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    Why not just Foo.bar, instead of self.__class__.bar? Commented Sep 13, 2009 at 20:59
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    @Mk12: When you've got class inheritance, a "class variable"could be in a base class or a subclass. Which do you want to refer to? Depends on what you're trying to do. Foo.bar would always refer to an attribute of the specified class--which might be a base class or a subclass. self.__class__.bar would refer to whichever class the instance is a type of. Commented Dec 11, 2009 at 4:47
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    Now we have reached that unfortunate point when we become so aware of the details of the language that we can discriminate between two finely attuned use cases. It does indeed depend what you want to do, but many people won't attend to such subtleties. Commented Dec 14, 2011 at 10:19
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    BTW, this is a RARE usage of "class variable". Much more common to have it defined in a specific class, here Foo. This is useful information for some advanced programming situations. But almost certainly not what the original question wanted as an answer (anyone who needs THIS answer will already know how to do Foo.bar). +1 because I learned something from this. Commented Nov 25, 2013 at 17:05
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    I'm learning about when to use class variables and methods (as opposed to instance variables and methods). When you want to access a class variable in an instance method, is it necessary to use self.__class__.bar? I noticed that self.bar works even though bar is a class variable not an instance variable. Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 18:30