Understanding Capitalist Cultists, Part Two: The Nature of Indoctrination

Markets economists are not economists at all - they are cult recruiters.

Peter Joseph is a filmmaker & author; host of the podcast Revolution Now! and one can support his work through Patreon.

Read Part One of this subject here.

Introduction: Language, Identity, and the Problem of Fixed Concepts

When engaging people who subscribe rigidly to market-economic ideology, the same pattern emerges again and again. You begin to talk about some element of the economic structure—competition, efficiency, value, whatever—and instead of having a conversation, you hit a conceptual brick wall. The problem isn’t necessarily that the person lacks intelligence or information. It’s that they’re operating with a fixed, insulated lexicon—a pre-loaded package of meanings they treat as inviolable. And because those meanings are fused with identity, there is no elasticity left in the conversation.

This phenomenon is deeper than intellectual disagreement. It’s structural. Thought itself is built out of language, and language is a chain of subjects, inferences, and associations that assemble into an internal model of the world. But if any part of that chain becomes rigid—if certain words take on sacred, unquestionable significance—then the rest of the reasoning process bends around those anchors like metal pulled by a magnet. Every new idea is interpreted only through the lens of the existing symbolic structure, even if it contradicts observed reality.

In the case of market economics, this rigidity is not accidental. It is cultivated. Generations of economic theorists, policy pundits, libertarian philosophers, and business commentators have crafted a lexicon that functions less like descriptive language and more like theological scripture. Concepts like “voluntary exchange,” “market efficiency,” “competition,” “growth,” and “rationality” are not treated as empirical claims that can be tested and revised; they are treated as axioms. Eternal facts. Immune to contradiction.

As a result, when you challenge one of these symbols, the indoctrinated individual does not hear what you’re actually saying. They hear an attack on the symbol itself, and since the symbol is intertwined with their sense of personal and political identity, they respond as if you’ve insulted them directly.

This is the core of capitalist indoctrination: a symbolic lexicon that overrides the capacity for empirical interpretation.

The Linguistic Architecture of Ideology

Every word in the dictionary is defined by other words, which means the entire system of meaning is inferred, never absolute. This is fine when dealing with concrete things—trees, chairs, rainfall. But when language is used to describe abstract systems like markets, incentives, or social value, the potential for manipulation increases by orders of magnitude.

Economic language, in particular, is a masterclass in ambiguity. Terms are stretched, repurposed, and reverse-engineered to produce a desired ideological effect. Consider the word efficiency. In everyday life, efficiency means getting something done with minimal wasted effort. In neoclassical economics, however, “market efficiency” refers to an elaborate set of theoretical conditions—perfect information, perfect competition, rational actors, and so on—that do not exist in the real world. Yet the term is deployed as if it describes an actual property of real markets.

This linguistic bait-and-switch is everywhere in capitalist discourse:

• “Voluntary exchange” conveniently ignores that the majority of exchanges are driven by structural coercion—people “voluntarily” sell labor because the alternative is homelessness.

• “Growth” is framed as social progress, even though, in physical terms, perpetual growth is thermodynamically impossible.

• “Rationality” is treated as an inherent human trait, even as behavioral science repeatedly shows humans do not behave according to economic rationality.

• “Competition” is elevated as a moral and structural necessity, but the endgame of competition—monopolization—is conveniently swept aside.

• “Freedom” is redefined as the freedom of capital, not the freedom of people.

These aren’t semantic accidents. They are ideological design.

The more abstract the domain, the more easily language can be manipulated to enforce a particular worldview. Economics is almost pure abstraction, and therefore the perfect medium for linguistic indoctrination.

The Collapse of Meaning: When Concepts Become Identity

A central problem when speaking with someone deeply embedded in capitalist ideology is that the meaning of a word is no longer up for discussion. The lexicon has been internalized to the point where challenging a term is equivalent to challenging the person.

Say you critique “market efficiency.”
They don’t ask what you mean.
They assume you don’t understand their meaning.

Say you point out that “voluntary exchange” is a fiction under conditions of economic precarity.
They don’t consider the argument.
They conclude you “don’t know what voluntary means.”

Say you argue that corporations are centrally planned hierarchical institutions, which undermines the idea that “planning never works.”
They don’t address the contradiction.
They accuse you of supporting authoritarianism.

This is why discussions with ideological capitalists tend to loop endlessly. You are not disagreeing about facts, but about symbolic authority. They aren’t trying to understand your argument; they’re defending the sanctity of a mental dictionary.

This is the psychological function of indoctrination:
to make the lexicon itself unquestionable.

The Reversal of Reality: Linguistic Inversion in Market Thought

Once the lexicon is fixed, the ideology gains an extraordinary ability to invert reality without triggering cognitive dissonance. The person simply reinterprets contradictory evidence as confirmation of the doctrine.

A classic example is competition.
To ordinary people, competition is a zero-sum contest. Someone wins, someone loses. It’s inherently adversarial.

But in certain capitalist schools of thought—particularly libertarianism—competition is reframed as collaboration, because “people agree to compete.”

This is absurd on its face.
By this logic:

• war games are collaborative

• arms races are collaborative

• predatory pricing is collaborative

• starvation wages are collaborative

• any mutually damaging conflict becomes “collaboration” because both sides participate

Yet this rhetorical move is common because the ideology requires competition to be morally acceptable. If competition is framed as aggression, then the entire normative structure of market worship collapses. So the meaning of the word is simply reversed.

