In the ongoing debate on social inequality, conflicts, and political radicalization, the book Triggerpunkte (2023) by Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser occupies a central position. The study focuses on attitudes towards inequality in four “arenas” of conflict (economic resources, everyday lifestyle, national affiliation/migration, ecology). Overall, the “opinion space” of the German population appears surprisingly consensual, oriented towards equality and only radicalized at the margins. There is no observable polarization of the public into few major groups. By taking into account the position of the respondents in the class structure (following Daniel Oesch) as well as their party affiliation as amplifiers of political attitudes, the study presents a significant gain in knowledge. However, inequalities of power and domination remain systematically under-thematized. The political system is not addressed as an independent “arena” of conflict itself; class structure is used descriptively, instead of being understood as an expression of social relations of domination. The “implicit social contract”, which is elaborated in the qualitative part of the study, appears as a contract between equals, but not between elites and the people.
