the other, dominant meaning of the word pawn before he is “capped.” 

 It is always easier for us to see the ideological fallacies of others, and most watching the show will recognize how foolish Bodie is in his belief in meritocratic rise in a violent world. Such a misplaced belief is not just a matter of the hierarchical and violent world of drug gangs. I would argue, following Althusser, that in capitalist society, a society structured both by hierarchy of class, and an ideology of individual achievement, we all believe ourselves to be “smart ass pawns.” We all know on some level that for the most part the rich stay the rich, passing on their wealth to family members, and pawns never advance beyond pawns, but our imaginary relation to these real conditions, our belief that we are subjects, leads us to overestimate our ability to make it to the other end of the board. Case in point for years in undergraduate and graduate school I was warned of the shrinking job prospects in academia. Adjuncts were being hired to replace full time faculty leading to less jobs overall. I was told this, but I believed myself to be a “smart ass pawn” which is to say I believed myself to be an exception, a subject. Althusser’s theory focuses on the intersection between structural conditions and psychological processes that make it difficult for us to make sense of the world around us.