I'm skeptical of the word 'intelligence', especially since it serves as a convenient justification for class division, and therefore so much pain and misery. If the word has any redeeming value, then the surest sign of intelligence is ferreting out the ways in one which has not escaped, and likely cannot escape, the common stupor.
And for that reason, I would beware granting any credit to the chatter of 'experts' ... the experts are functionaries, and usually pedants to boot, whether or not they style themselves differently ... if I had the choice between wasting my time chatting with 1. a marxist professor who claims to do their canned work on behalf of 'the masses' or 'the workers' or 2. the most racist, sexist, 'deplorable' working stiff you can imagine, I'd choose the latter any day of the week ... and simply because the second person is more interesting -- isn't a functionary, has a unique story, and like the rest of us working stiffs, is more redeemable.
I wish you luck in your actions, but I also wish you the ability to take it easy and to laugh, even at yourself, since individuals are not given the power to overrule the environments which foster them -- environments on which they remain dependent and within which they are fully integrated. Like you, I think capitalism is awful and sea change desirable. Ah, but history is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Heroes and villains do not make history; chance, blind forces, unintended consequences are the primary players. We all carry on without answers or solutions ... better to drift on the wreckage than vainly await someone who knows a way out.
