Published in Rizospastis, Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), on 8 October 2026, under the title "Elon Musk and the Bourgeois Myth of the “Genius” Capitalist". Real below the English translation:
The Collective Worker and the General Intellect
Marx explains this inversion. Capitalist production brings together scientists, engineers, technicians and production workers into a collective worker, while research centers and universities contribute to the broader body of social knowledge embodied in the products of their labor. The productive power arising from this cooperation is a social power of labor, even though, under capitalist relations, it appears as a power of capital (Capital, Vol. I, Chapters 13–16).
What the collective worker produces also incorporates the general intellect described in the Grundrisse: the accumulated scientific knowledge transmitted and developed by successive generations, which becomes a direct productive force. Under capitalism, however, this knowledge is appropriated by capital and appears as an inherent attribute of capital itself.
Marx describes the capitalist as the “personification of capital” (Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 24), precisely because his characteristic power derives not from his own labor or “intelligence,” but from his control over money, the means of production and the labor of workers.
Thus, the “cult” of the “genius” capitalist is a manifestation of the fetishism of capital. The knowledge, cooperation and creative power of thousands of workers appear as the personal gifts of the capitalist, while he himself, as the “personification of capital,” is proclaimed the creator of everything produced by collective labor (Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 48).
Robotics and artificial intelligence systems are among the most characteristic collective products in human history. Attributing them to a handful of “genius” capitalists is fetishism in its purest modern form.
Monopoly and the Suppression of Workers’ Talent
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin developed Engels’ thesis that production becomes increasingly socialized while appropriation remains private. Large enterprises and monopolies coordinate laboratories, supply chains, banks, infrastructure and tens of thousands, even millions, of workers across the globe.
Lenin observed that monopoly brings skilled labor, leading engineers, credit, transport and raw materials under its control, making its owners appear all-powerful. Thus, what is presented as the “genius” of an individual capitalist is, in reality, the productive intelligence of the collective worker and the general intellect placed at the disposal of a capitalist.
Lenin also attacked the narrative that large-scale management and organization are exclusive gifts possessed by capitalists, the wealthy and those trained to serve them. In How to Organise Competition?, he argued that capitalism stifles the initiative, energy and talents of the overwhelming majority, while simultaneously cultivating the notion that only the “upper classes” are capable of managing society.
On the contrary, he emphasized that many talented organizers exist among workers and peasants:
“There is a great deal of talent among the people. It is merely suppressed.”
The Historical Origins of the Bourgeois Myth
The bourgeois myth of capitalist “genius” has a history.
Edison was presented to the public as the solitary “Wizard of Menlo Park,” although Menlo Park was an industrial research laboratory staffed by skilled scientists and engineers, most of whom are largely forgotten today, including Charles Batchelor and John Kruesi. Moreover, the incandescent light bulb had numerous earlier inventors, most notably Joseph Swan.
Ford neither invented the automobile nor designed the moving assembly line single-handedly. His engineers combined interchangeable parts, a detailed division of labor and the continuous movement of materials — methods already employed elsewhere, particularly in slaughterhouses. The resulting productivity depended on repetitive, exhausting labor and produced such high employee turnover that the company was forced to double wages to retain its workforce.
Carnegie did not invent modern steelmaking. He adopted the British Bessemer process and built a vertically integrated capitalist empire around it.
At Homestead in 1892, the lockout, the deployment of armed agents from the private Pinkerton company and the crushing of the workers’ union were carried out by Carnegie’s associate, Henry Clay Frick, while Carnegie corresponded about what should be done from Scotland.
Acting on Carnegie’s instructions, Frick imposed the lockout, hired armed Pinkerton agents and attempted to destroy the union. When private violence failed, the state militia intervened to ensure that the plant could resume operations using strikebreakers.
The episode does not demonstrate Carnegie’s “managerial genius.” Instead, it exposes the machinery of capitalist power: the owner preserved his image as a philanthropist, the manager organized the repression, and the state completed what the private army had failed to accomplish.
There is another parallel between the “geniuses” Ford and Musk, as well as other supposedly “genius” capitalists.
Ford provided substantial financial support to Hitler and used his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to spread pro-Nazi propaganda. Hitler praised him, kept his portrait in his office and awarded him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938.¹
Musk made a Nazi salute and has repeatedly expressed support for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which he described as the country’s “greatest hope.” Speaking at an AfD election rally, he even declared that Germany dwells excessively on guilt over its Nazi past and the Holocaust.²
The Myth of Capitalist “Genius” as an Instrument of Class Manipulation
The conclusion is not that Musk is stupid. It is that the concept of “genius” carries a specific class character and serves a specific purpose.
The bourgeois mass media — many of which are directly owned by major capitalists and depend on their economic interests — together with governments, universities and other institutions of bourgeois society, endlessly reproduce the same narrative: the capitalist “creates jobs,” “invents the future” and “drives progress,” while the scientists, engineers, technicians and workers who actually produce the goods are portrayed as mere executors of his personal “vision.”
