Where does the term ‘champagne socialist’ come from?

The phrase champagne socialist first appeared in the 1906 novel Blind Alleys 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”.

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