According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of people in the United States believe that “strong conflicts” exist between rich and poor.
This was a 50 percent gain from a similar Pew survey from 2009, when just under half of respondents voiced a similar opinion. The demographic categories that experienced the biggest change were largely white and middle class. Racial minorities and poor people, presumably already more aware of the conflicts in U.S. society, registered smaller gains.
Senior figures at Pew Research ascribed the change to a variety of factors, including the attention focused by the Occupy Wall Street movement on wealth inequality and fairness.
Despite the lengths to which the mainstream bourgeois media goes to avoid mentioning the influence of class on life in capitalist society, the realities of a widening recession and continual attacks on working-class gains make class consciousness inevitable. As long as the contradictions in global capitalism sharpen, this trend will not reverse itself.
