As I am browsing through The Guardian, I come upon a picture of Marine Le Pen laughing. Her far-right Front National has been doing well lately, whence her happy face. But then I notice the text that goes with the picture: “Abandoned, the French working class is ready to punish the left’s neglect by voting for far right.” Remembering Marx, I skip the article. He got it all wrong, it goes without saying. Ever since the Nineteenth Century, the working class has gone every which way, abandoning the left whenever it pleased. Fascism and Nazism are good to remember in this context. The far-right movements were not attractive only to the petty bourgeoisie, but to the higher echelons of the working class, as well. In short, the link between the working class and the left is a figment of the left’s imagination. Ushered by the Nineteenth Century bright-eyed revolutionaries and upheld by Marx, the connection has been imagined as unbreakable. Le Pen’s march to power is only one more proof of the underlying misconception. The French working class is not punishing the left’s neglect, though. It is not feeling abandoned, either. As ever, it is following its petty interests without any compunction. Pace Marx, but Le Pen understands the working class much better than the bamboozled left.