Apparatus

Apparatus (pronounced ap-uh-rat-uhs (U) or ap-uh-rey-tuhs (non-U))

(1) A group or combination of instruments, machinery, tools, materials, etc, having a particular function or intended for a specific use:

(2) Any complex instrument or mechanism for a particular purpose.

(3) Any system or systematic organization of activities, functions, processes, etc, directed toward a specific goal; applied especially to government and state control to describe systems and bureaucratic organizations, especially those influenced by political patronage

(4) In physiology, a group of structurally different organs working together in the performance of a particular function:

1620–1630: From the Middle English apparatus (a collection of tools, utensils, etc. adapted as a means to some end), from the Latin apparātus (tools, implements, equipment, originally the act of equipping, preparation), noun of state from the past participle stem of apparāre.  The construct was apparā(re) (to prepare) (ap- the prefix usually found on verbs (and their derived nouns or adjectives) with the meaning “around” or “about”) + parāre (prepare) + -tus (the suffix of verb action)).  The Latin apparātus was the perfect passive participle of apparō (prepare) from ad- (to, towards, at) +‎ parō (prepare, provide) from the primitive Indo-European root pere- (to produce, procure").

The two noun plurals apparatus & apparatuses are both correct although the invariant plural, maintaining the Latin inflection in English on a loanword basis, is less commonly used.  However, because the word also has a mass noun sense in English and it often appears in such a way that its number (singular or plural) is disguised by absence of any inflectional or lexical signals as to which of these two senses is intended, readers may parse it in either sense.  Usually, this creates only a slight ambiguity which affects meaning not at all and is significant only in technical matters such as complex devices where the distinction between single and multiple machines needs to be clear.

Lindsay Lohan inspecting a specific-purpose apparatus in Labor Pains (2009).

Of and by the structure

French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918–1990) published his essay Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d'État (Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses) in 1970.  Fleshing out his earlier theory of ideology, it was a description of the particular form of state superstructure adopted under post-war capitalism to control the social formation required continuously and perpetually to maintain the productive forces (labour and the means of production & distribution).  Essentially an account of how a human being becomes a self-conscious subject, the work analyzed the necessary relationship between state and subject a given economic mode of production might subsist.  It included not only an analysis of the state and its legal and educational systems but also of the psychological relationship which existed between subject and state as ideology.  Althusser held that regimes were able to maintain control by reproducing subjects who believe that their position within the social structure was a natural one, the ideology being one’s function with the apparatus was part of the way the world must function.  The ideology was instantiated by institutions or “ideological state apparatuses” like family, schools and churches which provided developing subject with categories in which they could recognize themselves.

Althusser, in good Marxist tradition, didn’t suggest the imperative was to replace the ideological state apparatuses as a structure but rather that its underlying ideology should be supplanted so that rather than being productive of the bourgeois subject, it became productive of proletarian or communist subjects.  In the half-century since he wrote, there’s been no indication of that happening but the durability of an apparatus can’t easily be predicted on the basis of perception.  When the revolutions of the Arab Spring flared in 2011, it was entirely predictable the state apparatuses in Libya and Egypt would suppress the threat while the weaker, more disparate, Syrian model was vulnerable yet it was Gaddafi and Mubarak who were overthrown while Bashar al-Assad sits still in Damascus.

The idea of the state (corporatist, autocratic, totalitarian or democratic) as an apparatus is neither recent nor controversial and nor is the notion that the mechanism is more typically a number of apparatus which function sometimes in unison, sometimes separately and sometimes in opposition, these occasionally contradictory dynamics able simultaneously to interact.  For those interested in a case study of one famously apparatus-ridden apparatus, Albert Speer's (1905-1981; minister for armaments in the Third Reich 1942-1945) last published work (Infiltration (1981)), although at time turgid and never lively in style, is a valuable account of the actual workings of what was, even in the post-war decades, still often characterized as an efficient administrative unit.  Although some suggested Infiltration was a study of the way the SS (Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron) which began as the Führer's small personal bodyguard and evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong) became a kind of "state within a state", while that was the organization's objective (the apparatuses of the Nazi Party, the German state and the SS engaged in a permanent struggle for dominance), the book's alternative title in some markets (The Slave State: Heinrich Himmler's Masterplan for SS Supremacy) is a more accurate precis.  Infiltration is an account of the endless quarrels among contenders for power and rival bureaucracies in the Third Reich, a tale of scheming and plotting, not against the designated national enemy but against one another in the ever shifting battle for for power and influence.  In the wartime UK & US, the prime-minister & president were more effective dictators than ever was the Führer.

Whatever his other gifts (and whether as architect or administrator opinion remains divided), Speer was no great stylist of prose and the reputation his earlier volumes gained for lucidity owe much to the professional journalist who was his editor.  Speer wrote Infiltration unaided unaided and it's no place to start for anyone who wishes to explore the Third Reich but for those familiar with the history, it's an invaluable source and in some aspect, the ultimate cross-reference book.  Certainly, there's never been penned a better portrait of SS leader Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) and while such a bloodless bureaucrat can never be made to seem anything like a vivid personality, Speer does capture much missed by many.

Trailer of Labor Pains (2009), dubbed in German.