Where did the intellectual working class go?

The current working class European has an IQ below the average. You will not see complicated theories such as marxism and structuralism expressed by the working class. Marx, Althusser, Foucault and Gramsci are all absent in the library of the working class, that is, if they even have a library. But were the working class of the past like this? No.

The Swedish idea historian Ronny Ambjörnsson studied the ideas and ideals of sawmill workers in 1880-1930 in northern Sweden. The majority of the people who worked in the sawmills were also members of local civil society organizations, mainly in the temperance movement. They’d meet up for discussions regarding politics, have book clubs and have educational activities. Ambjörnsson writes that the ideal that was present in the sawmill society was that a worker should be educated, conscious and accultured. There was also a very strong class consciousness between the workers, and they leaned heavily towards social democracy and socialism.

But what happened to the working class? Why are they not so smart as they used to be? Why did the ideals and ideas change? Why do they vote for anti-immigration parties and are so conservative?

As soon as education is available for the general population, poor individuals with a higher IQ advance quickly in their respective societies. The most commonly known example of this is poor Ashkenazim and Asian immigrants who outperformed native US whites on average in education and income, and of course still outperform them today. But these people were not dumb when they were poor. Poverty doesn’t make you dumb.

The socialists of the past still exist, but they are now inside your government. They stepped up from the working class, only to become bureaucrats. They still yapp about stealing your wealth, but from a position of power.

Now, the question that I’m interested in is what this population would do if they were not in government jobs. Do we evade all the Ernestos, Fidels, Maos and Vladimirs by bribing them with government jobs? I think we do. But even then, they don’t sit still…


Ambjörnsson, R. (2017). Den skötsamme arbetaren : idéer och ideal i ett norrländskt sågverkssamhälle 1880-1930. Carlssons.

Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s