As a teacher of design, foresight and sustainable business models, I often encounter the challenges of engaging students and stakeholders in critical discussions about capitalism. Many people have a limited understanding of capitalism and how it shapes our society, often confusing it with democracy, freedom, and innovation. This confusion can make it difficult for them to envision alternative ways of organising society beyond the dominant capitalist system.
To address this issue, creating a solid connection between design and politics and between innovation and the material conditions that shape our societies is essential. By doing so, we can help students and stakeholders understand how design and capitalism are currently intertwined and how design can be used for social and political change.
Supporters of capitalism often perceive and understand the world through a variety of foundational lenses, which shape their views on society and the human condition.
Individualism
Capitalism imposes a social framework where individuals are viewed as solely responsible for their success or failure, stripping away the communal ties that traditionally sustain human societies. By centering on competition and self-interest, it compels people to prioritize personal ambition over collective well-being, undermining social cohesion. This mindset encourages a fragmented view of human existence, where community and cooperation are devalued, and individuals are isolated in their pursuit of personal goals. As a result, the idea of being the sole architect of one’s destiny serves not only to empower but also to alienate, cutting people off from the social bonds and mutual support systems that have defined human life across cultures.
Accumulation
At the heart of capitalism lies a process that extracts surplus value from workers and funnels it back into expanding the means of production. This relentless accumulation concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, deepening social hierarchies and perpetuating inequality. As capital is amassed, it entrenches the power of those who already control significant resources, creating an ever-widening gap between the privileged and the rest. This dynamic transforms social relations, privileging accumulation and control over communal bonds and shared well-being, reinforcing a system where power and wealth are increasingly disconnected from the broader society that sustains them.
Meritocracy
Capitalism promotes the idea of meritocracy, suggesting that people are rewarded based on talent, skills and hard work, unlike the rigid hierarchies of aristocracy. Yet, meritocracy mirrors these hierarchies. A UBS study found that only 8% of the 300 richest Swiss citizens earned their wealth, while the rest inherited it. In the next 20 to 30 years, over 1’000 billionaires are projected to transfer 5.2 trillion USD to their heirs. Despite the narrative of “self-made” success, a majority of the world’s ultra-wealthy either inherited their wealth or came from affluent backgrounds, challenging the idea that economic success is solely due to individual merit. By framing wealth and success as a result of personal effort, meritocracy obscures the structural barriers to true equality of opportunity. Like the old aristocratic order, it consolidates power among a few, creating new elites who protect their privileges under a façade of fairness. Its focus on individual success often leads to short-term gains over long-term solutions, reinforcing inequalities and neglecting broader societal well-being. Thus, meritocracy replaces one hierarchy with another, perpetuating inequality under the illusion of fairness.
Free market
Capitalist ideology presents the free market as the most efficient way to allocate resources and generate wealth, advocating for minimal government intervention. However, this “free market” often serves the interests of the capitalist class, perpetuating inequality and exploitation. It allows those who own capital to dictate terms, driving down wages and working conditions under the guise of competition. The market’s so-called freedom is built on accumulated wealth often acquired through exploitation, effectively privatizing profits while shifting the social and environmental costs onto the most vulnerable.
Private property
Private property is upheld as a core value in capitalist societies, emphasizing individual ownership and control over resources and production. This principle suggests that individuals have an inherent right to profit from their labor and investments, linking ownership to personal freedom and security. However, this notion of property rights often masks the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, enabling a small elite to control the means of production and dictate the terms of economic life. The emphasis on private ownership leads to social conflicts and deepens economic divides, as the majority are left with limited access to resources, while a privileged few accumulate wealth at their expense.
Patriarchy
Capitalism intertwines with patriarchal structures, entrenching gender inequality by prioritizing male authority and control while systematically devaluing women’s labor. It perpetuates norms that marginalize women, relegating their contributions to the margins and assigning lower economic value to their work, whether paid or unpaid. This system creates and reinforces economic barriers, leading to lower wages and fewer opportunities in female-dominated fields, while the unpaid care work performed predominantly by women remains invisible and unrecognized. These practices maintain a rigid social hierarchy that limits women’s mobility and agency, ensuring that power and resources remain concentrated in male-dominated spaces, sustaining gendered power imbalances across society.
Growth and productivism
Capitalist ideology stresses growth and productivity as essential pillars, promoting the belief that continuous economic expansion is vital for both economic health and individual well-being. However, this relentless focus on growth often comes at the expense of the environment and social equity, driving over-extraction of natural resources and fostering a culture of endless consumption. The pursuit of profit overrides concerns for sustainability or human welfare, treating both people and nature as mere tools to be exploited for economic gain, regardless of the long-term consequences.
Competition
In a capitalist economy, competition is seen as a driving force for innovation and efficiency, encouraging businesses to improve their products and services. However, this competitive mindset also promotes a “survival of the fittest” mentality, where the powerful thrive by exploiting the weak. It pits individuals and businesses against one another, driving wages down and prioritizing profits over people’s well-being. This focus on winning at all costs fosters a culture of cutthroat behavior, where mutual aid and cooperation are dismissed and social solidarity is undermined in favor of relentless accumulation.
