Baudrillard and the Crisis of Marxism: Beyond the Metaphysics of Production
Distant Revolutions , Agitprop Art . AI image Thesis This article argues that Jean Baudrillard’s significance lies not in revising Marxism, but in revealing the extent to which Marxism remains bound to the same conceptual framework as capitalist political economy. In The Mirror of Production, Baudrillard contends that Marxism reproduces the modern Western privileging of labor, production, and utility even as it attempts to oppose capitalism. Rather than offering a corrective to historical materialism, his critique exposes the internal dependence of Marxism upon the very categories it seeks to transcend. The Crisis of Western Marxism By the middle of the twentieth century, confidence in classical Marxism had begun to erode among European intellectuals. Advanced capitalist societies had not collapsed under the weight of their contradictions, nor had the industrial proletariat emerged as the revolutionary force Marx anticipated. Instead, postwar Western societies experienced ris...
