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One of Greenfield's best, and thanks very much for posting. He certainly isn't the first one to notice that very few advocates of socialism are actually working class - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon noted it at a time when Marxism was in its infancy. Orwell's long description of working class conditions in The Road To Wigan Pier ended with an equally lengthy exposition on why he was not himself in that class and how that class is held in contempt by other socialists like him. That was the part the socialists refused to publish.

One of the central political controversies on the Left at the moment is how it is even possible that the working class vote defected to Trump from its "natural" home supporting limousine liberals and champagne socialists whose actual contacts with the unwashed produce such antic moments as John Kerry's "Kin I git me a huntin' license heah?" or Hillary's "I ain't no ways tahrd." These are, believe it or not, their attempts at authenticity from which normal people recoil with horror and laughter. They don't get it, except to promote the popular conclusion that failure to consider this ridiculous pretense to be genuine is a mark of the audience's stupidity. And they say so. And the people around them repeat it.

These are "socialists" in thousand-dollar suits whose game is to take five nickels from A and redistribute four to B and C, and only if they like them. One winds up with a lot of nickels that way, as well as an insufferable self-righteousness stemming from a contrived outrage that A had five nickels in the first place - A doesn't now, but the socialist does. This, we are told, is "progress".

It was always a scam. Socialism cannot work without redistribution and redistribution cannot work without central authority doing it. Marx's state will never wither away, as he promised, it will only get bigger and more totalitarian. Orwell saw that. Milovan Djilas told us why and ended up doing nine years in prison for doing so. Authority, the State, the New Class, these do not like to be outed and will respond with violence, as in fact they are doing in America this very moment in that movement's nascence, and Venezuela is what happens in its senescence.

One of the central political controversies on the Left at the moment is how it is even possible that the working class vote defected to Trump from its "natural" home supporting limousine liberals and champagne socialists whose actual contacts with the unwashed produce such antic moments as John Kerry's "Kin I git me a huntin' license heah?" or Hillary's "I ain't no ways tahrd." These are, believe it or not, their attempts at authenticity from which normal people recoil with horror and laughter.

LOL - great stuff Bill...