Class consciousness in a mature neoliberal society: Evidence from Chile

•Data analysis was based on OLS and ordinal logistic regressions.•I assessed how class location and class origins affect class identity and class interests.•Class location and class origins account for significant variations in class consciousness.•Both historical and socioeconomic factors explain why both aspects of class matter.

Class consciousness is a central element of the sociological analysis of class inequality. It indicates the mechanisms through which inequality creates subjective-level outcomes as dissimilar class identities and material interests. Despite its importance, class consciousness has been largely unexamined in current neoliberal society. With a few exceptions, the basic sociological question of how inequality brings about consequences at the subjective level has not been addressed in recent research. In this paper I address this question by analyzing the patterns of class consciousness in Chile. To do so, I examine how class location and class origins (as indicator of class experiences) shape the two main components of class consciousness: class identity and class interests. The results suggest that the identity component depends on both class experiences and class position, as well as on the way that the latter creates subjective experiences of economic inequality (i.e. inequality in individual resources). On the other hand, the second component of class consciousness—oppositional class interests—depends on both class experiences and class location, and on the way in which the latter brings about subjective experiences of opposition in the terrain of the relations of production.