ABSTRACT
From its very inception in the work of Marx himself, Marxism has assigned a central role to ideas and forms of consciousness in the formation, legitimation and preservation of the institutions of society. As an expression and reflection of the interests of the ruling class within society and generated in productive practices and in that sense ideology, ideas and forms of consciousness act both as an ideational and material force which stabilises society (sustaining and reinforcing the status quo) by reproducing the relations of production through the way in which ideology clothes the economic order and assigns specific roles to individuals within the economy which turns them into economic and political agents of it. Consequently, within society, a dominant ideology emerges as a hegemonic culture which incorporates and institutionalises the interests of the dominant class and serves as a social cement which binds the whole social order into a particular and prevalent pattern.
