Marx's conception of the role of particular forms of ideology in class societies follows directly from these more general considerations. The main defect of idealism in philosophy and history is that it attempts to analyse the properties of societies by inference from the content of the dominant systems of ideas in those societies. But this neglects altogether the fact that there is not a unilateral relationship between values and power: the dominant class is able to disseminate ideas which are the legitimations of its position of dominance. Thus the ideas of freedom and equality which come to the fore in bourgeois society cannot be taken at their ' face value', as directly sum- ming up social reality; on the contrary, the legal freedoms which exist in bourgeois society actually serve to legitimise the reality of contractual obli- gations in which propertyless wage-labour is heavily disadvantaged as com- pared to the owners of capital. The import of this is that ideology must be studied in relation to the social relationships in which it is embedded: we must study both the concrete processes which give rise to various types of ideas, together with the factors which determine which ideas come into prominence within a given society. While ideologies obviously show con- tinuity over time, neither this continuity, nor any changes which occur, can be explained purely in terms of their internal content. Ideas do not evolve on their own account; they do so as elements of the consciousness of men living in society, following a definite Praxis: 'Whilst in ordinary life every shop- keeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians bave not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word concerning what it says and imagines about itself.' 30

Marx's conception of the role of particular forms of ideology in class societies follows directly from these more general considerations. The main defect of idealism in philosophy and history is that it attempts to analyse the properties of societies by inference from the content of the dominant systems of ideas in those societies. But this neglects altogether the fact that there is not a unilateral relationship between values and power: the dominant class is able to disseminate ideas which are the legitimations of its position of dominance. Thus the ideas of freedom and equality which come to the fore in bourgeois society cannot be taken at their ' face value', as directly sum- ming up social reality; on the contrary, the legal freedoms which exist in bourgeois society actually serve to legitimise the reality of contractual obli- gations in which propertyless wage-labour is heavily disadvantaged as com- pared to the owners of capital. The import of this is that ideology must be studied in relation to the social relationships in which it is embedded: we must study both the concrete processes which give rise to various types of ideas, together with the factors which determine which ideas come into prominence within a given society. While ideologies obviously show con- tinuity over time, neither this continuity, nor any changes which occur, can be explained purely in terms of their internal content. Ideas do not evolve on their own account; they do so as elements of the consciousness of men living in society, following a definite Praxis: 'Whilst in ordinary life every shop- keeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians bave not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word concerning what it says and imagines about itself.' 30