 This video will introduce you to the word Ideology and explain where it came from and how it was appropriated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid 19th century The information cited here is resourced from Andrew Haywood's book Political Ideologies and Introduction Haywood begins by pointing out that the word ideology was coined during the French Revolution by Antoine de Stout de Tassie and was first used in public in 1796 For de Tassie, ideology referred to a new science of ideas, literally an idea-ology However, this was just the term's humble beginnings because later it would be inserted into new contexts for new ways to think about class structure and systems of beliefs Actually, Haywood describes ideology as a word that has a long career This career really took off as a key political term stemming from the use made of it in the writings of Karl Marx Marx's use of the term and the interest shown in it by later generations of Marxist thinkers says Haywood Largely explains the prominence ideology enjoys in modern social and political thought Haywood continues Marx used the term in the title of his early work, The German Ideology written with his lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels This also contains Marx's clearest description of his view of ideology The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch, the ruling ideas i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time the ruling intellectual force The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production So that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it So in Marx's view, what is ideology describing? Well, according to Haywood First, ideology is about delusion and mystification It perpetrates a false or mistaken view of the world, what Engels later referred to as false consciousness Marx used ideology as a critical concept whose purpose is to unmask a process of systematic mystification, writes Haywood He goes on to write that second, ideology is linked to the class system Marx believed that the distortion implicit in ideology stems from the fact that it reflects the interests and Perspective on society of the ruling class The ruling class is unwilling to recognize itself as an oppressor and equally is anxious to reconcile the oppressed to their oppression Haywood continues on to explain that in the third sense, ideology is a manifestation of power In concealing the contradictions upon which capitalism, in common with all class societies, is based Ideology serves to disguise from the exploited proletariat the fact of its own exploitation Thereby upholding a system of unequal class power After Marx, the term ideology continued to be built upon by many others, one of which was Antonio Gramski Gramski argued that the capitalist class domination system is upheld not simply by unequal economic and political power But by what he called hegemony Hegemony means leadership or domination Gramski highlighted the degree to which ideology is embedded at every level in society In its art and literature, in its education system and mass media, in everyday language and in popular culture As Haywood continues on to write, ideologies are embraced less because they stand up to scrutiny and logical analysis And more because they help individuals groups and societies to make sense of the world in which they live As Andrew Vincent put it, we examine ideology as fellow travelers, not as neutral observers So that's a few minutes for an introduction to the term ideology