Through this systematic inversion, collective labor is depersonalized, while collective achievement is personified in the owner of capital.
Bourgeois propaganda and manipulation are thus presented as self-evident common sense. Workers are encouraged to regard the owner not as someone who appropriates the product of their collective labor, but as a benefactor who provides them with employment, technology and a future.
The myth of the “genius” capitalist performs three functions. It makes the collective worker invisible, legitimizes the extreme concentration of wealth and power, and presents any challenge to private ownership as a threat to innovation and progress.
Capitalism appropriates not only the product and surplus value of collective labor, but also historical memory, recognition and the very credit for creation.
The capitalist therefore wins twice: first, by appropriating the surplus value produced by the collective worker, and then by acquiring the prestige of being its creator.
The collective worker also loses twice: workers lose both the product of their labor and the recognition that they, rather than the parasitic capitalist, are the real driving force behind production and innovation.
In Bertolt Brecht’s poem “Questions From a Worker Who Reads,” the question “Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?” remains as relevant as ever.
Just as bourgeois history attributed to kings the achievements of thousands of anonymous workers, scientists and engineers, bourgeois ideology today attributes to capitalists the technologies collectively created by scientists, engineers, technicians and workers.
The Answer Lies in Socialism
The answer is not to wait for a “better” or more philanthropic billionaire.
The problem lies not primarily in the character of one capitalist or another, but in the social relationship that allows a private individual to control the means of production, the labor of thousands or millions of people and, ultimately, the decisions that determine the future of society as a whole.
The socialist answer, therefore, is to bring ownership of the means of production into correspondence with the already social character of production.
This requires the working class, in alliance with all working and exploited social strata, to conquer political power, socialize the principal means of production and place the economy under workers’ and people’s control.
It means the direct participation of workers themselves in the administration of production and the state, through elected and recallable representatives, public oversight and accountability.
Socialism alone can liberate workers’ talents from subordination to profit and place them at the service of society’s growing needs.
Sources:
To question the description of Elon Musk as a “genius,” along with similar descriptions bestowed on numerous other capitalists throughout history, is not to make a clinical assessment of his intelligence. It is to reject the bourgeois ideological myth according to which technological progress is the creation of individual “genius” capitalists operating within a supposedly passive society, rather than the product of collective labor and accumulated social knowledge.
The word “genius,” so frequently applied to capitalists, has a clear ideological foundation. It transforms private ownership into authorship of the results of the collective labor of millions of workers and scientists, wealth into proof of intellectual superiority, and the collective labor power and talent of workers into the personal “aura” and “intelligence” of one or more billionaires.
The Collective Worker and the General Intellect
Marx explains this inversion. Capitalist production brings together scientists, engineers, technicians and production workers into a collective worker, while research centers and universities contribute to the broader body of social knowledge embodied in the products of their labor. The productive power arising from this cooperation is a social power of labor, even though, under capitalist relations, it appears as a power of capital (Capital, Vol. I, Chapters 13–16).
What the collective worker produces also incorporates the general intellect described in the Grundrisse: the accumulated scientific knowledge transmitted and developed by successive generations, which becomes a direct productive force. Under capitalism, however, this knowledge is appropriated by capital and appears as an inherent attribute of capital itself.
Marx describes the capitalist as the “personification of capital” (Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 24), precisely because his characteristic power derives not from his own labor or “intelligence,” but from his control over money, the means of production and the labor of workers.
Thus, the “cult” of the “genius” capitalist is a manifestation of the fetishism of capital. The knowledge, cooperation and creative power of thousands of workers appear as the personal gifts of the capitalist, while he himself, as the “personification of capital,” is proclaimed the creator of everything produced by collective labor (Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 48).
Robotics and artificial intelligence systems are among the most characteristic collective products in human history. Attributing them to a handful of “genius” capitalists is fetishism in its purest modern form.
Monopoly and the Suppression of Workers’ Talent
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin developed Engels’ thesis that production becomes increasingly socialized while appropriation remains private. Large enterprises and monopolies coordinate laboratories, supply chains, banks, infrastructure and tens of thousands, even millions, of workers across the globe.
Lenin observed that monopoly brings skilled labor, leading engineers, credit, transport and raw materials under its control, making its owners appear all-powerful. Thus, what is presented as the “genius” of an individual capitalist is, in reality, the productive intelligence of the collective worker and the general intellect placed at the disposal of a capitalist.
Lenin also attacked the narrative that large-scale management and organization are exclusive gifts possessed by capitalists, the wealthy and those trained to serve them. In How to Organise Competition?, he argued that capitalism stifles the initiative, energy and talents of the overwhelming majority, while simultaneously cultivating the notion that only the “upper classes” are capable of managing society.
