That quote is disputed:
- As quoted in A Short History of Progress (2004) by Ronald Wright: “John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” This has since been cited as a direct quote by some, but the remark is very likely a paraphrase from Steinbeck’s article “A Primer on the '30s.” Esquire (June 1960), p. 85-93:
- "Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: ‘After the revolution even we will have more, won’t we, dear?’ Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
“I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn’t have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.”
I always thought it was Mencken, who was one of those guys just on the verge of getting it but never really getting there.
I think the point of the meme is that, as far as we’ll ever know, there might be a few, maybe dozens, or hundreds, of young people with a talent the rough equivalent of hers, maybe even greater, but we’ll never know it because they were never given access to a platform, or an instrument, or the time and environment in which to learn and compose, or ever find any audience whatsoever.
A head start is an advantage over people with average opportunities, but way too many people are allowed no start at all.
(Note: the consequences include an aspect of punishment, for the crime of not maintaining yourself in a state of utility. Your suffering doesn’t matter, only your usefulness is of value. If you are no longer useful, then you will suffer the natural consequences of that, and be punished for damaging state property.)
And, to take care of your body, you have to pay.
