Can Capitalism Ever Be Decolonized?Rethinking Economic Power and Environmental Justice
This article explores the complex and contested question of whether capitalism can be decolonized. While calls to “decolonize” various systems,education, development, and environmental policy,have grown louder in recent years, the economic foundation underpinning these systems, global capitalism, remains largely intact. Drawing on the literature surrounding green grabbing, environmental colonialism, and decolonial theory, this article argues that efforts to reform capitalism often reproduce colonial patterns of extraction and dispossession under the guise of sustainability or development. Using Third World Quarterly’s framework for decolonizing the economy, the article contends that true decolonization requires not just policy shifts, but a fundamental rethinking of the epistemologies, ownership structures, and value systems that sustain capitalist hegemony.
Capitalism, in both its historical and contemporary forms, has been deeply entangled with colonial expansion. The early accumulation of wealth that seeded modern capitalist economies was built on the violent extraction of labor and resources from colonized territories. Today, these legacies persist in the global economic order, as trade imbalances, debt dependency, and resource exploitation continue to structure relationships between the Global North and South. While neoliberal capitalism has adapted to include language around sustainability, corporate responsibility, and inclusive growth, these adaptations often obscure rather than resolve the colonial dynamics embedded within the system. One key example of this phenomenon is “green grabbing”,the appropriation of land and natural resources for environmental ends such as carbon offsetting, conservation, or renewable energy projects. Although framed as part of the global climate solution, green grabbing often displaces Indigenous peoples and rural communities, transferring control over ecosystems to international investors, NGOs, or state actors. Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones (2012) identify this trend as a form of environmental colonialism, where environmental governance becomes a vehicle for reasserting control over land, labor, and ecological value,mirroring the logics of colonial land grabs in previous centuries.
These developments highlight a core contradiction: sustainability under capitalism often requires the same kinds of territorial control, centralized expertise, and commodification of nature that colonialism once justified. Rather than challenging the economic foundations of inequality, many green capitalist projects simply rebrand them. As such, attempts to “decolonize” global development or environmental management without addressing capitalist structures may result in what some critics call colonialism in green clothing. In response to these tensions, scholars have proposed theoretical frameworks for decolonizing the economy itself. A key contribution comes from Demaria, Kothari, and Acosta (2019), whose article Decolonizing the Economy: A Theoretical Framework, published in Third World Quarterly, interrogates the dominance of Western economic paradigms and explores alternative models rooted in Indigenous knowledge, communal ownership, and relational value systems (DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2019.1646186). They argue that decolonization must go beyond redistribution or inclusion; it must dismantle the ontological foundations of capitalism,such as the belief in infinite growth, individualism, and human supremacy over nature. Their framework draws on practices like Buen Vivir (a relational Indigenous worldview in Latin America), solidarity economies, and degrowth movements, which emphasize well-being, community, and ecological harmony over market efficiency or capital accumulation. These models reject the idea that development equals modernization or industrial expansion and instead prioritize locally defined, culturally embedded forms of sustainability and prosperity.
Yet, efforts to decolonize capitalism face immense resistance,not just from entrenched elites and institutions, but also from within popular discourse. Many sustainability and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) efforts promoted by global corporations and international institutions claim to be inclusive and ethical, but remain grounded in a logic of commodification and competitive advantage. The risk is that the term “decolonization” becomes co-opted as a rhetorical device, used to legitimize reforms that leave core capitalist dynamics unchanged. Still, the growing visibility of decolonial movements offers hope for structural transformation. From landback campaigns in North America to food sovereignty initiatives in Africa and Latin America, grassroots movements are articulating alternatives to extractive capitalism. These efforts challenge not only material inequality but also epistemic injustice,the marginalization of Indigenous, feminist, and Southern knowledges in favor of Eurocentric models of economy and governance.
Whether capitalism can be decolonized depends on how we define both capitalism and decolonization. If decolonization is reduced to representation or inclusion within capitalist frameworks, the answer is likely no. But if it is understood as a radical reorientation of power, value, and knowledge, then decolonizing the economy becomes both necessary and possible. For students, activists, and policymakers, this demands not only a critique of capitalism’s colonial roots but a commitment to building alternatives grounded in justice, plurality, and ecological stewardship.
References
Demaria, F., Kothari, A., & Acosta, A. (2019). Decolonizing the Economy: A Theoretical Framework. Third World Quarterly, 40(11), 1946–1964. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2019.1646186
Fairhead, J., Leach, M., & Scoones, I. (2012). Green Grabbing: A New Appropriation of Nature? Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), 237–261.
Hickel, J. (2020). Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. William Heinemann.
Mignolo, W. D., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Duke University Press.
