When we think of design, we spontaneously think of the cubic house built by this couple of doctors in the countryside, or the expensive Italian sofas that fill the pages of Marie-Claire Maison. At its best, design evokes a kind of bourgeois luxury, a decorative extra for those who can afford it; at its worst, it's the ultimate tool for manipulation by the capitalist class, who use neuromarketing to shape our desires into deviously irresistible commodities. And yet, if you look closely, whether at the concrete practices of design within capitalist companies or at the origins of the discipline, design is an oddity that runs completely counter to the logics imposed on production by the bourgeoisie. This DNA, which has led design to be increasingly sidelined from actual design processes, could in symmetry nourish very concrete leads for imagining the forms of production freed from capitalism.
One Can Care About Objects Without Supporting Capitalism—Quite the Opposite
The material reproduction of our lives is the most fundamental function of society and requires constant work. Capitalism steals a portion of the fruits of this labor and, as we’ll discuss later, skews what needs to be produced. Meanwhile, the ecological crisis forces us to urgently reconsider the pace and scale at which we make objects, as well as the purposes we assign to them. Yet, it’s crucial to understand that simply avoiding decay will always require, in any society, the production of material goods.
The most obvious example is food, which must be harvested, cultivated, or raised (and increasingly less so in the case of livestock). But the same applies to virtually everything around us: over time, all objects are gradually worn down through use. The glue on a chair eventually gives way, and its weaving wears out. The sole of a shoe erodes as we walk, and even in a society where artisanal repair becomes the norm, we will still need replacement soles, glue, thread, and even the machines to carry out these repairs. Similarly, a house or an apartment, if left unmaintained, will eventually become a ruin. Constant upkeep is needed: new seals, pipes, paint, flooring, tiles, metalwork, framework, and so on.
In the common understanding of consumption, it is primarily associated with the act of purchasing, as if what we consume is our money. However, it seems much more useful to view consumption as the use that wears down our objects. A consumer society isn’t just one where people spend a lot of money or have significant purchasing power—otherwise, we’d fail to grasp the evolution of mass production and poverty. Rather, it’s a society where a great many things are destroyed.
That said, it’s important not to be bitter toward material goods. While we are right to reject the idea of an abundance of goods as a condition for happiness, the refinement and aesthetic care given to everyday objects—the effort to enrich their crafting and enjoy their presence—has always been a deep-seated human tendency. It predates capitalism and will outlive it. Loving objects and their beauty isn’t a perversion glorifying commodities; it’s a cultural practice that stimulates the mind and aesthetic sensibility. This is an almost anthropological trait, evident from the finely crafted flint tools of the Neolithic to societies with minimal production of artifacts. It’s this extra layer of humanity that makes life richer than mere functional reproduction.
Criticizing the fetishization of commodities doesn’t mean claiming that having beautiful objects is harmful. It’s about denouncing the practice of imbuing mediocre products with false values they don’t possess to justify their price—without addressing how they were made: industrial pâté cans marketed as “premium quality,” “traditional” baguettes from “authentic” bakeries made with standard flours, “indestructible” English boots, “punk rock icons” manufactured in China with subpar leather, and so on.
More importantly, if we aim to envision a post-capitalist world, we’ll struggle to win people over with renunciation, asceticism, and scarcity. As Frédéric Lordon famously put it: “If communism is a gray proposition, it will lose the imaginary battle. But it doesn’t have to be gray—far from it. In fact, the opposite is true. There’s no paradox in arguing that it can and must be luxurious. That is, it should shine with the beauty of well-made things because everyone will have the conditions to make things beautiful and well.”
Against the Division of Labor and Bourgeois Luxury: The Revolutionary Origins of Design
Furniture by Italian designer Enzo Mari exhibited at the Triennale di Milano, followed by one of his 1976 "Carte storiche" boards. This work describes the "liberation of artistic research from bourgeois ideology" through themes such as "criticism of the division into disciplines," "militant counter-information," and "dialectical historical materialism." A perfectly orthodox Marxist.
This vision was shared by a group of artists, architects, decorators, and engineers who, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, laid the groundwork for a new discipline: industrial creation, also known as design.
