''The Mirror of Production'' (french: Le Miroir de la production) is a 1973 book by the French sociologist and philosopher
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as ...
. It is a systematic critique of
Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialec ...
. Baudrillard's thesis is that
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
’s theory of
historical materialism
Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...
is too rooted in assumptions and values of political economy which Marx attempted to critique to provide a sufficient framework for radical action. The fault of Marxism is in prioritizing the very concepts that founded capital, e.g. necessity, value, and labor.
For Baudrillard, Marx did not transcend political economy but merely saw its reverse or its “mirror” side. Marxism merely strengthens political economy’s basic propositions, in particular the idea that self-creation is performed through productive, non-alienated labor. In Baudrillard’s words, “''
arxismconvinces men that they are alienated by the sale of their labor power, thus censoring the much more radical hypothesis that they might be alienated as labor power''.”
Baudrillard proposes to liberate workers from their "labor value" and think in terms other than production.
See also
*
Critique of political economy
Critique of political economy or critique of economy is a form of social critique that rejects the various social categories and structures that constitute the mainstream discourse concerning the forms and modalities of resource allocation and ...
*
Moishe Postone
*
Robert Kurz
Robert Kurz (24 December 1943 – 18 July 2012) was a German Marxist philosopher, social critic, journalist and editor of the journal ''Exit!'' He was one of Germany's most prominent theorists of value criticism.
*
Mirror stage
The mirror stage (french: stade du miroir) is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. The mirror stage is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror (literal) or other symbolic contraption which induces ap ...
References
External links
*Jean Baudrillard, ''The Mirror of Production'', trans.
Mark Poster
Mark Poster (July 5, 1941 – October 10, 2012) was Professor Emeritus of History and Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine, where he also taught in the Critical Theory Emphasis. He was pivotal to "bringing French critical theory to the U.S ...
(New York
Telos Press 1975)
1973 non-fiction books
Books about Marxism
Books by Jean Baudrillard
French non-fiction books
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Critique of political economy