Generate text that refutes this claim: Class consciousness is an important aspect of Socialism, it would be hard to find a period in recent history when the majority have been so aware that their interests are not the same as the uber-rich  It has rarely been so clear that the interests of the few are not the same as those of the vast bulk of either European societies or the world outside it. At a time of rising unemployment, a handful of people who are already fantastically rich continue to pay themselves obscene salaries and bonuses. Of course there is nothing in this that is unusual, it’s just not usually done in so cavalier a fashion.  Although there is nothing mechanical in the process, most Socialist thinkers have been clear that the popular realisation that there really is a class distinction between what the Occupy protesters refer to as the 1% and the rest of us is an important first step towards establishing Socialism.  Whatever the media and political classes may pretend, Socialism is not – and never was – a single party or policy. It is a process. And that process is being seen on the streets across Europe
political philosophy politics government society house believes socialism dead
As has so often been the case in the history of Socialism, the moment one form is comprehensively beaten, its adherents announce, “Oh that wasn’t really Socialism”. The reality is that Socialism fell with the Berlin Wall it just took a few years for the impact of that to ripple all the way across Europe.  The last stage of that process is now taking place as the economies that continued to believe that social systems would pay for themselves realize that not only is that fantasy not the case, it never was.  It may have taken a crisis in Capitalism to demonstrate that Socialism is a luxury Europe cannot afford but the result is the same anyway.