These early designers gradually built a new body of knowledge at the intersection of art and craftsmanship. They harnessed technological advancements, economies of scale, and the standardization offered by industry to bring artistic enrichment into everyday life. Their goal was twofold: first, to abolish the designer/producer distinction, which relegated the most grueling production tasks to an alienated working class; and second, to break away from fine arts and their legitimized forms. Instead, they sought to form artisan-designers who wouldn’t create objects exclusively for palaces in perpetually traditional styles but for ordinary people, in a language that reflected the spirit of their time. This stood in stark contrast to the bourgeois luxury of aristocratic inspiration, which represented the pinnacle of “good taste” at the time. Much of the design language we still encounter today owes its origins to them.
To highlight some of the singular figures who contributed to this ambitious and challenging mission:
William Morris, an architect, decorator, painter, writer, and socialist activist, was appalled by the working conditions of late 19th-century England. Alongside writing utopian visions of self-managed factories of the future, he founded Morris & Co., a factory of a different kind during the age of Taylorism. It brought together artisan-designers who crafted chairs, tables, wallpapers, tapestries, furniture, and architectural elements autonomously and in their own image. His nearly moral imperative was to reconnect with an honest conception of good and beautiful furniture, opposing what he called the “swine-like luxury of the rich.”
In 1920s Germany, the Bauhaus school brought together Europe’s avant-garde artists to merge art and craftsmanship for the common good. Its founders, like Walter Gropius, were also involved in a Soviet of the Arts and advocated for “class struggle […] to ensure everyone’s right to fulfilling work” (Moholy-Nagy). The school was shut down by the Nazis for its predominantly communist and socialist affiliations.
In 1920s France, the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM) championed industrial art to provide comfort and refinement to the masses. Among its founders were trailblazers like Charlotte Perriand, a communist and feminist activist who challenged Eurocentric perspectives. She furnished early social housing projects and created murals celebrating the Front Populaire. Another was Jean Prouvé, who established a workshop where all employees—from laborers to himself—earned the same wage, until its closure. Prouvé later joined the Resistance to fight the Nazis and afterward designed furniture for students in Nancy, modular homes for war victims, and compact 57m² houses for Abbé Pierre to shelter Paris’s homeless. His Maison des jours meilleurs (“House of Better Days”), prefabricated in his Nancy workshop, could be assembled in half a day. Its standardized components kept costs low while offering genuinely pleasant living spaces.
The beautiful "Maison des jours meilleurs" by Jean Prouvé
Of course, not all of them were equally progressive, and none were free from ties to the bourgeoisie. A certain “bohemian” and nonconformist segment of the bourgeoisie took pleasure in financing these experiments and commissioning furniture. However, the mindset of the pioneers of industrial creation clearly shows that the discipline was built on the inspiration of revolutionary and socialist thought. This is hardly surprising given the doctrine’s focus on mass comfort as well as free and well-done labor, refinement, economy of means rather than ostentatious displays, constructive intelligence elevated to an art form, and so on.
But what did the capitalist mode of production do with this aspiration? How has the design of everyday consumer goods evolved since then, and why ?
The Rise and Fall of Capitalist-Driven Design
Immediately after the war, the bourgeoisie, which had already begun to recognize the economic potential of mass markets, fully integrated these designer-creators. This new figure systematically became part of the design processes within companies. At the same time, its revolutionary potential was absorbed by the advertising objectives of its patrons. A whole generation of designers, many of whom emigrated to the United States, shaped the aesthetics of the postwar boom years. Raymond Loewy, the father of the streamlined aesthetic typical of the 1950s, perfectly exemplifies this shift with his famous motto, “Ugly doesn’t sell,” reflecting the discipline’s adoption of a commercial perspective—entirely absent from its prewar doctrines.
This was a smart move on the part of the bourgeoisie. The designs of Raymond Loewy, among others, led to a dramatic increase in the sales of the consumer goods he created: cars, cigarettes, appliances, and more.
Raymond Loewy is a canonical example of a designer fully integrated into capitalism. He designed an immense number of products for countless major multinationals, including logos for Shell, Lucky Strike, and LU. However, it’s worth noting that he spent the later part of his life designing motorcycles and cars for the USSR because he couldn't stand to leave them with ugly vehicles—such a kind soul.
