''The System of Objects'' () is a 1968 book by the sociologist

Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard (, ; ; – 6 March 2007) was a French sociology, sociologist and philosopher with an interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as hi ...

. The book is based on the Baudrillard's doctoral thesis under the dissertation committee of

Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre ( ; ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for furthering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of social ...

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ...

, and

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (, ; ; ; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influ ...

.Chris Turner's introduction to ''The Intelligence of Evil'', Berg (2005), p. 2.

Content

In his early books, such as ''The System of Objects'', ''For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign'', and ''The Consumer Society'', Baudrillard's main focus is upon consumerism, and how different objects are consumed in different ways. At this time Baudrillard's political outlook was loosely associated with

Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...

(and situationism), but in these books he differed from

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

in one significant way. For Baudrillard, as for the situationists, it was consumption rather than production that was the main driver of

capitalist society Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a n ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:System of Objects 1968 non-fiction books Books by Jean Baudrillard Books in philosophy of technology French non-fiction books Non-fiction books about consumerism