Eribon’s tale is about the elite left’s divorce from the working classes. These elites were what Marx called the vanguard of the proletariat – the enlightened bourgeois who would lead their revolution. Nowadays Lenin would be teaching cultural studies at the Sorbonne. All traces of Marxist romanticism have been shed. So have the names. Working class has been supplanted by left behind. Once romanticised, they are now denigrated. But the elite leftists have only swapped one myth for another. There is nothing new about working-class populism. It can go in many directions depending on the
...more
