The entrepreneur as capitalism's ideal subject

When we say «entrepreneur», we picture someone who founded a company. But the figure of the entrepreneur left the world of business long ago. Today everyone is invited to be one: the employee, to manage a career like a startup; the student, to invest in themselves; the freelancer, to be their own brand. Entrepreneurship has become not an occupation but a way of being a person. How did this happen?

01From occupation to norm

Historically the entrepreneur is a specific economic role: the one who combines resources and takes on risk for profit. A respected role, but a particular one: most people were not entrepreneurs and had no intention of becoming any. They were workers, officials, craftsmen. The entrepreneur was one type among many.

The turn comes when entrepreneurship stops being one role among others and becomes the model for all the rest. The worker must now «invest in their development». The unemployed must «work on themselves». Even rest is framed as an investment in productivity. A figure that once described a minority becomes the norm to which everyone is pulled.

The entrepreneur is convenient because it removes the question of structure: if everything depends on initiative, there is no need to talk about order.

02A subject who treats themselves as a project

This figure has an inner logic. The entrepreneurial subject treats themselves as an enterprise: they have «capital» (skills, connections, reputation) to grow; «risks» to manage; a «brand» to maintain. Life becomes a continuous project of self-optimisation.

This is neither hypocrisy nor deception. People genuinely begin to think and feel this way — because the structure of the economy pushes them to. When employment is unstable and guarantees are few, treating yourself as a project is a rational strategy. The figure of the entrepreneur is not imposed from above; it grows from below, out of real conditions.

03What the figure conceals

Every norm has a reverse side — what it renders invisible. The entrepreneurial subject conceals structure. If success is the result of initiative, then failure is the result of its absence. The problem always turns out to be personal: didn't try hard enough, didn't take the risk, didn't invest. The question of how the labour market is built, how resources are distributed, what conditions different people were handed — that question dissolves.

This is precisely why the figure is so durable. It not only describes the economy — it explains it in a way that makes structure disappear from view. All that remains is individuals and their choices.

04Why this matters now

Digital platforms have pushed this logic to its limit. A platform courier is formally not an employee but a «partner» — an independent entrepreneur who «chooses their own hours». A content creator is a one-person business. Productivity apps sell self-optimisation as a way of life. Technology does not merely serve the entrepreneurial subject — it produces it, building it into interfaces and into the very form of employment.

I study this figure not in order to condemn it. Entrepreneurship is a real and often productive practice; I do it myself. I want to understand how a particular economic role turned into a general anthropological norm — and what we stop noticing once we accept it as natural. That is the question of the subject: not «who is the entrepreneur», but «what does an order that demands everyone be an entrepreneur make of us».