Capitalism and communism are not opposites: They’re partners in control

Between 1920 and 1991, the ideological landscape of the Western world appeared to be sharply divided. On one side stood the apostles of capitalism, who envisioned a global order anchored in free markets, private enterprise, and liberal democracy. 

On the other were the champions of communism, who sought to establish a world governed by central planning, social equality, and the collectivist ethos. Both camps aspired, in their own way, to universalism: a one-world government guided by their respective doctrines.

Yet this apparent binary—capitalism versus communism—obscured a deeper continuity. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the ideological contest did not end so much as it evolved. The Cold War’s stark opposition between East and West gave way to a new synthesis, in which elements of both systems were absorbed into a broader architecture of Western hegemony.

Post-1991, the West no longer needed to choose between capitalism and communism. Instead, it began to blend them—deploying capitalist tools to ensure economic control, and communitarian or collectivist rhetoric to engineer social conformity. Global governance institutions, multinational corporations, digital surveillance regimes, and moralizing bureaucracies now work in tandem, creating a new technocratic order that draws selectively from both traditions. The dream of a one-world government persists, but now it is pursued through ideological fusion rather than confrontation.

This convergence is masked by the enduring myths that each system tells about itself. Capitalism continues to present itself as the path to individual freedom and prosperity; communism, as the vehicle of equality and fraternity. But such notions, while emotionally potent, are ideologically sanitized. In practice, both systems have exhibited authoritarian tendencies. Both have shown a readiness to subordinate the individual to abstract ideals—whether markets or the collective—and both have been instrumentalized to justify sweeping interventions into the political, economic, and even spiritual life of societies.

To believe that capitalism inherently delivers freedom, or that communism guarantees justice, is to remain entrapped in a narrative crafted by Western ideologues to legitimize global dominance. In truth, both are mechanisms of control—different masks worn by the same imperial will.

The modern world order, shaped by this hybrid ideology, is not a triumph of one system over another, but a testament to their convergence. And unless this fusion is critically examined, the dream of a truly plural, autonomous world may remain forever deferred.