Capitalism is far and away the most ingenious form of class rule in human history. The lords and kings of Europe in the middle ages, the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, and the southern US slave owners were all a bunch of amateurs when compared with today’s rulers.

The self-evident exploitation of the slave or the serf, which was imposed by brutal and direct force, made no pretence to be anything other than what it was. To the extent that ideology was used to convince the downtrodden to accept their lot, it was usually by fostering hope of redemption after death.

One of the key aspects that distinguishes today’s world from the class societies of the past is the success the ruling elite have had in convincing many of us, for much of the time, that the struggle between rich and poor is not the defining feature of our society.

The ideological apparatus of the system does this in a million different ways.

We are told the rich are “wealth creators” and that where you end up on the social ladder is down to hard work and entrepreneurship. If you are poor, we’re told, it must be your fault.

We’re told that the real cause of our problems are refugees taking our jobs, or Aborigines and young people bludging on the dole, or foreign workers driving down our wages. Blame anyone but the parasites at the top whose vast wealth and privilege is added to daily at our expense.

There are more leftist sounding versions of the same ideology. People who tell us that the class divide is just one of many of the divides in contemporary society and that “crude” Marxist arguments about the centrality of the class struggle to politics are hopelessly reductive.

Marxists never argued that class is the only divide in society, only that it was the fundamental divide that shapes (as well as being shaped by) all the other social conflicts.

For all the ideological mechanisms designed to conceal the true nature of our world, this underlying reality always, eventually, is revealed.

We saw this in the wake of the GFC in the US. The hideous sight of the billionaire bankers being bailed out while millions were losing their jobs led to the rise of the Occupy movement, with its wonderfully evocative slogan pitting the 99 percent against the 1 percent of parasites at the top.

In Australia, Joe Hockey’s budget provides a similar moment of clarity. It is now incontestable that this is a government in the service of the rich, determined to drive down workers’ living standards, and in particular hit the poorest and most vulnerable.

All the hysteria about refugees on which the Liberals coasted to office was nothing more than an elaborate circus, designed to win broad support for a government that will do whatever it takes to serve the 1 percenters in the corporate boardrooms.

Socialists are constantly being lectured by the oh-so-sophisticated liberal commentators in the media and in universities that the politics of class struggle belong to a bygone era.

The Liberal Party and the right wing think tanks that crafted this budget never believed such stupidity. They never forgot for a moment that they are there to protect and advance the interests of the powerful, whatever the cost.

They understand that the real war in society is the class war. In the wake of this budget, it’s time our side started to understand that reality as well.