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Concept in Marxist philosophy

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. In revolutionary praxis, the slogan: "The dominant ideology is the ideology of the dominant class" summarises ideology's function as a basis for revolution. In a capitalist, bourgeois society, Marxist revolutionary praxis seeks to achieve the social and political circumstances that 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 achieves and establishes 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 Marxist theory, one of the social classes of a society becomes the ruling class when they are a socially progressive force sufficiently powerful, with popular support of the other social classes, to overthrow the previous ruling class. For example, the great bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries occurred because the bourgeoisie had become the standard bearer for social progress, the universal class. The bourgeoisie gradually began to lose its progressive character and became increasingly reactionary once it came to power (since it began to support the status quo rather than seek further social progress). As a consequence, the dominant ideology may contain a mixture of socially progressive and regressive elements. Therefore, Marxists do not reject everything and anything related to the dominant ideology of capitalism; rather, they agree with its progressive elements and criticise its regressive elements. In other words, Marxist critiques of the dominant ideology of capitalism are not normally crude rejections of their content, but rather of their limiting, capitalist form.