One of Althusser’s great contributions to us studying personal life and politics, is his Theory of Ideological State Apparatuses. There are three ideological State apparatuses: The Authoritarian Family,
Authoritarian Religion, and Authoritarian Education. Each wields enormous power, and the power that they wield is much more powerful than the power of the Army and the power of the Police, because they train people to submit to authority from the inside, to understand that they’re nobody much, and they’d better stay subordinate, and obedience is their primary virtue, so that they daren’t step out of line.