On the contrary, he emphasized that many talented organizers exist among workers and peasants:
“There is a great deal of talent among the people. It is merely suppressed.”
The Historical Origins of the Bourgeois Myth
The bourgeois myth of capitalist “genius” has a history.
Edison was presented to the public as the solitary “Wizard of Menlo Park,” although Menlo Park was an industrial research laboratory staffed by skilled scientists and engineers, most of whom are largely forgotten today, including Charles Batchelor and John Kruesi. Moreover, the incandescent light bulb had numerous earlier inventors, most notably Joseph Swan.
Ford neither invented the automobile nor designed the moving assembly line single-handedly. His engineers combined interchangeable parts, a detailed division of labor and the continuous movement of materials — methods already employed elsewhere, particularly in slaughterhouses. The resulting productivity depended on repetitive, exhausting labor and produced such high employee turnover that the company was forced to double wages to retain its workforce.
Carnegie did not invent modern steelmaking. He adopted the British Bessemer process and built a vertically integrated capitalist empire around it.
At Homestead in 1892, the lockout, the deployment of armed agents from the private Pinkerton company and the crushing of the workers’ union were carried out by Carnegie’s associate, Henry Clay Frick, while Carnegie corresponded about what should be done from Scotland.
Acting on Carnegie’s instructions, Frick imposed the lockout, hired armed Pinkerton agents and attempted to destroy the union. When private violence failed, the state militia intervened to ensure that the plant could resume operations using strikebreakers.
The episode does not demonstrate Carnegie’s “managerial genius.” Instead, it exposes the machinery of capitalist power: the owner preserved his image as a philanthropist, the manager organized the repression, and the state completed what the private army had failed to accomplish.
There is another parallel between the “geniuses” Ford and Musk, as well as other supposedly “genius” capitalists.
Ford provided substantial financial support to Hitler and used his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to spread pro-Nazi propaganda. Hitler praised him, kept his portrait in his office and awarded him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938.¹
Musk made a Nazi salute and has repeatedly expressed support for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which he described as the country’s “greatest hope.” Speaking at an AfD election rally, he even declared that Germany dwells excessively on guilt over its Nazi past and the Holocaust.²
The Myth of Capitalist “Genius” as an Instrument of Class Manipulation
The conclusion is not that Musk is stupid. It is that the concept of “genius” carries a specific class character and serves a specific purpose.
The bourgeois mass media — many of which are directly owned by major capitalists and depend on their economic interests — together with governments, universities and other institutions of bourgeois society, endlessly reproduce the same narrative: the capitalist “creates jobs,” “invents the future” and “drives progress,” while the scientists, engineers, technicians and workers who actually produce the goods are portrayed as mere executors of his personal “vision.”
Through this systematic inversion, collective labor is depersonalized, while collective achievement is personified in the owner of capital.
Bourgeois propaganda and manipulation are thus presented as self-evident common sense. Workers are encouraged to regard the owner not as someone who appropriates the product of their collective labor, but as a benefactor who provides them with employment, technology and a future.
The myth of the “genius” capitalist performs three functions. It makes the collective worker invisible, legitimizes the extreme concentration of wealth and power, and presents any challenge to private ownership as a threat to innovation and progress.
Capitalism appropriates not only the product and surplus value of collective labor, but also historical memory, recognition and the very credit for creation.
The capitalist therefore wins twice: first, by appropriating the surplus value produced by the collective worker, and then by acquiring the prestige of being its creator.
The collective worker also loses twice: workers lose both the product of their labor and the recognition that they, rather than the parasitic capitalist, are the real driving force behind production and innovation.
In Bertolt Brecht’s poem “Questions From a Worker Who Reads,” the question “Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?” remains as relevant as ever.
Just as bourgeois history attributed to kings the achievements of thousands of anonymous workers, scientists and engineers, bourgeois ideology today attributes to capitalists the technologies collectively created by scientists, engineers, technicians and workers.
The Answer Lies in Socialism
The answer is not to wait for a “better” or more philanthropic billionaire.
The problem lies not primarily in the character of one capitalist or another, but in the social relationship that allows a private individual to control the means of production, the labor of thousands or millions of people and, ultimately, the decisions that determine the future of society as a whole.
The socialist answer, therefore, is to bring ownership of the means of production into correspondence with the already social character of production.
This requires the working class, in alliance with all working and exploited social strata, to conquer political power, socialize the principal means of production and place the economy under workers’ and people’s control.
It means the direct participation of workers themselves in the administration of production and the state, through elected and recallable representatives, public oversight and accountability.
Socialism alone can liberate workers’ talents from subordination to profit and place them at the service of society’s growing needs.
Sources:
- Henry Ford Receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi Officials, 1938. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry-ford-grand-cross-1938/
- AfD rally in Halle, January 25, 2025. NPR: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/27/nx-s1-5276084/elon-musk-german-far-right-afd-holocaust
