Fascist politicians like Donald Trump and billionaire bosses like Elon Musk are reviving the poison of IQ, “genetic superiority,” and human hierarchy. Trump brags about his “good genes… a very high IQ” (Washington Post, 10/2016), reducing people to bloodlines and rankings. Musk pushes a high-tech version of the same lie, claiming “AI will surpass human intelligence by the end of 2026” (World Economic Forum, 01/2026), treating intelligence like a number that can rank workers, machines, and whole populations. Underlying this logic is a racist, sexist logic meant to prime the working class for fascism. Billionaires like Peter Thiel openly defend inequality and attack even the façade of liberal-democracy, insisting that society must be led by a so-called superior few (Cato Institute, 2009). Different voices, same message: some people are meant to rule, and the rest are meant to obey.
These ideas are not new. They are the same old ruling-class lie dressed up in a new language. From Charles Murray to earlier racists like E. O. Wilson, the bosses have always tried to “prove” that inequality is natural. What they call science is propaganda for the ruling class. Today they dress up eugenics in the language of data, genetics, and technology to make that lie seem modern and inevitable, but the goal has not changed: to justify exploitation and prepare the ground for repression and genocide.
This fascist message is clear: if workers are poor, exploited, or discarded, it is because they lack intelligence. This lie must be smashed. Intelligence is not biological destiny. It is produced through the collective labor of the working class.
Working-Class intelligence is social labor
Intelligence does not belong to individuals. It is created through the collective labor of the working class. Every day, workers generate knowledge through cooperation, improvisation, and struggle. A teacher reads a classroom, adjusts instruction, and develops new ways to reach students under pressure. A transit worker carries out an emergency evacuation, coordinating movement, calming passengers, and restoring service in the face of danger. A nurse makes rapid decisions that balance training with the unpredictable realities of a patient’s condition. These are not isolated acts of individual genius. They are expressions of social labor, rooted in shared experience and collective practice.
This intelligence is cumulative. It is built over time through shared struggle, passed between workers, refined in practice, and sharpened as a class project. On the job, workers constantly solve problems that management cannot anticipate. Workers build shortcuts, informal support systems, and collective strategies that keep workplaces functioning despite underfunding, speedups, and outright repression. Without it, production would grind to a halt.
This intelligence is also fundamentally cooperative. It emerges through communication, trust, and coordination. Workers depend on one another, pooling insight and synchronizing action in ways no isolated individual could replicate. Even under conditions designed to fragment and isolate workers, they generate shared understanding. This stands in direct opposition to the capitalist myth of intelligence as an individual asset to be measured, ranked, and rewarded. In reality, intelligence is relational. It is produced between people, not contained within them.
Capital depends on this worker’s social intelligence at every level, yet it refuses to recognize its source. Instead, it extracts knowledge from workers and presents it as the property of institutions, experts, and machines. Training manuals, algorithms, and management techniques are all built on the accumulated knowledge of workers, stripped from its social context and repackaged as capital’s property. What workers create together is turned into a force that disciplines and controls them.
Scarcity, debraining, and the myth of experts
To maintain this system, capitalism makes knowledge scarce. Access to education is restricted, expertise is enclosed within elite institutions, and information is hoarded behind paywalls and credentials. The knowledge produced by workers is taken, concentrated, and repackaged as specialized expertise (LARB, 02/2025). At the same time, the working class is subjected to social debraining. Exhaustion, precarity, and endless distraction fragment attention and prevent collective understanding (Brooklyn Rail, 02/2026). Workers are denied the time and space needed to connect their experiences into class consciousness.
The ruling class then elevates “experts” as the rightful owners of knowledge. These experts claim neutrality, but their authority depends on their alignment with capital. “Experts” are empowered to interpret and manage knowledge extracted from workers while dismissing working-class understanding as uninformed. This creates a false divide between workers. In truth, expert knowledge is itself a crystallization of collective labor.
It is not the property of a cognitive elite, but a derivative of social production. The real conflict is not between intelligence and ignorance. It is between capitalist enclosure of knowledge and the working class’s capacity to reclaim it.
Communist revolution is the only solution
The problem is not flawed IQ tests or biased algorithms. The problem is capitalism itself. This system turns human intelligence into a commodity, ranks workers to justify exploitation, and deploys science and technology as tools of domination (LARB, 02/2024). No reform can fix this. As long as capitalism exists, knowledge will be privatized, intelligence will be weaponized, and fascist ideas will reappear to defend inequality.
