Abstract
The article reviews the theories of subjective class consciousness and ideology and revises the “reference group and reality (R&R) interaction model”. During the last two decades, it is argued that the proletarian class consciousness, left-wing ideology, and class voting behavior may decline in the post-industrial societies during the globalization era. However, the revised R&R model implies that, in the global depression era, through the reference group and more complete information, the influence of objective class structure on subjective class consciousness can be stronger, and the ideology may turn back from the right to the left. The empirical evidence from Taiwan, a young democratic industrial country, shows that Taiwanese people’s objective class location has more greatly influenced their subjective identity, their cognition of income inequality has become more serious, their meritocratic ideology has been declining, and class voting behavior has become more obvious in the last decade. The anomaly changes of class formation in a new-comer among advanced capitalist economies may challenge the understanding of class politics in the globalization era.