LOTR - classist?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Mänwe

Slightly amusing are these passages in the letters I came across, for your benefit Lush

“Even the unlucky little Samoyedes, I suspect, have tinned food and the village loudspeaker telling Stalin's bed-time stories about Democracy and the wicked Fascists who eat babies and steal sledge-dogs. There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as 'patriotism', may remain a habit! But it won't do any good, if it is not universal.” (Letter #52)

Good lord Tolkien, a terrorist, never!

Actually, there is possibly a more historically precise term for Tolkien's position: Luddite or perhaps Eric Hobsbawm's social bandit. That is, if we take Tolkien's letter seriously and not simply as hyperbole.