Dominant ideology

In Marxist philosophy, the term dominant ideology denotes the attitudes, beliefs, values, and morals shared by the majority of the people in a given society; as a mechanism of social control, the dominant ideology frames how the majority of the population thinks about the nature of society, their place in society, and their connection to a social class.

In The German Ideology (1845), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said that “The ideas of the ruling class are, in any age, the ruling ideas” applied to every social class in service to the interests of the ruling class. Hence, in the revolutionary practice, the slogan: “The dominant ideology is the ideology of the dominant class” summarises its function as a revolutionary basis.

In a capitalist, bourgeois society, Marxist revolutionary praxis seeks to achieve the social and political circumstances that will render the ruling class as politically illegitimate, as such, it is requisite for the successful deposition of the capitalist system of production. Then, the ideology of the working class will achieve and establish social, political, and economic dominance, so that the proletariat (the urban working class and the peasantry) can assume power (political and economic) as the dominant class of the society.

In non-Marxist theory, the dominant ideology means the values, beliefs, and morals shared by the social majority, which frames how most of the populace think about their society, and so, to the extent that it does, it may serve the interests of the ruling class; therefore, the extent to which a dominant ideology effectively dominates collective societal thought has declined during the modern era.

Social control exercised and effected by means of the ideological manipulation of aspects of the common culture of a society — religion and politics, culture and economy, etc. — to explain and justify the status quo to the political advantage of the dominant (ruling) class dates from the Age of Enlightenment, in the 18th century. Such a method of social control conceptually derived from the Noble Lie, proposed by Plato, which was required for the social stability of a republic composed of three social classes. In Book 3 (414e–15c) of The Republic, Plato presents the Noble Lie (gennaion pseudos, γενναῖον ψεῦδος) in a fictional tale, wherein Socrates establishes and justifies the origin of the socially stratified society:

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