  Thus ideology, far from being a science, as De Tracy contends, or any set of action-oriented beliefs as Bell puts it, is rather inherently conservative, quietist, and epistemically unreliable. Ideology conserves by camouflaging flawed social conditions, giving an illusory account of their rationale or function, in order to legitimate and win acceptance of them. Indeed, on this view of the ideological role of law, in a just society there would be no need for a mystifying account of reality, and thus no need for law. The concept of law as ideology is thus central to the Marxist view that law will wither away with the full flowering of communism (Sypnowich 1990, ch. 1).