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So, this tweet basically describes only 15 people but I happen to know most of them (either as friends or as writers). So I can't help but wonder what is going on here.
First of all "they love reading balzac and trollope, read the financial press, listen to orchestral music and operas" basically describes Marx and Engels (if you leave off Trollope). So it's just a case that some Marxists continue to share the habits of the founders of Marxism.
But it's not just a matter of Marxists inheriting Marx's taste. There's a tradition of leftists loving reactionary/conservative writers. Marx/Engels on Balzac, Lukacs on Mann, Jameson on F.M. Ford & Wyndham Lewis, Anderson on Anthony Powell, Delany on Heinlein.
I think the core explanation is that reactionary writers like Balzac are very sensitive to historical change (their work is a mourning for a lost world). Marxists appreciate this sense of history without sharing the nostalgia for the lost world.
Engels appreciation of Balzac actually makes this point beautifully. It's Balzac's rich historical consciousness and textured understanding of social class that spoke to Marx & Engels 
Tangentially, someone should write about the paradox of how the vey Tory novelist Anthony Powell is loved by leftists (Anderson, Tariq Ali, Hitchens, Pinter) & often derided by his fellow reactionaries (Muggeridge, Larkin, Naipaul, Auburn Waugh).
