How sacred myths, everyday practices, systemic violence sustain exploitative capitalist global order

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak 

The rituals of capitalism are crucial for constructing and reinforcing its narrative as the dominant—and seemingly sole—organising system of society. Much like religion, capitalism relies on rituals to socialise people into accepting abnormal and unnatural processes and institutions as the only viable options in their everyday lives. These rituals serve to normalise and naturalise capitalist society and its culture, embedding capitalist social, economic, and market relations into the lives of individuals and communities, and perpetuating them daily under the guise of rationalising the 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. These tools are deployed to domesticate both people and nature, all in the name of an illusory freedom. In doing so, capitalism commodifies and colonises both human beings and the planet, sustaining itself through boundless exploitation.

The foundational rite of capitalism is the privatisation of land and all natural resources to establish and safeguard private property, which is treated as sacrosanct in capitalist societies. This sanctification enables limitless accumulation, legitimised through laws, policies, and, when necessary, brute force—justified in the name of divine order or sovereign authority, whether democratic or dictatorial. The transformation of communal resources into private property has become a defining pillar of modern capitalism. Legal and policy frameworks have evolved to brand resistance as criminal, anti-development, undemocratic, anti-freedom, or even anti-national. This dominant narrative helps capitalism survive and thrive, largely unchallenged.

Another central ritual is commodity fetishism—where living labour and nature are commodified, masking the underlying social relations involved in production, reproduction, distribution, exchange, and consumption. Commodity fetishism distorts human relationships—with one another and with nature—dismantling communities and their collective foundations. It replaces cultures of solidarity with atomised individuals who primarily function as consumers. In such an alienated society, consumption becomes the main source of personal meaning, replacing genuine social bonds. The seductive ideals of “my space, my happiness, my car” begin to dictate everyday life.

Standardisation is yet another strategic ritual, rooted in Taylorist principles that optimise the mass production of goods, services, and even culture. Products, time, skills, technologies, and creativity are all standardised to align with the needs of capitalist expansion and profit maximisation. While this may enhance efficiency, it marginalises small producers and narrows consumer choice. It also undermines the conditions for local production and cultural diversity, imposing monotonous routines on workers and reducing life to repetitive tasks in service of capital.

Capitalism also ritualises the concept of the "free market"—an ideal that is neither truly free nor fair. In practice, it is unaccountable to producers, consumers, or democratic oversight. It functions to manipulate production, consumption, and pricing solely for the generation of super-profits. The "free market" is free only in the sense that it allows the exploitation of producers and consumers without interference.

The rituals of privacy, individualism, and freedom are held sacred within capitalist ideology. However, these are primarily designed to protect property and its owners, while the working poor remain exposed to poverty, hunger, and homelessness. For the underprivileged, "privacy" is often limited to makeshift shelters—beneath trees, under bridges, or in roadside slums. In the digital age, even their privacy is reduced to data—numbers collected, stored, and exploited by state and private entities with a click.

Similarly, the rituals of individualism and freedom, much like the religious promise of salvation, remain largely illusory. Capitalism promotes a vision of individualism tied to utility, pleasure, and consumption, while suppressing true freedom and libidinal needs. Personal freedoms are carefully curated to conform to the system’s imperatives. In this consumerist society, freedom is less a reality and more a myth.

Violence, too, is inherent in the rituals of capitalism. There is no peaceful path to capitalist accumulation—whether it is through the exploitation of human labour or the extraction of natural resources. Capitalist growth often requires and justifies violence, frequently deployed through the state and its institutions—police, security forces, and militaries—on behalf of private interests. Across the globe, Indigenous communities are displaced or exterminated in the name of mining-led industrialisation, as people and nature are sacrificed to feed profit-driven hierarchies.

Contemporary wars and conflicts are, directly or indirectly, resource-based—highlighting how violence underpins even the so-called “peaceful” mechanisms of accumulation. The public display of violence becomes a tool of mass domestication, instilling fear to enforce submission. Everyday forms of institutional violence are embedded in governance under the pretext of maintaining law and order. These are not exceptions but systemic features of capitalism.

Furthermore, capitalist rituals often bolster dictatorial, irrational, reactionary, and superstitious political, cultural, and religious forces under the veil of cultural relativism. This philosophical cover is often used to legitimise inequality and exploitation, weakening internationalist solidarities necessary to address global challenges like war, climate collapse, and human rights violations.

These ritualised forms of capitalist religiosity continue to shape our contemporary world and its everyday practices of dehumanisation. It is therefore imperative that rituals of resistance emerge to confront and challenge these capitalist rites. Such resistance must strive to build diverse, democratic, decolonial, decentralised, and decarbonised alternatives—systems that prioritise people and the planet, and where peace and prosperity guide our collective future.