Marxists and workers Sir: Auberon Waugh's class war concept of
history (Spectator 3 April) regards the liberal middle classes as being the enlightened and progressive ones while Marxist materialists see the working class as the only progressive force in society.
But are not middle-class pseudo-intellectual values the breeding ground for so much of the muddle-headed Marxist theory articulated by the National Union of Students? Was not Engels a factory owner, Marx a bourgeois Jew, Lenin the son of a nobleman ? These gentlemen no more did a 'real job of work' or talked as equals to the working class than do the present Labour Party leadership. The working class—as opposed to those who purport to be their leaders—do understand what freedom is and what a 'good day's work for a good day's pay' is.
R. E. B. Atkinson Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat, Mainz, Germany
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