Starting in the 1930s and lasting through the 1950s, the Museum of Modern Art embarked on a series of influential exhibitions that would create an entirely new way of thinking about design. By elevating everyday, inexpensive objects that fit the museum’s criteria of “good design,” MoMA paved the way for modernism to hit the mainstream, launching the careers of seminal designers like Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames and displaying designs that visitors could actually buy.

But there was a hidden agenda–one explored in the museum’s latest exhibition, The Value of Good Design, which opened over the weekend: to extol the virtues of American consumerist capitalism in comparison to Soviet communism, and to boost the American economy in the post-World War II era.

If the Soviet design of the time was nationalistic and austere, American industrial design was focused on the intersection of functionality, beauty, and sheer creativity–which in some ways symbolized the American ideal. “Governments on both sides of the Cold War divide… woke up to the seductive power of contemporary design as a political tool,” reads one of The Value of Good Design‘s wall texts.

During this era, MoMA hosted competitions that challenged designers to come up with design that was accessible to everyone, and curated “Good Design” exhibitions that showcased notable, inexpensive, household design, including the classic Chemex coffee maker, the Slinky, and Tupperware–designs that have become such a core part of American culture that they’re still sold today.

These were also the types of objects that were featured in a MoMA exhibition that toured Europe from 1950 to 1952 promoting American design. But this was no innocuous design fair. It was funded by the State Department and curated by MoMA to broadcast beautifully designed American products as evidence of the country’s dominance–and as proof that capitalism was superior to Communism.

“The story of exporting Abstract Expressionism in Cold War politics is more familiar, but actually far more visible were these exhibitions of Good Design,” says Juliet Kinchin, the curator of the exhibit. “And they literally did go all over the world.”

There was a secondary motivation for the Good Design institution as well: economic expansion, both at home and abroad. According to Kinchin, the Good Design exhibitions, which were established in conjunction with the Chicago Merchandise Mart, played a key role in educating the American consumer about why they should be buying these kinds of American household products.