Rituals of Capitalism

Rituals of capitalism are crucial to develop capitalist narratives as dominant and only narratives. There is no other alternative to capitalism. Like religions, capitalism also relies heavily on rituals to socialise people into accepting abnormal and unnatural processes and institutional structures as the only viable options in their everyday lives. These rituals help normalise and naturalise capitalist society and its culture, where capitalist social, economic, and market relations are internalised by individuals and communities, and perpetuated daily under the guise of rationalisation of lifeworld.

Legal frameworks, market protocols, and governance procedures enable capitalism to control, domesticate, incentivise, and promote art, architecture, advertising, cinema, music, and various political, cultural, economic, social, and educational projects to domesticate people and nature in the name of illusive freedom. This allows capitalism to commodify and colonise both people and the planet, sustaining itself through boundless exploitation.

The primary rite of capitalism is the privatisation of land and all other natural resources to establish and secure private property, which is considered sacrosanct in all capitalist societies. This sanctification of private property enables processes of limitless accumulation, supported by laws, policies, and brute force, all justified in the name of divine order or authoritative rule—be it dictatorial or democratic. This transformation of communal resources into private property has become a foundational pillar of contemporary capitalism. Legal mechanisms and policy frameworks have created conditions in which any resistance to capitalism is branded as criminal, anti-growth, undemocratic, anti-freedom, or even anti-national. Such a dominant narrative allows capitalism to survive and grow without facing any significant challenges.

Commodity fetishism is another core ritual of capitalism, in which the commodification of living labour and nature lies at the heart of the system. It obscures the underlying social relations involved in the processes of production, reproduction, distribution, exchange, and consumption. Through commodity fetishism, human beings and their relationships—with each other and with nature—are devalued and distorted. It dismantles communities, erodes their collective foundations, and destroys cultures of solidarity, replacing them with atomised individuals who live and function primarily as consumers. In such an alienated society, the consumption of commodities becomes the primary source of meaning in individual lives, displacing genuine interpersonal social relationships. The elusive notions of ‘my space, my happiness, and my car’ shape the everyday activities of individuals under capitalism.

Standardisation is another strategic ritual of capitalism, rooted in the ideals of Taylorism, which facilitates the floor management of the mass production of goods, services, and culture in alignment with the needs of capitalist expansion. Products, time, skills, technologies, people, and their creativity are all standardised in the pursuit of capitalist profit. While this strategy supports efficiency and profit maximisation, it is detrimental to small producers, and also to consumers, as it can limit meaningful choice. For working people, standardisation undermines the conditions necessary for local production and consumption, thereby eroding diverse cultural practices around how goods are made and used. Ultimately, standardisation serves capitalism by reducing production costs and consolidating profits. At the same time, it imposes rigid routines on workers, creating a culture where life becomes monotonous and repetitive.

Capitalism promotes the asocial concept of the “free market” as part of its ritualisation. However, the free market is neither truly free nor fair. In practice, it is free from producers, consumers, and distributors—and free from accountability or scrutiny by the state, government, or any other regulatory institution. It is neither a social nor an economic institution designed to protect the interests of producers or consumers. Instead, it is structured to manipulate production, distribution, consumption, and pricing in order to generate super-profits for the capitalist class, while exploiting working people without hindrance. Free market means free to exploit producers and consumers.

Privacy, individualism, and freedom are among the sacred rituals of capitalism. Privacy, in this context, is primarily designed to protect property and its owners, while working people continue to endure harsh conditions of poverty, hunger, and homelessness. For the poor, privacy is often reduced to makeshift shelters—trees, overpasses, and roadside slums covered with thin plastic sheets that serve as fragile barriers from public view. In the age of digitalisation, the privacy of the working poor has been reduced to data—mere numbers stored and accessed at the click of a mouse by state and private digital corporations.

The capitalist rituals of individualism and freedom, much like the promise of salvation after death, remain largely illusory. Yet capitalism continues to promote various forms of individualism and freedom rooted in the ideals of utility, pleasure, and satisfaction. In reality, individuals often sacrifice genuine freedom and libidinal needs within a constructed desire-driven, consumerist society—one that perpetually reproduces commodity desires to sustain the commodity market. Even so-called personal freedoms are carefully curated and constrained by the needs of the capitalist system. In such a society, the notion of freedom is little more than a myth.

The rituals of violence are inherent within capitalism. There is no such thing as a peaceful process of capitalist accumulation—whether it involves the exploitation of human beings, their labour and creative capacities, or the extraction of natural resources. Violence lies at the core of capitalist accumulation. Capitalism frequently relies on the state and its institutions—such as the police, security forces, and military—to defend the interests of private corporations. Across the globe, indigenous communities are often displaced or killed in the name of mining-led industrialisation, where both people and nature are exploited to feed the profit-driven hierarchy of private wealth.

Most contemporary conflicts and wars are, directly or indirectly, resource-based conflicts, highlighting how violence is essential to the supposedly “peaceful” processes of capitalist accumulation. The public display of violence is central to creating conditions for mass domestication by instilling fear for lives and livelihoods. Various forms of primitive violence are embedded in everyday governance, where the state and government justify their use in the name of maintaining law and order. These are tools of mass domestication. The celebration and normalisation of violence are integral to capitalism and are woven into its hypostasised systems and processes.

Capitalist rituals often promote dictatorial, irrational, reactionary, and superstitious political, social, cultural, and religious forces under the guise of cultural relativism. This philosophical framework is frequently used to justify various forms of inequality and exploitation in the name of cultural context. In doing so, it undermines an internationalist outlook—an essential perspective for addressing global challenges such as war, the climate crisis, and the protection of workers’ and human rights.

These religiosities of capitalist rituals continue to shape contemporary capitalism and its everyday practices of dehumanisation. Therefore, rituals of resistance must confront and challenge these capitalist rites, while simultaneously striving to build diverse, democratic, decolonial, decentralised and decarbonised alternatives that prioritise people and the planet—where peace and prosperity define the future.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a political commentator