Imperialism and colonialism
Capitalism’s expansionist framework often disguises imperialism and colonialism as necessary for economic growth and “development,” using these arguments to justify the violent domination and exploitation of entire nations and peoples. This framing turns theft and subjugation into a narrative of progress, allowing the powerful to extract resources, labor and wealth from the global periphery to enrich themselves. These actions, presented as beneficial or inevitable, are actually tools of control that maintain a global hierarchy, entrenching inequality and perpetuating the oppression of the many for the benefit of the few.
Dehumanization and racism
Modern capitalism is deeply intertwined with colonial ideologies that justified the exploitation of people and resources through practices like the transatlantic slave trade, land dispossession and the creation of racial hierarchies. These ideologies framed profit-making as a natural right of colonizers, commodifying not only human labor but also entire ecosystems to serve expanding markets. This history laid the groundwork for ongoing inequalities, with colonial practices evolving into contemporary policies, such as debt dependency, trade imbalances and structural adjustment programs that continue to favor the Global North over the South. These policies maintain the same dynamics of exploitation, while capitalist systems perpetuate their dominance by marginalizing diverse ways of knowing, living and resisting. The intersections of race, class and geography within these frameworks reveal the layered ways in which oppression functions, as capitalist practices continue to devalue indigenous knowledge systems and cultures, positioning them as inferior to Western models of development. By ignoring these alternative epistemologies, the current system reinforces a narrow vision of progress that benefits the few while sustaining cycles of exploitation and marginalization for the many.
Extractivism
Capitalism is built on a foundation of extraction, using plantations and mines to strip the earth and its people for maximum profit. This system sees land and labor as endless commodities to be dominated and exploited, with no regard for their inherent worth or the devastating impact on communities. Plantations turn land into zones of monoculture, displacing local farmers and destroying biodiversity, while mines carve up the earth, poisoning water and air in the pursuit of wealth. These practices drive a cycle of relentless extraction that sacrifices entire ecosystems and the lives of those who depend on them, all for the enrichment of a privileged few. The legacy of this system is ongoing: a deepening ecological crisis and ever-widening inequalities that continue to devastate both people and the planet.
Consumerism
Consumerism lies at the heart of capitalism, pushing the notion that economic growth and personal happiness depend on endless consumption. It instills the belief that one’s value and identity are measured by the ability to buy, turning people into perpetual shoppers whose worth is defined by their purchasing power. Through relentless marketing and manufactured desires, it manipulates social trends and culture, convincing people that fulfillment comes from accumulating more goods. This obsessive focus on material wealth feeds a cycle of overproduction and waste, diverting attention from deeper issues of inequality and exploitation, while keeping the system intact by keeping people consuming.
Overwork and burnout
Capitalism, much like communism, operates as a productivity-driven system that glorifies relentless work and constant output, reducing human life to units of labor to be maximized. Under this framework, overwork is celebrated as a sign of virtue and dedication, driving people to exhaustion in the pursuit of endless growth and profit. This obsession with productivity leads to widespread burnout, chronic stress and declining health, while the pressure to constantly achieve causes individuals to neglect their own well-being. In both systems, the human spirit is subordinated to the demands of production, normalizing a cycle of overwork where worth is defined by output, not by the quality of life or genuine fulfillment.
Surveillance
Both capitalism and communism rely on extensive surveillance to maintain control, though they do so for different ends. In capitalist societies, surveillance technologies track workers’ productivity and consumers’ habits, reducing privacy to a mere privilege reserved for those who can afford it. This constant monitoring ensures that every action is monetized, and every behavior is analyzed to squeeze out maximum profit. Meanwhile, in communist states, surveillance is used to oversee citizens’ loyalty and suppress any threat to the state’s authority. Regardless of the system, surveillance becomes a means of domination, treating people not as free individuals, but as subjects to be observed, controlled, and directed according to the interests of those in power.
Financialisation
Financialisation is not a new phenomenon but a deepening of capitalism’s inherent reliance on speculative finance, evident since its earliest days with joint-stock companies and financial bubbles like the South Sea and Tulip Manias. In recent decades, this tendency has accelerated, with the financial sector now dominating the global economy through instruments like derivatives that have little connection to real economic activity. In 2022, the notional value of the global derivatives market exceeded 600 trillion USD, compared to a global GDP of around 100 trillion USD. This reveals a financial “casino” built on the labor of workers, where the wealthy profit from speculation while others endure the risks. This mechanism reinforces a system where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the global transnational bourgeoisie, entrenching their position at the top and further insulating them from the economic instability they help create.
Commodification
Capitalism imposes a merchant’s worldview, seeing everything—nature, human labor, social bonds, even intimacy and mental health—as merchandise to be bought, sold and profited from. This perspective strips all things of their intrinsic value, reducing them to market transactions and reinforcing the idea that only what can be commodified has worth. Relationships become market exchanges, care and connection are packaged as services, and even human well-being is repurposed for profit. The commodification of life distorts every aspect of existence, severing our natural connections and reducing the world to a series of goods to be traded and consumed, all to feed an endless cycle of accumulation.
Not all of the pillars of capitalism are exclusive to capitalism. For example, patriarchy and imperialism have existed in many economic systems throughout history. However, the critical distinction with capitalism is how these pillars are reinforced and perpetuated through the system’s fundamental mechanisms and institutions, such as the free market, private property and competition.