In my opinion, it's from this kind of collaboration that the idea that we owe a certain form of beauty to capitalism was born. This could be justified in the 1950s, but I think it’s clearly no longer the case today... the "success story" of design quickly runs into several relentless mechanisms that gradually push it out of the design process.
1 - On one hand, the very principle of taking time to develop objects ends up clashing with the production rhythms: making three prototypes of armrests to arrive at a perfect shape, based on criteria as difficult to quantify as comfort or aesthetic feeling—sometimes changing only a few millimeters or adjusting a chamfer or fillet—this seems increasingly unnecessary to most sales departments in production companies. As a result, even the historical companies that used design to become dominant now mostly just maintain a heritage catalog of designs created from the 1920s to the 1980s.
2 - Similarly, the general trend of wage compression, inherent to the class struggle for added value, limits the market for products that meet the aspirations design places in an object: making things properly with durable materials, in human conditions that are accessible to the masses. This seems obvious, but it’s worth repeating: lower wages mean less money to spend on each object we acquire, which leads to cost-cutting by producers, resulting in lower quality, and eventually, since we can’t endlessly compress the cost of raw materials, production in inhumane conditions (examples are plentiful: Belarusian gulag for Ikea, Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, etc.). At this point, it’s almost laughable to lament that these productions save on the cost of a designer; even if that’s not always the case, the designer would be compromising their morals... The evidence of this capitalist shift is abundant, and even pro-business economists note a strong market polarization: "mid-range" products are disappearing, replaced by either low-cost or luxury items. One example I particularly like is the magnificent Zoombike folding bicycle by Richard Sapper, designed in 2000 but completely unsuited to a market economy… All the parts are custom-machined from aerospace-grade aluminum, ensuring spectacular lightness but also a prohibitive price. Since capitalism is flawed, the only people who can afford such quality are more likely to take taxis for their daily commutes than ride a folding bike (which was, by the way, designed for multi-modality, i.e., to be carried on a bus or subway…).
The beautiful Zoombike by Richard Sapper
3 - Indeed, the very logic of capitalism is to delegate all judgments on the need to produce this or that good to the deliberation of a market, as wealth becomes more and more concentrated, establishing a kind of plutocracy of objects where everyone has as much “right to vote” on demand as they have money. And since 10% of the bourgeoisie monopolize 32% of annual production, we have to realize that this is as much wealth as is going to distort the very structure of demand in favor of their particular desires. Just think of the number of people working to manufacture, for example, digital advertising screens, printed tarpaulins and trade show stands to broadcast ads for SUVs and Cartier watches that most of us wouldn't even think of buying. Of course, for productions destined for the homes of the capitalist class, there's plenty of time to design objects. And so it was that a luxury market flourished, to the extent that the world's first fortune was made by a manufacturer of handbags and trunks that were literally impossible to carry, since they were handled by servants (we're not going to clutter them up with wheels, that would be vulgar). Within the luxury sector, certain design approaches still hold their place. And yet, even if there are sometimes admirable products, the misunderstood function of pomp and circumstance often leads to a profligacy of means that makes it difficult to appreciate the constructive intelligence and appropriateness of luxury products. When we're not simply revolted by the affront to fairness they represent. To come back to the trunks, imagine that a hideous Vuitton sneaker display that isn't even subtly and intelligently constructed (rigid canvas panels, what a horrible redundancy in formatting) is worth about the price of a 20-square-meter apartment in Paris (€180,000!!!)...
The awful sneaker "malle" from Vuitton. An idea of hell would be to be stuck with it's owner, wanting to show you his sneaker collection...
To summarize: Certainly, our bourgeois class would like us to collectively take pride in our crystal chandeliers from Sèvres. Certainly, many Westerners own very beautiful iPhones, but the quantitative majority of the landscape of objects generated by capitalism is better represented by PVC windows, Miko-branded bistro chairs, air conditioning units sticking out of windows, and plastic bathroom stools.
