"What exactly do the intellectuals want out of their Rococo Marxist mental acrobatics? Is it change they want, change for all the para-proletariats whose ideological benefactors they proclaim themselves to be? Of course not. Actual change would involve irksome toil. So what do they want? It's a simple business, at bottom. All the intellectual wants, in his heart of hearts, is to hold on to what was magically given to him one shining moment a century ago. He asks for nothing more than to remain aloof, removed, as Revel once put it, from the mob, the philistines . . . "the middle class.""
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Tom Wolfe, "In the Land of the Rococo Marxists", Harpers Monthly, June 2000
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Revel
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Jean-François Revel
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