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The Re-production of Bourgeois Aesthetics: Baudrillard and the Limits of Radical Theory

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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...
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Baudrillard and the Crisis of Marxism: Beyond the Metaphysics of Production

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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...
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