  For the left-wing theorist of ideology, however, the rule of law also has ideological aspects that mean it serves capitalist purposes in more sinister ways. For in its restraint on political and legal power, the rule of law implies that these public forms of power are the only forms of power that exist, or at least the only ones that matter. Moreover, in assuring the subjects of the law that that law is applied with generality and certainty, the rule of law also implies that formal justice is the only relevant kind of justice; that equality before the law is identical to equality per se.