Ancient Stoic texts like Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations have become staples of wellness blogs and chief executive book clubs.
The rise of stoicism as a chic cultural trend among the middle and upper classes belies a deeper history of how self-denial and discipline serve as markers of class and tools of power.
Across Silicon Valley and global elites, chief executives and millionaires embrace spartan routines — 5am wake-ups, intermittent fasting, cold showers — in performative displays of stoic fortitude.
Ancient Stoic texts like Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations have become staples of wellness blogs and chief executive book clubs. This contemporary stoicism is touted as a path to personal excellence.
Yet framed against the material realities of most people, the voluntary asceticism of the rich appears less as universal virtue and more as an assertion of elite identity.
This cultural turn is not happening in a vacuum. It emerges amid global polycrisis: inequality, ecological collapse, burnout and political cynicism. In this context, the call to regulate the self resonates with the middle and upper classes — especially those seeking to protect their position.
But this turn inward also functions as depoliticisation. It substitutes self-mastery for social transformation, and inner calm for collective action.
More than a century ago, Marx reminded us that the ruling ideas in every epoch are those of the ruling class. Elite stoicism is no exception.
The notion that suffering should be endured in silence, that virtue lies in control rather than critique, forms part of an ideological apparatus that protects the powerful. When stoicism becomes a lifestyle aesthetic, it ceases to be a philosophy of endurance and becomes a moral alibi for injustice.
Stoicism, as it is popularly revived today, also carries a gendered ideal. The image of the stoic man — unflinching, unemotional, master of his appetites — repeats old patriarchal tropes about strength.
Emotional expression, relational vulnerability and care are subtly devalued. In this way, the aesthetics of stoicism not only reinforce class boundaries but also masculine authority, suggesting that true virtue lies in detachment and domination over one’s own body and desires.
The fusion of stoicism with models of elite masculinity — particularly the tech entrepreneur, the financier, the corporate titan — reinscribes patriarchal norms under the guise of self-improvement. The ideal subject is not only wealthy, but also hard, unyielding and sovereign — a fortress unto himself.
Max Weber observed how the Protestant ethic of 17th-century Europe extolled hard work, frugality and abstention as signs of godliness, laying cultural groundwork for capitalism.
This “worldly asceticism” acted against the enjoyment of possessions and framed success as evidence of divine favour. The bourgeois self, disciplined and restrained, came to symbolise moral superiority. Self-denial was not only personal — it was political, turning economic dominance into an ethical claim.
Weber traced how religious anxiety — especially Calvinist fear of spiritual fate — morphed into compulsive labour, deferred gratification and capital accumulation. Early capitalism needed not just markets but a new human subject: rational, calculating, restrained.
What made this ethic powerful, Weber argued, was its secularisation. The iron cage of modern life was built from habits of denial. Today’s elite stoicism inherits this legacy. The minimalist chief executive, the fasting influencer, the monkish billionaire are secular saints of the postmodern order.
Similar dynamics exist across cultures. In the Indian caste system, dietary asceticism historically became a marker of spiritual and social rank. Brahmins consumed only “pure” foods prepared in ritually approved ways, while lower castes and Dalits, eating what they could afford, were stigmatised as impure. Chosen restraint for some is imposed scarcity for others.
Mohandas Gandhi elevated asceticism into a political tool. His simple lifestyle and fasts were performative acts of moral pressure, shaming the colonial state and Indian elites. Yet Gandhi’s austerity was a choice. His fasts drew global attention; everyday hunger was ignored. His politics of the body highlighted the difference between voluntary and involuntary suffering.
In the Gulf, Wahhabism produced a religious ideology of austerity. Alcohol, music and mixed social spaces were banned; modesty and restraint strictly enforced. The state invoked piety to justify control. As in Protestant Europe and Brahmanical India, public denial obscured private power.
Today’s elite stoicism continues these traditions. Modern stoics wear neutral tones, skip breakfast and practise “quiet luxury”. They renounce excess not because they must, but to signal virtue. Green juice replaces wine; ice baths replace spas. What was once luxury becomes discretion. Minimalism becomes a class aesthetic.
For the working poor, stoicism is not a trend but a necessity. Millions skip meals not for clarity but because they cannot afford them. In South Africa, more than 55% of the population lives below the upper-bound poverty line. Waking at 5am is not discipline — it’s survival. Austerity is not an ideal; it is life under precarity.
The working class cannot display restraint for praise. Their deprivation is seen not as character but as failure. Their hunger is not viewed as virtue but irresponsibility. Even small pleasures — a branded shoe, a takeaway meal — are moralised and condemned. In the hands of the rich, such items are normal.
This double standard is ancient. In medieval Europe, sumptuary laws banned commoners from wearing luxurious fabrics and colours. In 14th-century England, laws prohibited those below knightly rank from wearing fur, silk or purple. A butcher’s daughter could be fined for pearls; a merchant’s wife scolded for embroidered sleeves. Appearance became a mechanism of hierarchy; simplicity, when mandated, was never innocent.
This logic persists. Working-class people are expected to be frugal and grateful. If not, their poverty is blamed on moral weakness. Meanwhile, the rich reinvent simplicity as innovation. A billionaire drinking bone broth becomes a wellness icon. A mother skipping meals becomes another invisible statistic.
The stoicism of the poor is neither celebrated nor seen.
In the workplace, corporate mindfulness teaches employees to manage stress with breathing techniques. Instead of better pay or conditions, workers are told to change their mindset. Stoicism, here, becomes an ideology of compliance. It suggests that problems are personal, not structural. Resilience is rebranded as resignation.
The moral tale remains: the rich are disciplined and deserve their wealth; the poor are undisciplined and deserve their suffering.
This story, repeated through religion, culture and media, preserves hierarchy by moralising it. Inequality is framed as character, not power. This is the ideological genius of elite stoicism: it hides exploitation behind virtue.
If we are to recover the radical core of stoicism — its challenge to desire, its critique of illusion, its commitment to inner freedom — we must also confront the structures that make freedom impossible for the many. Virtue cannot be aesthetic. It must be political.
Vashna Jagarnath is a historian, political risk and DEI consultant, labour expert, pan-African and South Asian political analyst and curriculum specialist.