Since its conception more than a century ago, champagne socialism has been an enduring, if unofficial, part of politics in Britain and around the world. The pharse champagne socialist first appeared in the 1906 novel by the American author George Cary Eggleston, in which one of the characters contrasts the so-called “beer socialist” – referencing the preferred beverage of the working class – to the “champagne socialist” in the middle class. This, Eggleston elucidates, is someone who “wants everybody to be equal upon the higher plane that suits him, utterly ignoring the fact that there is not enough champagne, green turtle and truffles to go round”.
The novel sought to emphasise the gulf between the comfort of bourgeois life and the everyday hardships faced by the working class. The beer socialist is someone who “wants everybody to come down to his low standards of living”. Egglestone questioned the sincerity of those who, despite their privilege, champion economic and social equality.
It could be expected that any accusations of hypocrisy when it comes to middle-class socialism would be coming chiefly from the political right. Yet some of the most vociferous attacks of champagne socialism have emanated from left-wing voices. A notable example is Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour of the United Kingdom.
He would be called a traitor to his party’s egalitarian principles throughout his time in office, with critics lambasting his hobnobbing with the British elite. In 1931, with the economy reeling from the aftershocks of the two years earlier and the subsequent , MacDonald formed the National Government. This was a coalition of the major political parties, but dominated by the Conservatives, so was immediately seen by many on the left as a betrayal of the organised labour movement.
MacDonald was even expelled from his own party. More recently, supporters of New Labour – led by Tony Blair in the 1990s and 2000s – faced similar accusations. Critics of Blair, Gordon Brown and their allies pointed to their middle-class backgrounds, their courting of the ‘Cool Britannia’ campaign (a pop-culture-heavy celebration of all things British), and their perceived compromises on traditional Labour values, as the embodiment of champagne socialism.
Variations of champagne socialism have existed in many nations around the world. In the 1980s, the term (left caviar) became particularly popular in France as an attack on their president François Mitterrand, for what his political enemies saw as his duplicity. In New Zealand and Australia, the preferred insult was for a time ‘chardonnay socialist’.
But the implicit meaning of such insults has been expanded beyond socialism to expose hypocrisy among all progressive strains of thought. So in the United States, for example, one of the equivalent terms became ‘limousine liberal’. Other caricatures have emerged, from experts in their ‘ivory towers’ to the ‘luvvies’ of the ‘metropolitan liberal elite’.
All have come to disparage a social caste regarded as being at the top of society who make vaguely egalitarian signals from their life of luxury inside gated communities, far removed from the experiences of ordinary people. Opponents of socialism have long relished pointing out that certain individuals on the left have enjoyed comfortable lives. Friedrich Engels – friend and sponsor of Karl Marx, and co-author of – came from a wealthy family that owned factories, after all.
Nevertheless, the label has occasionally been embraced by those on the left who reject the notion that socialism should aspire to a minimalist and austere existence. Returning to , why should they give up the green turtle and truffles? Rather, they point out that their egalitarian beliefs stem from a desire to ensure that everybody is able to enjoy the finer things in life..
