No, that’s idealist. It’s not about who or how people are in themselves that makes them popular and powerful. It’s how useful they are to the ruling class. If they help to justify the oppressive system in power, it doesn’t matter whether they are intelligent or not. They can also honestly believe to do the right thing, while doing terrible things, if they don’t understand the economic system they find themselves in and it’s contradictions. Take Robert Owen, during his time, he was the most popular person in the British empire. He wasn’t manipulative, evil or sociopathic. He was just wrong. As an utopian socialist, he lacked the proper understanding about how capitalism functioned. By chance he became a very rich capitalist. Out of goodwill, he became the first philanthropist. His message that capitalism could be profitable and humane made him extremely popular, because it served the ruling classes. Then he came to understand his error. His workers, even though they worked “only” ten hours a day instead of the usual twelve, were still completely depended on him. In his words, they were still his “slaves”. He detested that and took action. He tried to convince everyone, that the whole system had to change radically. He was immediately shunned and hated by the establishment. Excluded from business he still tried to do everything to help the poor. He died poor himself. But being useful to hegemonic oppressors is not the only way. There’s another way for us to gain power, but collective power instead of individual one: through class struggle and revolution.