Society chained up by desires
In addition to promoting a culture of work, capitalism also promotes a culture of desire.
The marketplace is effectively limited by how much people want. This leads to a natural tendency in a market system for the sellers within the system to work hard to increase human desire, leading to the creation of more and stronger wants, all in the name of market expansion.
While marketing is the most direct expression of this phenomenon, it really pervades the entire culture and is generally reflected in entertainment, the education system, and government policy, which all in the end shapes our personal attitude.
The development of the culture of desire created by market capitalism has actually been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, 
change in societies around the globe.
While many communities in the past practiced a culture of self-denial, today one has a difficult task to find any of such remaining.
Even the average citizen was relatively reserved in early times. Of course, in the past countries were not as capitalistic and people were much more self-sufficient. Most individuals and communities provided for their own needs and wants directly, independent of the market system. Countries were predominately family farming countries until the mid 19th century.
Advertising and the consumer culture had become significant by "the Roaring 20s" of the early 20th century as especially the American capitalist economy really began to thrive. This later increased with the widespread adoption of radio, but it wasn’t really until the 1950s, and the widespread usage of television and movies, however, that the consumer culture revolution really began. Not only did technology facilitate the advancement of consumer culture, but the Keynesian economic policies adopted by 'the industrialized states' after World War II viewed consumerism as the drive train of the economy.
While many examples can be given, cigarette smoking is a classic example of a specific case for the promotion of a product via not just advertising, but its portrayal in media and society in general as well.
Interestingly, the tobacco industry is the oldest major industry coming from the U$ of A. 
The tobacco industry was (some claim it even still is) one of many highly involved in slavery, as slaves were heavily used on tobacco plantations. Arguably, the tobacco industry is the epitome of the American establishment, and represents some of the oldest fortunes that exist in the U$A, as well as some of America’s oldest corporations.
Nothing really represents “The Man” in the 'modern world' more than tobacco, yet, this industry, through marketing, Hollywood, and general social presentation, was able to convince many millions of individuals around the globe, not only that “smoking was cool”, but also that it was a form of rebellion “against the establishment”. How ironic.
Many “social rebels”, those troubled youth who “hated the system” and wanted to “fight against oppression”, bought into one of the biggest elements of the very system that they opposed. Nothing represents power, corruption, deception, the legacy of slavery and social manipulation more than Big Tobacco, and yet for generations “rebels” by the millions have been lighting up, and they continue to do so, feeding the establishment that they love to hate.
That, however, is just one example of how an irrational desire for a specific product has been promoted by an industry. It is the overall culture of consumerism that is of bigger concern.
All media and social practices that promote desire in general are embraced by capitalist culture, because the promotion of desire itself, even when not directly related to a specific product, promotes a culture of consumerism, and much of advertising is not about promoting a specific product, but indeed about promoting the overall culture of desire.
In the natural world, emotional desires motivate animals to engage in the activities needed for survival and procreation, just like human desires developed over millions of years of evolution in environments of typically scarce resources and opportunities, where strong motivations were needed to prompt action in the face of risk.
With the advance of human civilization, human beings have been able to alter the natural environment and make resources that were difficult to obtain in the natural world much easier to reach. This has happened rapidly over the past 10,000 years or so, and the ability of people to make these resources more easily obtainable has continued to increased over time.
This is, for example, why people today have such a high affinity for fatty foods. Historically, fats were a scarce resource that was difficult for humans to obtain. Fats are extremely high in energy, and thus very valuable to humans “in the wild”. For this reason, humans evolved a high affinity for fatty foods. The desire for fatty foods drove humans to pursue resources that were highly beneficial to survival in a natural context, and to prefer those resources over other possible alternatives when there was a decision to be made.
It’s important to remember that economics is the study of human choice in relation to limited resources.
In 'modern societies' today fatty foods are no longer scare resources that are difficult for humans to get their hands on, but our brain is still motivated to seek them out as if they were scare resources that are difficult to obtain, and thus, in terms of decision making, people are generally compelled by their desires to prefer fatty foods over other foods, even when the choice of the fatty food is not rational. This has resulted in our capitalist market economy focusing on the production and marketing of fatty foods because they are easy to sell and as explained humans have a natural instinctive desire to prefer fatty foods. The culture created by marketing feeds on these desires and works to increase them.
Traditionally (very traditionally), many religions have developed as efforts to limit the overloading of these natural desire mechanisms.
What the capitalist system does, is it provides a profit motive for sellers to exploit human desires for personal gain.
The unleashing and deepening of human passion and desire creates demand, and that demand moves products off the shelves to satisfy those wants, thus creating profits for sellers.
Let's take for example the commercialization of sexuality. Since sex is a fundamental human desire, the commercialization of such is a primary result of the capitalist market system.
Sexuality is marketed directly, but sexual cues are also heavily associated with tons of non-sexual products. By associating sexual cues with products, such as cars or beer, the biological desire triggers are stimulated.
The marketing of sexuality to teenagers is perhaps one of the most controversial products of the capitalist system. Because sex is one of the most primal and strongest forms of desire, sexuality is one of the most effective marking tools, and a highly sexually active culture is a culture more open to overall consumerism, and thus highly sexually charged culture is encouraged by capitalism.
During puberty people are particularly strongly impacted by sexual marketing and this encourages sellers in a market system to target preteens and teens with highly sexual media. This is not just in the context of advertisements, but all media, including music, movies, books etc. Increasing sexual awareness increases overall consumerism.
Products themselves can be a way to further promote a consumer lifestyle and to deepen human desire. A popular new line of toys that demonstrates this concept is the Bratz Dolls line of products.
Bratz Dolls are marketed towards the 4 to early teen age-group and portray sexy, fashion savvy, self-centered, consumerist characters with lots of "needs" and "plenty of attitude". Bratz imagery abounds with sexual cues and material accessories.
If you still don't know what I mean check out their homepage: BratzPack.com ==> notice the use of the word "passion".
The makers of Bratz Dolls claim that they are just giving children what they want, that dolls are just harmless pieces of plastic, and that it's ultimately the parent's responsibility to choose if they think the dolls are appropriate for their child or not.
As psychologists know, dolls are powerful learning devices for children that can greatly influence worldviews, and of course the makers of Bratz Dolls know this too, they just deny it publicly. Capitalists know that young girls brought up playing with Bratz Dolls are more likely to internalize self-centered consumerist lifestyles, and therefore be "better consumers" as they grow up, or even while they are young for that matter.
It's not just Bratz Dolls, however, it is a general industry trend especially in childrens and teens media.
~ p e a c e ~
