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.
Marxism
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:
By the nineteenth century, Karl Marx described such ruling-class cultural hegemony with the term dominant ideology, which described the societal status quo (religious and political, economic and cultural) that characterised the capitalism of the nineteenth century.