Ideology is an important concept in sociological political theory. Before this concept was created, philosophers represented by Plato began to consider human ideology. Bacon, Locke, Claude-Adrien Helvétius, and other medieval enlightenment thinkers started the discussion on the source of human truth, criticized religious theology, and laid the ideological foundation for the emergence of ideology. Tracy inherited the ideas of Bacon and others, founded the theory of “ideology” as a concept based on people’s thoughts and feelings, with the task of studying the origin, boundary,and reliability of cognition, and regarded it as the basis of all sciences, trying to carryout a comprehensive reform from school education to the social system. In Tracy’s view,“ideology” has a positive connotation and a certain degree of progress. In the view of Marx and Engels, ideology is no longer a simple problem of cognition, but a problem closely related to social practice and revolutionary struggle. They put ideology into the social and historical perspective and criticized the essence of bourgeois ideology’s reversal to reflect realistic relations. Therefore, “ideology”has the fundamental feature of hypocrisy and has become a negative concept. Lenin insisted on the basic viewpoint of historical materialism and used “ideology” as a descriptive concept from the needs of theoretical criticism and practical struggle in his time. He defined the class nature of ideology, distinguished bourgeois ideology from proletarian ideology, and put forward a brand-new conclusion that there are scientific and unscientific ideologies, thus enriching and developing Marxist ideology theory.

　　Editor: Zhong Yao Liu Tingting

　　From: Research on Marxist Cultural.2023.No.2.