"Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement.... " [updated]

"Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists, deriving from certain tendencies of abstract thought with which for a long time only the intellectuals were familiar; and it required long efforts by the intellectuals before the working classes could be persuaded to adopt it as their programme."

~ Friedrich Hayek, from his 1949 article 'The Intellectuals and Socialism'

UPDATE:

"Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs."

~ Ayn Rand, from, her 1962 essay 'The Monument Builders,' excerpted in the Ayn Rand Lexicon entry on 'Socialism'