Criticism of capitalism typically ranges from disagreement with particular aspects or outcomes of capitalism to rejection of the capitalist system in its entirety. Criticism comes from various political and philosophical perspectives, including anarchist, socialist, religious, and nationalist viewpoints. Some believe that capitalism can only be overcome through revolution, while others believe that structural change can occur gradually through political reforms. Some critics believe that capitalism has merits and wish to balance it with some form of social control, typically through government regulation (e.g., the social market movement).
Prominent among critiques of capitalism are accusations that it is inherently exploitative, alienating, unstable, and unsustainable; that it creates massive economic inequality, commodifies people, is anti-democratic; and leads to an erosion of human rights and national sovereignty. Meanwhile, it incentivises imperialist expansion and war and benefits a small minority at the expense of the majority of the population. Environmental scientists and activists, leftists, and degrowthers have also criticised capitalism for depleting resources, causing climate change, biodiversity loss, topsoil loss, eutrophication, and for generating massive amounts of pollution and waste.
History
Early critics of capitalism, such as Friedrich Engels, claimed that rapid industrialization in Europe created unfair working conditions, including 14-hour work days, child labor, and shanty towns. Some modern economists argue that average living standards did not improve, or only very slowly improved, before 1840.
Writing in 2025, Harvard historian Sven Beckert describes the other story of capitalism as one including the exploitation of labour, slavery, colonialism, war, environmental devastation and immiseration. He concludes "In this story, capitalism is an insatiable demon on a planet-threatening trajectory with staggering social costs."
Criticism by different schools of thought
Anarchism French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking, and land interests and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion that led to it), which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. The Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Giménez Igualada sees "capitalism is an effect of government; the disappearance of government means capitalism falls from its pedestal vertiginously ... That which we call capitalism is not something else but a product of the State, within which the only thing that is being pushed forward is profit, good or badly acquired. And so to fight against capitalism is a pointless task, since be it State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism, as long as Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of consciousness, is against the State"."el capitalismo es sólo el efecto del gobierno; desaparecido el gobierno, el capitalismo cae de su pedestal vertiginosamente ... Lo que llamamos capitalismo no es otra cosa que el producto del Estado, dentro del cual lo único que se cultiva es la ganancia, bien o mal habida. Luchar, pues, contra el capitalismo es tarea inútil, porque sea Capitalismo de Estado o Capitalismo de Empresa, mientras el Gobierno exista, existirá el capital que explota. La lucha, pero de conciencias, es contra el Estado."Anarquismo by Miguel Gimenez Igualada
Within anarchism, there emerged a critique of wage slavery, which refers to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary slavery, where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. The term "wage slavery" has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops) and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy.
Libertarian socialists believe that if freedom is valued, society must work towards a system in which individuals have the power to decide on economic and political issues. Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified authority with direct democracy, voluntary federation, and popular autonomy in all aspects of life, including physical communities and economic enterprises.Harrington, Austin, et al. Encyclopedia of Social Theory Routledge (2006) p. 50 With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal use, Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines while later Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves". American anarchist Emma Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was incompatible with human liberty. "The only demand that property recognizes", she wrote in Anarchism and Other Essays, "is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade".Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays. 3rd ed. 1917. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1969, p. 54. She also argued that capitalism dehumanized workers, "turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron".
Noam Chomsky contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting oneself to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace. Many libertarian socialists argue that large-scale voluntary associations should manage industrial manufacture while workers retain rights to the individual products of their labor.Lindemann, Albert S. A History of European Socialism Yale University Press (1983) p. 160 As such, they see a distinction between the concepts of "private property" and "personal possession". Whereas "private property" grants an individual exclusive control over a thing, whether it is in use or not, and regardless of its productive capacity, "possession" grants no rights to things that are not in use.Ely, Richard et al. 'Property and Contract in Their Relations to the Distribution of Wealth' The Macmillan Company (1914)
In addition to anarchist Benjamin Tucker's "big four" monopolies (land, money, tariffs and patents) that have emerged under capitalism, neo-mutualist economist Kevin Carson argues that the state has also transferred wealth to the wealthy by subsidizing organizational centralization in the form of transportation and communication subsidies. He believes that Tucker overlooked this issue because of his focus on individual market transactions, whereas Carson focuses on organizational issues. The theoretical sections of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy are presented as an attempt to integrate marginalist critiques into the labor theory of value.Kevin A. Carson, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy chs. 1–3 Carson has also been highly critical of intellectual property. The primary focus of his most recent work has been decentralized manufacturing and the informal and household economies. Carson holds that "[c]apitalism, arising as a new class society directly from the old class society of the Middle Ages, was founded on an act of robbery as massive as the earlier feudal conquest of the land. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect its system of privilege without which its survival is unimaginable".Richman, Sheldon, Libertarian Left , The American Conservative (March 2011)
Carson coined the pejorative term "vulgar libertarianism", a phrase that describes the use of free-market rhetoric in defense of corporate capitalism and economic inequality. According to Carson, the term is derived from the phrase "vulgar political economy", which Karl Marx described as an economic order that "deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the ideas which contain the contradictions [existing in economic life]".Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, III, p. 501.
Conservatism and traditionalism
In Conservatives Against Capitalism, Peter Kolozi relies on Norberto Bobbio's definition of right and left, dividing the two camps according to their preference for hierarchy or equality, respectively. Kolozi argued that capitalism has faced persistent criticism from the right since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Such critics, while heterogeneous, are united in the belief "that laissez-faire capitalism has undermined an established social hierarchy governed by the virtuous or excellent".
In September 2018, Murtaza Hussain wrote in The Intercept about "Conservatives Against Capitalism", stating: For all their differences, there is one key aspect of the intellectual history charted in "Conservatives Against Capitalism" that deals with an issue of shared concern on both the left and the right: the need for community. One of the grim consequences of the Social Darwinian pressures unleashed by free-market capitalism has been the destruction of networks of community, family, and professional associations in developed societies. ... These so-called intermediate institutions have historically played a vital role giving ordinary people a sense of meaning and protecting them from the structural violence of the state and the market. Their loss has led to the creation of a huge class of atomized and lonely people, cut adrift from traditional sources of support and left alone to contend with the power of impersonal economic forces.In June 2023, Bridget Ryder wrote in The European Conservative about the degrowth movement, stating:
Fascism
Fascists opposed both international socialism and free-market capitalism, arguing that their views represented a Third PositionPayne, Stanley G., Fascism: Comparison and Definition. (Madison, Wisconsin; London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980) p. 162. and claiming to provide a realistic economic alternative that was neither laissez-faire capitalism nor communism.Philip Morgan, Fascism in Europe, 1919–1945, New York, Taylor & Francis, 2003, p. 168. They favored corporatism and class collaboration, believing that the existence of inequality and social hierarchy was natural (contrary to the views of socialists) "[Fascism] affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men"John Weiss, "The Fascist Tradition", Harper & Row, New York, 1967. pp. 14 while also arguing that the state had a role in mediating relations between classes (contrary to the views of economic liberals).Calvin B. Hoover, The Paths of Economic Change: Contrasting Tendencies in the Modern World, The American Economic Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. (March 1935), pp. 13–20.
Liberalism
During the Age of Enlightenment, some proponents of liberalism criticized wage slavery.Chomsky, Noam (1993). Year 501: The Conquest Continues. Verso. p. 19. .Rodriguez, Junius P. (2007). Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia. 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 500. . However, classical liberalism itself was very much an ideology of capitalism, supporting the free market and laissez-faire.
Marxism