"Bizarrely, though, there's a trend now among the upper classes to speak Estuarine English, together with lashings of glottal stops and rising terminals."

Hell, I must be getting old! And I still belive in RP!

Piers, your criticised sentence is a non-sequitur.

And you confuse class with wealth.

If a revolution is necessary (it might be) it is necessary to identify the enemy.

A state necessarily involves a structure. Therefore there will be those who have power in that structure, whether you call it/them a nomenklatura or not. In the absence of that structure you will have unfettered competition or even total anarchy resulting in an armed struggle for advantage - until co-operation widely replaces selfishness in the human behaviour pattern.

I do not seek to attack (as such) Marx - I am broadly sympathetic, but while I do not necessarily support class power, I do believe that class differences exist (and that Americans find them largely incomprehensible although Gervase (not, I think, American) seems to be close to the button in quite a lot of what he says about them). I think you will find he does not ascribe merit to the class structure, simply its existence. Once must observe before understanding, and understand before judging.

I tried reading the RTP once. About 3 pages was enough for me.