The only solution is communist revolution. The working class must seize the knowledge it produces and abolish the structures that hoard, distort, and control it. Under communism, intelligence will no longer serve profit or hierarchy. It will be shared collectively and used to meet human needs.
The artificial divisions of IQ, expertise, and worth will be destroyed, replaced by a society where the collective intelligence of workers organizes production and social life. As the antiracist anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould argued, we will be “less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
The ruling class fears this future. That is why it clings to the language of IQ and hierarchy. But the truth is simple: the working class already has the knowledge to run society. What it lacks is power. That power will only be won through organized, revolutionary struggle. Join PLP!
Greenbelt, Maryland, March 28—“Whose Park, Our Park” and “ICE out of Greenbelt” were enthusiastic chants as 250 people marched for 24 minutes through Greenbelt Park and past the police station where Federal Park Police detain immigrants for ICE. Several Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends helped the Greenbelt Resistance Network (GRN) organize and guarantee the success of this militant challenge to the ICE machine. As Donald Trump has released police forces throughout the Federal government, even the Park Police have become collaborators with ICE. In this case the Park Police pull over drivers on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, a federal highway. They racially profile drivers and target workers driving pickup trucks. ICE agents often join them at the highway but may also come to the police station in Greenbelt Park.
No such thing as a “good” cop
This march at “No Kings #3” clearly caught the Park Police off guard. With 250 marchers and another 150+ protestors on the other side of the street there was little they could do, although they tried to exert control by telling us to march “single file.” Eventually they called the local Greenbelt police who arrived at the tail end of the event and pretended to help escort the remaining marchers across the street. Already 200 marchers had made it across without a single cop. A comrade gave a speech attacking all police forces and calling for an end to the capitalist system. A couple of people tried to stop him, saying that they love their Greenbelt police who were just trying to help. Others jumped in to support the comrade’s speech. This sharpened the politics within the GRN and supporters and offers us a chance to continue to explain that all police exist to control workers and protect the capitalist class. The idea that local police oppose ICE is a myth being spread in the media to confuse the many new protesters. There are no good cops. The No Kings rallies overall have no political message other than voting for the Democratic Party and opposition to the worst of ICE’s behavior. They do not oppose genocide, and as we have also seen in Congress, have no real opposition to immigrant enforcement or war.
Workers show signs of class potential
The march through Greenbelt Park followed two months of previous rallies against ICE and the Park Police. Weekly meetings of the Greenbelt Resistance Network (GRN) had debated and planned this protest and considered questions of security and safety. In the end, the event went off without a permit, and the numbers made it work! Marching into this federal park with signs and chants is certainly “breaking the law” and shows the potential for the working class to advance with consistent organizing and commitment to class struggle. The rally and march were more multiracial than past rallies. A highlight of the rally was when a Black woman stepped up and said, “We are all in this together” and then led the crowd in singing civil rights songs. Another protestor took the mike to chant “Obreros Unidos no mas seran vencidos” and we translated: “The workers united will never be defeated.” PLP members were able to talk with many residents and make contacts for the party and for GRN. We gave out 30 CHALLENGEs and 50 notices about our ongoing struggle in Hyattsville where ICE is attempting to expand its presence in a local building and where we have given out 50 CHALLENGEs in the past two weeks. PLP has become recognized as a serious organization here.
Winning people to organize with our party for May Day is the next step, as more of our friends learn about our vision of a communist society and the struggle for revolution.
In Northwest Indiana, 800 workers were locked out of their jobs at the British Petroleum (BP) refinery on March 19th. They were followed by another 1600 workers locked out by utility company NIPSCO on April 2nd. PLP members were at the picket sharing communist politics and warm food. The bosses want to build fascism and racism to discipline our class to prepare for war, but workers aren't backing down! More to come in the next issue!
The Retired Teachers Chapter (RTC) of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) underwent a dramatic shift last year when the Unity Caucus lost to a slate of retirees who fought to defend our original Medicare coverage rather than accept a “disadvantage plan.” Unity has dominated the UFT since its founding, so this break was significant — and it opened new political space inside the chapter.
