However, even in Europe, the direction of socialism for step-by-step reforms through the parliamentary route, e.g. Social Democrats, historically favoured policies building up a wide middle-class. Myself, I think the self-defeating nature of this project could have been seen on the onset

It was. But rather a lot of the people who saw it were presenting alternatives that involved lining people up against a wall and shooting them. Those alternatives were almost uniformly discarded for a variety of usually excellent reasons.

The late 19th century was not a nice period in European history. (Well, the 19th century wasn't a nice period in history overall, but the late part of it saw the formative years of the labour movement.)

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.