This article analyses ‘inferiority’ as a symbolic dimension of social inequality. In addition to being a position in the social hierarchy, inferiority signifies a feeling of deficient self-esteem, which has great significance for the understanding of social inequality. After examining the social preconditions of feelings of inferiority in class society, typical syndromes of feelings of inferiority will be investigated. As social inequality has become ‘individualised’, the social reference system of inferiority has become modernised as a symbolic construction of deficient individuality.