[pasabagi]

I think leftism has a particular appeal for culture types because it's traditionally been the case (until 1980 or so) that capitalism didn't really have much of a place for culture - which was traditionally a poor product, and the better it was as culture, the worse it sold.

There's also the traditional aristocratic looking-down-upon-the-bourgeois for their grubby and banal mindsets, which has got sort of subsumed into leftism because there aren't many aristocrats left. Adorno is a kind of good exposition of this sort of thing.

Lastly, it's very traditional. The French revolution, at least in the early stages, was basically bankrolled and sheltered by L Phillipe de Orlean, the first prince of the blood.