One consequence of this was the universal exaltation of industrial work and workers—a distinct political asset for parties claiming to represent them. Left-leaning, educated, middle-class men and women embarrassed by their social origin could assuage their discomfort by abandoning themselves to Communism. But even if they didn’t go so far as to join the Party, many artists and writers in France and Italy especially ‘prostrated themselves before the proletariat’ (Arthur Koestler) and elevated the ‘revolutionary working class’ (typically imagined in a rather Socialist-Realist/Fascist light as
...more
