Ideology

Ideology, in the Althusserian sense, is "the imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence". It can be described as a set of conscious and unconscious ideas which make up one's beliefs, goals, expectations, and motivations. An ideology is a comprehensive normative vision that are followed by people, governments, or other groups that is considered the correct way by the majority of the population, as argued in several philosophical tendencies (see political ideologies). It can also be a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of society such as the elite to all members of society as suggested in some Marxist and critical-theory accounts. While the concept of "ideology" describes a set of ideas broad in its normative reach, an ideology is less encompassing than the ideas expressed in concepts such as worldview, imaginary and ontology.

Ideology refers to the system of abstracted meaning applied to public matters, thus making this concept central to politics. Implicitly, in societies that distinguish between public and private life, every political or economic tendency entails ideology, whether or not it is propounded as an explicit system of thought.