ideology generally a disparaging term used to describe someone else’s political views which one regards as unsound. This use derives from Marx’s employment of the term to signify a false consciousness shared by the members of a particular social class. For example, according to Marx, members of the capitalist class share the ideology that the laws of the competitive market are natural and impersonal, that workers in a competitive market are paid all that they can be paid, and that the institutions of private property in the means of production are natural and justified. See also MARXISM, POLITICAL PHILOS- OPH. J.P.St.