SOC 201 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Antoine Destutt De Tracy, Karl Mannheim, The German Ideology
Document Summary
The concept of ideology generally refers to knowledge that has been distorted by social, economic, or political interests. But the concept of ideology gained currency only when it was taken up by karl. Marx and friedrich engels in their book the german ideology. Marx and engels used ideology to refer specifically to the set of ideas found in law, religion, literature, and art that the upper classes use to maintain their economic superiority: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i. e. , the class, which is the ruling material [economic] force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships . ; hence, of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore the ideas of its dominance.
