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Retro Museum Display with Vintage Objects. AI image Thesis This article argues that contemporary consumer society has transformed not only the economy of objects but also humanity’s temporal and symbolic relation to them. Drawing on the work of Jean Baudrillard, the essay suggests that the ecological and existential tensions of modernity are tied not merely to overproduction, but to the disappearance of durable relations between people, objects, and memory. Things that once mediated continuity, inheritance, and ritual meaning now circulate as disposable commodities within an accelerated system of production and consumption. Introduction — Objects That Outlived Their Owners There was a time when ordinary possessions accompanied an entire human life. A couple married and purchased a refrigerator, a sewing machine, a bicycle, perhaps a radio. Those items remained in the household for decades. Children inherited them. Grandchildren sometimes used them as well. Over the years, such th...

Steinbruch mit Bauarbeitern und Maschinen. AI image Introduction — The Ecological Crisis Beyond Capitalism The ecological crisis is frequently described as the consequence of excessive capitalism: overproduction, relentless consumption, and the unchecked expansion of markets. Within this framework, the proposed remedies often appear straightforward—regulate industry, redistribute resources, reform economic institutions, or replace private ownership with collective control. Yet such responses may remain confined within the very conceptual horizon they seek to challenge. In The Mirror of Production , Jean Baudrillard advances a more unsettling diagnosis. The central issue, he argues, is not merely who controls production, but the privileged status production itself has acquired within modern thought. Both capitalism and Marxism, despite their political antagonism, continue to define humanity through labor, technological transformation, and the expansion of productive capacity. This...

Thesis This article argues that Jean Baudrillard offers a critique that extends beyond capitalism and classical Marxism to include the broader intellectual traditions that attempted to surpass them. According to Baudrillard, much of twentieth-century radical thought remains enclosed within a productivist imaginary shared with political economy itself. The “mirror of production” does not only structure economic and theoretical discourse; it also extends into desire, aesthetics, and symbolic life. As a result, the radical left may reject bourgeois morality while remaining unconsciously attached to bourgeois forms of prestige, style, and seduction. From Political Economy to Productivist Thought In The Mirror of Production , Baudrillard develops a critique that targets not only capitalism but also the conceptual foundations of Marxism. His argument is that modern theory repeatedly defines the human being through categories of labor, creativity, and productive capacity. Even emancipat...