How do stupid people advance under capitalism?

[Blanquist]

Is it just blind luck?

I want to cite Condoleezza Rice as an example.

She got a bourgeois education in politics, and foreign affairs with an emphasis on Russia and Soviet studies.

She was an advisor to Bush sr. on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And sat on the board of huge trans-national corporations, no doubt as a "Russia expert"

Under Bush jr. she was first National Security adviser and then Secretary of State.


When Oprah Winfrey asked her what she thought at the time of the Soviet Union collapse, being a Russia expert and all that. She said she was happy for the Russian people but at the same time she was shocked and surprised because nothing in her teachings foresaw such a series of events, that the ruling elite would choose this path.

But if she was a Soviet expert she must have read Trotsky? At least his most famous works, and he foresaw exactly that set of circumstances. Of course she never read Trotsky, in fact I doubt she's ever read a full length book in her life.

Reading her memoirs she states that the Russians hate Georgians, and then she says 'of course Stalin was Georgian, and Beria, "And a man so vile they named a purge after him - Sergo Ordzhonikidze {!!!!}

Uh, Ordzhonikidze died in February 1937, and the very worst thing any bourgeois expert has ever said about him is that he "might have been a soft-Stalinist, but a Stalinist nonetheless"

I mean seriously, Ordzhonikidze in the company of Stalin and Beria is singled out as being "so vile they named a purge after him"?

Does she not have any fact checkers? How can you be so stupid!?


She is in no way smarter than a Sarah Palin, but she isn't a politician, she's an academic, an 'expert', an adviser, a diplomat.

How was she able to reach such heights? Pure dumb luck?

What does it say when the bourgeois experts goes from the likes of Brzezinski and Colin Powell, two guys who really know their shit, especially Brzezinski, to the likes of Rice and Hillary Clinton? Such moronic people. Is it a sign of serious decline?

Rice is currently a professor at Stanford btw. Teaching a batch of future leaders, dumber than herself.

[Questionable]

The people you listed advance in the capitalist system because they support the status quo. Condoleeza Rice would never go and say that capitalism is hopelessly flawed and socialism is the only answer; she's a bourgeois apologist, and that's why she's kept around.

[Raúl Duke]

I kinda blame the quality of education one gets in college these days.

At my university, not many of the people studying poli-sci seem to be very bright, etc. They're just "wasting time" and "going through the motions" to get a degree that would later (after studying law I assume) get them to work in politics as politicians, etc. To them, it's all about the ends. At my uni, mostly people majoring in History, Anthropology, and Philosophy know about Marx/Leftist Intellectuals and talk knowledgeably about politics, particularly even outside the electoral/official realm. Although I met a few poli-sci majors talking about Negri, et.al and the ideas of the "multitude." Those people however went in because they want to "change" something I guess, most going into poli-sci are wannabe future GOP or Dem politicians.

Personally, I feel poli-sci is like (what I think of) economics: too highly ideological fields of study which major focus is to support the status-quo.


but at the same time she was shocked and surprised because nothing in her teachings foresaw such a series of events, that the ruling elite would choose this path.

That's not surprising because the majority of experts on the USSR, foreign affairs people, etc were all equally surprised. Even Brzezinski I believe.

[MarxSchmarx]

Rice is a scumbag, but she is not stupid. Failing to predict the fall of the USSR, as Raul Duke notes, was pretty common among Russia experts everywhere.

But to get to your broader question, "stupid" (I think you mean generally careless) people, very rarely undergo substantial upward social mobility in capitalism. There are a few exceptions, like Tara Reid, but they are exactly that, exceptions. Basically these people have some crazy gambling winnings or win the genetic lottery in terms of looks or physical abilities. There are also some people that are born into wealth who, if born poor, may have ended up staying poor. But on the whole, the system is built to reward some degree of risk taking, but more often than not cunning and picking up on clues others miss are how money is made. Even "dumb sales people" are really quite savvy in my experience.

When it comes to wealth creation, capitalism does have a system in place. There are some - in fact, many - amazingly intelligent people whose lives go no where under capitalism, yes. But it is probably correct that those who rose to wealth ("advanced") are as a group more educated and quite possibly more intelligent than the general population. The rich do not part with their money easily, it takes some pretty smart people to get them to do so.

[Psy]

The people you listed advance in the capitalist system because they support the status quo. Condoleeza Rice would never go and say that capitalism is hopelessly flawed and socialism is the only answer; she's a bourgeois apologist, and that's why she's kept around.
But what use is people like Condoleeza Rice to the bureaucracy? Condoleeza Rice is contaminated by propaganda as were the USSR "experts" that didn't see the collapse of the USSR coming. What good is a bureaucracy that believes its own lies, is that not like a used car sales man that believes his own sales pitch?