This sort of linguistic acrobatics is pervasive:

• “Externalities” is a word that minimizes ecological destruction by treating it as a bookkeeping error.

• “Innovation” becomes a synonym for planned obsolescence.

• “Choice” becomes a synonym for market fragmentation.

• “Risk” becomes something private firms offload onto the public.

• “Freedom” becomes freedom for capital, not freedom from exploitation.

Every term is a linguistic device engineered to maintain ideological coherence. And because adherents conflate these terms with truth itself, the ideology becomes nearly immune to contradiction.

Indoctrination as a Structural Need, Not an Accident

Popular culture treats indoctrination as something that happens accidentally, or in “cults,” or in fringe religious movements. But capitalist ideology requires indoctrination by design. The system cannot function without a population conditioned to accept its core abstractions as immutable truths.

This is because capitalism is uniquely dependent on misinterpreting its own consequences:

• Inequality is reframed as merit.

• Exploitation is reframed as opportunity.

• Desperation is reframed as incentive.

• Environmental collapse is reframed as externality.

• Social degradation is reframed as personal failure.

• Instability is reframed as the natural order of things.

• Structural coercion is reframed as voluntary exchange.

If people interpreted these outcomes literally, capitalism would lose legitimacy overnight. Therefore, the ideology must rely on a rigid symbolic system that overrides empirical interpretation.

A person doesn’t defend the system because they have studied its mechanics. They defend it because the system has become their interpretive frame. Capitalism defines what is “realistic,” “rational,” “practical,” and “possible.” The language pre-formats the imagination.

Why Empiricism Is Treated as a Threat

One of the most revealing features of capitalist indoctrination is the hostility toward empirical scrutiny. Every time you bring a real-world example into the conversation—actual market failures, environmental collapse, monopolistic behavior, inequality, labor exploitation—the ideology either:

1. reframes it as an exception,

2. blames government interference, or

3. denies the empirical reality outright.

That’s because the symbolic lexicon is not built to accommodate contradiction. It’s built to absorb it.

You point out that competition leads to monopolization.
They claim monopolization “isn’t real competition,” rewriting the definition retroactively.

You show that price signals can’t account for ecological cost.
They claim the market “would” price it in under ideal conditions—a theoretical world that never arrives but always justifies ignoring the present.

You demonstrate that people often act irrationally.
They redefine irrational behavior as “bounded rationality,” thereby absorbing the contradiction without revising the premise.

You note that voluntary exchange is meaningless under survival coercion.
They insist the exchange is still voluntary because the person could theoretically choose homelessness.

The inability to integrate empirical contradiction is not a flaw.
It’s the entire point.
Empirical realities must be dismissed to preserve the sanctity of the symbolic system.

The Social Reinforcement Loop

Another layer of indoctrination comes from social reinforcement. People are not only defending a conceptual lexicon—they are defending their membership in a cultural identity. Market ideology is deeply entwined with:

• nationalism

• American individualism

• entrepreneurial mythology

• masculine competitiveness

• anti-government sentiment

• moral narratives about personal responsibility

• generational class identity

This is why critiques of capitalism are interpreted as personal attacks. To question the lexicon is to question the identity group that sustains it.

And like any group identity, the ideology punishes divergence:

• You question the market → you’re a “Marxist.”

• You critique competition → you “hate freedom.”

• You point out ecological limits → you’re “anti-progress.”

• You highlight structural coercion → you “victimize yourself.”

• You describe systemic inequality → you’re engaging in “class warfare.”

These rhetorical defenses are not arguments. They are boundary-maintaining mechanisms. They keep the believer psychologically insulated from cognitive dissonance.

The Psychological Comfort of Simplified Systems

One reason capitalist ideology is so sticky is that it offers a deceptively simple model of human behavior and social coordination. It takes the chaotic mess of reality and compresses it into a handful of reassuring equations:

• people respond to incentives

• competition drives innovation

• markets self-regulate

• prices contain all information

• voluntary exchange is fair

• growth equals improvement

These claims survive because they reduce complexity, not because they reflect reality. They provide a sense of predictability in a world that is fundamentally unpredictable. In that sense, capitalism functions much like a religion: it offers a set of comforting narratives that feel explanatory even when they are empirically hollow.

And because these narratives are repeated through media, education, and cultural norms, they take on the appearance of common sense.

Conclusion: Indoctrination as a Barrier to Collective Understanding

Understanding how capitalist indoctrination works is not about demonizing individuals. Most people absorbed this lexicon without ever choosing it. They were raised in it. It was taught to them as fact. It shapes how they interpret everything from personal failure to planetary collapse.

But if we are going to build a viable alternative to the present social-economic architecture, we need to understand how deeply linguistic and cognitive these barriers are. You cannot introduce new ideas into a system of thought that has sealed its central symbols against revision.

The challenge is not just to present better evidence or better arguments. The challenge is to deconstruct the symbolic architecture that prevents new evidence and arguments from being heard in the first place.

Until that barrier is addressed, discussions about capitalism will remain trapped in semantic loops where words function like shields, logic becomes circular, and indoctrination masquerades as common sense.

Peter Joseph is a filmmaker & author; host of the podcast Revolution Now! and one can support his work through Patreon.