The Spectral Light of Political Economy: Baudrillard Beyond Marx
Structural Limits of the Marxist Critique Near the end of Chapter 2 of The Mirror of Production, Jean Baudrillard makes a striking observation: political economy “projects itself retrospectively as a model” (Baudrillard, 1981, p. 63). The phrase appears within a methodological discussion concerning the limits of Marxist critique, yet it quietly transforms the frame of the argument. Marxism no longer appears merely as a theory of capitalism, but as a structure that illuminates history through categories already generated by capitalism itself. At stake in this passage is not simply the concept of production, but the way production becomes a principle of intelligibility. Earlier societies cease to appear as radically different forms of social existence and instead become incomplete versions of the present. Labor, exchange, accumulation, and economic rationality are projected backward as though they had always constituted the hidden truth of human organization. The present becomes the ...