Introducing militant ideas
Our Party club meets collectively and in smaller sub-clubs, and comrades in these groups have been organizing steadily within the RTC to raise the level of struggle and bring communist ideas, as well as sharper, more militant ideas into the chapter. We helped form an anti fascist group within the RTC’s Labor Solidarity Committee, giving us a consistent presence on the executive board and at the monthly meetings, which draw a few hundred in person and close to a thousand on Zoom. Most importantly, we’ve attracted a core of retired teachers who want to confront fascism and imperialism directly. We meet regularly and publish a newsletter that advances both the practical and ideological struggle inside the RTC.
We’ve had the greatest success at the general meetings and through the anti fascist committee. Our resolutions—including one addressing the growing fascist threat in the U.S.—have passed overwhelmingly, often with more than 80 percent support. Yet, as is often the case, the current RTC leadership remains timid. They “understand” the world situation but lack confidence that the membership can grasp the ideas and language needed to explain what so many people already feel. The terms that have sparked the most “controversy” are fascism and imperialism.
Liberal union bosses try quelling antifascist language
Our committee collectively drafted a resolution opposing the imperialist war in Iran. When our members and allies presented it to the executive board, it was rejected because it used the word imperialism. The board substituted a watered down version, but even so, the RTC is now officially on record opposing the war—and that resolution also passed with well over 80 percent support.
Our newsletter has been especially well received. Each issue features a conversation between two retired teachers debating the political questions of the moment. This month’s discussion focused on why terms like imperialism and fascism are essential for understanding world events, not rhetorical flourishes to be avoided.
Our work in the RTC produces small but meaningful gains. Two members of our anti fascist committee helped distribute the newsletter to everyone entering the meeting hall. We’ve also circulated CHALLENGE to much of our growing base. Many RTC members marched in the No Kings rally, and were joined by PL’ers there with a banner calling for resistance to rising fascism and to the imperialist war in Iran. Step by step, through patience and consistent struggle, we are making progress.
The Party still has a long road ahead before we have the forces necessary to mount a communist revolution. But right now, we can have a real impact on both the practical and ideological struggle by bringing communist ideas to the working class. Once grasped, these ideas become a powerful force for change and ultimately communist revolution.
Baltimore, MD, March 28—There was an early spring chill in the air as the crowd filled War Memorial Plaza in front of Baltimore City Hall. The red communist flag of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) waved among the tide of patriotic and anti-Trump posters, as well as Palestinian flags. As international communists, we make no mistake in flying only the red flag, the only one that represents all workers of the world.
We positioned ourselves on the right side of the main stage. Armed with a stack of communist flyers and CHALLENGE newspapers, we mingled among the crowd. Our chants of “Communist flyer, communist flyer!” resonated with those in front of the stage.
No kings and no bosses
The No Kings rallies are largely organized by the Indivisible Project, a non-profit organization sponsored by several foundations and capitalists, including the Open Society Foundation, Sandler Foundation, and Reid Hoffman, the CEO of LinkedIn. These “progressive” organizations are now deceiving their liberal base by promoting workers’ rights, equity, and justice, while in 2024—under Genocide Joe’s administration—they were timidly silent during the height of the genocide in Gaza. Local, state and federal politicians who acted as puppeteers for these non-profits occupied the stage. Their job is to entertain and contain their liberal base to garner enough votes and win in upcoming elections, which only maintains the same rotten capitalist system. In contrast, PLP fights to destroy capitalism and the dictatorship of the capitalist class. We organize workers, soldiers, and youth into a revolutionary movement for communism.
While the Big Fascists, under their Democrat label, were speaking nationalist unity, we fired back with our literature.
From our flyer:
“There are no kings or queens in the U.S., but the U.S. Government certainly likes monarchies. Republicans and Democrats alike are feeding propaganda, telling us to support lesser-evil politicians, while actually making bloody deals with deadly monarchs around the world.”
We all took turns passing out the newspaper. Our newest comrade had a valuable time sharing our communist line. We sold 100 copies of CHALLENGE, spread 300 flyers, received donations, and had productive conversations with other protesters. We talked with the workers who wanted to know more about PLP and communism, collecting contacts from those who were especially interested.
Despite the Democrats’ parade of national unity, Progressive Labor Party spoke to the true unity of international worker solidarity. We fight to smash the bosses, racism, sexism, and fascism through collective struggle among the working class. Our ultimate goal for a safe and egalitarian world is only possible under a communist society. Fight for communism! Join PLP!