Let’s be clear, there are still capitalist companies that take the gamble and make the effort to try and create beautiful objects, but when we consider the vast majority of industrial production, these principles are not what guide it. More often than not, decision-makers follow the advice of marketing departments—or, in many cases, the marketing departments themselves are responsible for designing the products.
D - The Bullshit in Contemporary Design
These individuals, who most often have neither training in nor interest in actual production, are naturally incapable of coming up with truly intelligent ideas about what form to give to matter, or which process to use to extract the most beauty from the simplest possible manufacturing methods. It simply isn’t their business. Most decisions, therefore, remain cosmetic, relying on abstract methods that concern everything except the object, its use, its practicality, or its beauty.
I remember a time when criticism of neuromarketing was very trendy on the left, described as a real danger to our free will—a sneaky and unstoppable capitalist strategy to keep us under its grip by creating scientifically irresistible products. Now, we’ll come back to this, but I feel that what is created outside the capitalist framework is much more beautiful and of higher quality. But above all, it’s worth taking a closer look at reality.
I’m not saying there are no tangible effects of neuromarketing in advertising or on supermarket shelves, but when it comes to the design of objects per se, its rare instances are more comical than frightening. For example, the company Neurons, which sells AI solutions based on “eye-tracking” studies, enlightens us with this brilliant insight:
“Kellogg reorganized its packaging as part of a strategic brand evolution. Consumers’ attention shifted away from product variation to focus on brand recognition and Kellogg’s heritage.”
...to suggest, wait for it... enlarging the logo.
If we shift from packaging to design proper, just look at all the over-marketed products to realize they are filled with dumb prejudices rather than actual attention science. Imagine an iron with an irresistible neuro-marketed design crafted by the greatest experts in the field. Note the lavender color, which will immediately appeal to madam’s reptilian brain, plunging her into a compulsive buying spiral typical of the weaker sex. It’s laughable, but it’s hard to see how the underlying idea could have been much different during brainstorming sessions at Philips…
Left: The Laughable Attention Analysis by Neurons AI / Right: The Philips Iron
In reality, I’ve never encountered any theory or practice in this area that’s more prescriptive than the Buba-Kiki effect or the recommendation to make important buttons red. We can sleep soundly on that front. Moreover, these techniques aren’t really what’s used to design the products themselves but rather a succession of meetings and mood boards filled with idiotic slogans. A real-life example:
“Our brand is water, water is life, so our brand is life! Now figure something out and come up with something that feels ‘sustainable.’”
Changing the shape of the bottle to reduce the amount of air packaged in a six-pack by 25% and thereby save as much in CO2 emissions during transport? No, that’s too ambitious!
Every industrial designer is familiar with these kinds of stupid, mercantile directives that push for mediocrity. Not only is there no shortage of sustainable, ecological, and humanistic production ambitions—both in society and among designers—but they even seem stifled by the laws of the market. Above all, we should remember that the true power of design, since its very inception, lies in creating new ways of living through the creation of new objects.
E - Design: A Post-Capitalist “Already There”!
Envisioning new uses and new objects with functions we didn’t previously know is one of the hallmarks of design practice. Freeing this creativity from the imperative of profitability at all costs can greatly contribute to societal change. Imagine, for instance, the concrete form a well-designed self-managed restaurant or café might take. What kinds of shapes, objects, and layouts could minimize the unfulfilling tasks we currently delegate to subordinates? Combining quality culinary preparations with a self-service system that feels warmer than a cafeteria, designing customer-facing, user-friendly dishwashers, integrating kitchens into the main dining area, and so on.
Or take, for example, the framework of socializing basic necessities under a model like a food security program. What forms might free community pantries at the foot of apartment buildings take? Pantries that distribute staple goods everyone consumes—vegetable oil, salt, household and hygiene products, and so on. Making these spaces practical, pleasant, and beautiful—in a word, desirable—is a tremendous “empowerment” of the underlying political ideas. And the best part? There’s no need to wait for a revolution to get started.
