4. Marxism
If neoclassical productivism sanctifies output, Marxism radicalizes labor. Within this framework, the engine of history is not the market's invisible hand nor the ladder of merit, but the struggle between those who own the means of production and those whose labor creates value. In theory, this paradigm should be sympathetic to the genius: the intellectual worker who pours immense labor into the creation of knowledge, art, or technology.
But Marxism, in practice, inherits its own form of blindness. By grounding value in socially necessary labor time, it collapses the genius into a category where their contributions are indistinguishable from those of any other worker. Ramanujan's leap from intuition to theorem, which compresses centuries of intellectual toil into a single inspired formula, is worth no more under this calculus than the labor of a factory hand producing textiles. Van Gogh's tormented nights at the easel do not add up to value because his canvases did not circulate as commodities within his lifetime. Tesla's visions of global energy systems were not "labor time" in the Marxist sense, because they produced no exchange value in the market.
The paradox deepens: Marxism critiques capitalism for exploiting workers, yet it lacks the vocabulary to recognize the unique, non-linear productivity of genius. In a dialectical irony, the genius becomes doubly invisible---under capitalism because their contributions are not immediately profitable, and under Marxism because their labor is not socially validated as value-creating.
Moreover, Marxism's focus on collective struggle often mistrusts the figure of the solitary genius, treating them as bourgeois romanticism or as a mystification of class dynamics. The eccentric outsider---Tesla in his lab, Van Gogh in his studio, Ramanujan scribbling formulas in poverty---does not fit neatly into the Marxist script of collective labor power. At best, they are anomalies; at worst, they are distractions from the "real" agents of history, the masses.
Thus, while Marxism seeks to liberate human creativity from capitalist exploitation, it ironically erases precisely those forms of creativity that operate outside its categories. The impoverished genius is not redeemed by Marxism but subsumed---explained away as a symptom of class alienation, rather than recognized as a distinct tragedy of systemic blindness.
5. Wealth Mindset Ideology
If Marxism critiques structures and productivism quantifies outputs, wealth mindset ideology turns inward and proclaims: the problem is you. It is the gospel of self-help seminars, motivational gurus, and entrepreneurial evangelists who promise that riches await anyone who cultivates the "right" psychology. Poverty, in this worldview, is not systemic or historical but personal---a failure of mindset, discipline, or "abundance thinking."
For the impoverished genius, this ideology becomes a cruel caricature. Tesla, we are told, lacked the entrepreneurial spirit; Van Gogh failed to "market himself"; Ramanujan was insufficiently networked. Their poverty is reframed not as evidence of structural blindness to genius but as a cautionary tale against "bad mindset." In the seminar halls of wealth gurus, the moral is simple: if you are brilliant but broke, it is because you never learned to think rich.
The problem with this ideology is not merely its superficiality but its violence. It erases the structural conditions---the market's illegibility of abstract value, the time lag of genius, the hostility of capital to disruptive visions---and replaces them with psychologized blame. In doing so, it privatizes systemic failures and sells their solutions as commodities: books, courses, and "mindset coaching." It transforms structural injustice into a profitable industry of victim-blaming.
But most damning is its historical amnesia. Van Gogh's paintings did not soar in value because he suddenly adopted a millionaire mindset from beyond the grave; they soared because later institutions---dealers, museums, collectors---constructed markets that finally recognized them. Tesla's visions did not fail because he lacked affirmations but because they threatened entrenched business models. Ramanujan's genius did not blossom through visualization of wealth but through the raw intensity of intellectual obsession.
