Serious question: why is it bad to be a champagne socialist?

[JawJaw]

Being a champagne socialist is apparently a bad thing. I am mystified about this. Can someone explain why?

For those who think what we're describing is communism. Cambridge dictionary (political) definition of socialism:

the set of beliefs that states that all people are equal and should share equally in a country's money, or the political systems based on these beliefs

The Definition of “socialist” that I’ve found in an authoritative source is:

Socialist:
A term used to describe themselves by two groups of people.
^^
(i) committed left-wing activists who use the term in the sense conveyed by the USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
^^
(ii) middle class posers who want to seem nice and fair and generally wonderful while they avoid any meaningful detriment to their well-heeled cosy lives. Many of these are found on the British website forum, Mumsnet.

You can still hold socialist values, for example: seeing the relevance of public services being fit for purpose and not run down and cut to the bone; for wanting improved social housing, good quality tax-funded education which we know is achievable as it was in the 1960s and 70s and not wanting the NHS to be replaced by private healthcare. But without the extreme of being on £100K and being taxed 70% of your entire salary. Nobody is ever taxed on a % of their entire salary, there is always an allowance and tapering, even if it needs to be increased.

For that matter why not throw in the made-up scenario of 80% or 90% taxation, and call it communism. That isn't reality in the UK and it isn't necessary to agree to that degree of taxation, to prove you hold socialist values and want the best for this country and its citizens by agreeing to pay higher taxes. Nobody likes a virtue signaller.

I remember Polly Toynbee on Question Time saying that people needed to be taxed heavily to put air travel out of reach - including annual summer holidays.

Richard Littlejohn then asked her if she thought about climate change when she was jetting off to her villa in Tuscany.

The look on her face at being called out in public!

That exchange was related to climate change, but it is exactly the same with champagne socialists. They espouse policies for the plebs, but consider themselves exempt due to wealth, education, social class, etc.

But socialist values are everyone having equal access to a country's wealth.

A champagne socialist still wants to have a better standard of living than average.

Bloody brilliant!

No I want everyone else's to be better. It's not a race to the bottom!

So you'll happily buy a house on the sink estate between a drug dealer and a hoarder? Or are you saying this from a naice house in a naice area with good schools and jobs?

Congratulations @Dinnerdinnerchickenwinner , you won the thread. It really does come down to proposing policies that you can afford to float over.

No, but in order for everyone else's to be better, yours will have to be worse than it currently is... Not awful, just not to the same standard it is now. So that everyone is equal. That's socialism. There isn't a bottomless pit of money.

All the champagne socialists I know live in houses worth at least £1.5m, if they don't send their dc to private school as a matter of principle, they send them to The Oratory, they go regularly to Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and Lords, and quietly avoid tax through efficient investments.

Therefore I think they are not a little hypocritical alongside being rather intellectually and morally superior. It pisses me off.

It sounds like you're a Thatcherite.

I remember her standing in the House of Commons saying that the problem with the socialists was that they wanted everybody to be down here (holding her hands with a narrow gap near her waste), whereas we want people to be up here (holding her hands in a wide band with the lower hand at chest height).

That's exactly the problem with socialism. Everyone is equally poor and poorer than the poorest people in a capitalist society.

@RosesAndHellebores , you nailed it. They ARE intellectually superior, hence they make better decisions than people with lesser skills.

I am a bit of a champagne socialist.
I believe in state education, decent pay for all. I want affordable housing and good public transport and excellent healthcare for everyone.

I was genuinely horrified when my child was not allocated the nice leafy suburb state school her brother had attended, but a much less leafy suburb sister school. I literally had a panic attack. I then used my privilege to win a school appeal so she now attends the naice school.

It held a hugely unflattering mirror up to me and made me realise that a lot of my values are luxury beliefs that I can pursue from my bubble of middle class suburban existence, claiming to be an egalitarian when I am not prepared to put up with what I espouse for others.

I like myself a lot less and know myself a bit more now.

@DeliasMyth

At least you're self-aware and honest enough to acknowledge your faults and hypocrisy.

I'd certainly fight for my kids' education and i don't blame you for doing the same.

But you can’t ’fight for your children’s education’ and BE a socialist.

Socialism is the belief that everyone is entitled to an equal service and standard of living, that means taking the rough with the smooth regardless of the circumstances, not ‘I’m a socialist, or at least I will be when the working class behave better and I can stand to have them in class with my children’.

I'm not a socialist. I'm simply acknowledging and thanking @DeliasMyth for her honesty.

Because usually, they're espousing political ideology, which doesn't directly effect them in any way.

And luvvies!

I don't think I am in any way unique. Vaguely know a woman and her partner - she a tattooed social worker, he a probation officer. Both very Citizen Smith. Until their son was allocated a school nearby that was (gasp) 90 percent children of South Asian heritage.

When they moved their son to a small independent school rather than have him mix with a majority South Asian class, I did realise that it was Pulp's "Common People" playing out in reality. All "up the workers" until their child might have to mix with some of them.

Simple story. The working class who rely on state schools and the NHS and are not higher rate tax payers are the majority. They are expected to be aspirational - ie Tory voters and hate immigrants, disabled and poor because that is the narrative fed to them by the middle class. Even though it's against their interests and they then have to deal with no GP appointments, overwhelmed A&E, poor schools, poor infrastructure etc because they have been led to believe that tax cuts are good (by people who don't rely on the NHS and state schools). Ideology, hegemony - whatever. You get a small tax cut but you are worse off because the services that your taxes fund are overwhelmed. Will your small tax cut fund private medical care or private school?

The media and government are over-represented by the middle class. Who went to private school. The status quo works for them and they want to retain it because it means that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (because they deserve it).

Some people who have become wealthy see how this is unfair. Doesn't take an Einstein, it really is. This can be brushed aside as the politics of envy for the poor but what about the rich? This breaks the narrative. So they are branded as champaign socialists so we can all see how unreasonable they are and can go back to vilifying the poor and celebrating the rich with a clear conscience.

TLDR - you don't have to be poor to see inequality.