A warning for fellow bookworms

From Leftism, by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a word of caution to those with lots of theories and little experience:

“The distance of a bookworm from reality can be considerable.”

Kuehnelt-Leddihn is making this point to explain the failure of Karl Marx's theories to come true, the failure of Marxists once they come to power, and more broadly why revolutionaries tend to be bourgeois autodidacts or pure cranks rather than actual members of the classes they claim to represent. Those oppressed peoples–be they the workers, the peasants, or something else–are too busy in the real world for sloganeering. Plumbers rarely throw bombs at the Tsar's troops. College dropouts often do. And once they come to power, millions starve precisely because of this teething problem in their intellectual-real world transmission.

I include myself in this word of caution. Work with the concrete. Avoid abstractions. Get out in the world and get dirty. It's good for your intellectual immune system.