The Leftist's dilemma

Being a Leftist in a free market-society is a tricky thing. In order to be a successful one (that is, a one that collects a lot of votes) you need a few things to be in place:

1. You need the filthy rich to talk bad about.
2. You need a big group of average- or low-paid people to envy the filthy rich.
3. You need the money of the filthy rich to spend on your favorite groups of voters.
4. You need to tax just enough to squeeze on the filthy rich, but not too much so you don't scare them away to other countries or reduce the incentive to become rich too much.

So basically, you need a society where you can actually become rich (or not low-paid), and design the tax-code in such a way that keeps the rich within your taxing grips. This means you can not create a full scheme of redistribution because although that would guarantee a big share of the votes from the low-income voters, it would also leave you without the rich to tax for the "benefit" of the poor.

So basically, in order to keep face as a Leftist, you need to be a capitalist in practice, but a socialist in speech. And isn't that a double-moral that would keep any honest man awake at night?