Because projects like this already exist. A particularly successful example is the collaboration between students from Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and Kengo Kuma’s architectural firm. In 2014, they created an open pavilion on Hokkaido Island, Japan. This “nest” project provides an open structure that supports activities like harvesting, storing, preparing, consuming, and composting local foods. All community members participate in every stage of the consumption cycle, in a sort of primitive communism that honestly doesn’t seem unpleasant:
The Nest we Grow, 2014 - Berkley College of environmental design and Kengo Kuma & Associates.
It must be said that if we think about the objects we would like to see manufactured rather than those we are capable of buying, the logic shifts completely. While the concrete forms of a society free from capitalist domination remain somewhat unclear for most people, everyone has a general sense of the kind of production that environmental constraints compel us to pursue.
Users and creators naturally have a much greater appetite for ecology and durability than "the market" does. Excellent ideas regularly emerge in academic, experimental, or even professional contexts. Numerous research projects propose unbreakable toasters, modular smartphones where individual components can be replaced rather than discarding the entire device when the battery wears out, or washing machines designed for lifelong repairability.
These examples highlight the absurdity of leaving the control of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The "Increvable" washing machine, conceived in 2014 by Julien Phedyaeff as part of a graduation and entrepreneurial project, exemplifies this. It proposed an evolutionary product designed to guarantee a 15-year lifespan and optimal repairability for 20 years. Despite demonstrated public interest and massive preorders, the project had to be abandoned due to a lack of investment willingness from manufacturers.
Similarly, the Phonebloks concept, a modular phone by Dave Hakken, promised a small revolution in smartphone durability. The concept was taken over by Google, which developed it cheaply (using the aforementioned processes) and produced the ARA—a kind of lukewarm compromise that appealed to no one, as it was designed merely to sell upgrade modules rather than enable genuine repairability.
The academic toaster project titled "ANTI Throw Away Mentality" by Zixuan Zhou features a monobloc design in unbreakable ceramic with a replaceable heating element to ensure greater durability and sustainability.
Google's Ara, derived from Dave Hakken's brilliant Phonebloks, turned a great idea into a superfluous gadget. Instead of prioritizing repairability, it focused solely on offering upgradeable feature modules, missing the core purpose of durability and sustainability. The public wasn’t fooled, and the project was suspended due to a lack of interest.
The evolutionary, durable, and repairable washing machine "L’Increvable" by Julien Phedyaeff was designed to challenge planned obsolescence.
The advantage remains that we can rely on these examples to imagine economic frameworks that would facilitate the viability of such projects. One of the critical points lies in the purchase price. Let’s reiterate: building properly comes at a cost. It is impossible to offer more robust products in an environment of wage compression. Taking surplus value away from the bourgeoisie is therefore one of the most direct conditions for the widespread dissemination of durable objects.
The next accessible lever would be the selective subsidy of the necessary investment. In a capitalist system, this is rather unsatisfying because it subsidizes private profits. This can be circumvented by envisioning non-profit production frameworks. To provide a concrete example, I’ve already outlined a public service supply chain tied to sustainable forest management through a state production service that, while currently underutilized, has the merit of already existing.
Of course, we would favor the socialization of production over mere state control—SCOPs (worker cooperatives) and associative groups for complex projects. But we have the right to be even more ambitious, imagining the abolition of strict divisions of labor and the liberation of individual creative and artisanal aspirations. Naturally, no one should be forced into drudgery, but how many of us take pottery classes, practice woodworking as amateurs, or would happily do so? How much could the cumulative effort of millions of amateur potters replace industrial presses, molding machines, or plaster molds used in the ceramic industry? How much transportation—and therefore energy—could local craftsmanship save?
Spreading design techniques widely, promoting the designer-manufacturer status, and abolishing the restrictions of lucrative intellectual property would allow for a healthy diffusion of creativity and beautiful forms. This vision brings us back almost to the utopias of William Morris or the historical designs of Enzo Mari.
Ultimately, to summarize as simply as possible, I am convinced that fully pursuing the ambitions that founded design inevitably leads us to imagine a world that is not only more egalitarian but also more sustainable from an environmental standpoint. Thus, the pathways to surpass the current production system emerge naturally as soon as we take seriously the need to meet human needs. This is the legacy I would like us to retain from the discipline, rather than its contemporary pitfalls that merely mimic its essence.
