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Crítica de la economía política del signo
La verdad desde hace tanto tiempo reconocida en el sector de la producción económica de que en ninguna parte aparece ya el valor de uso, debe ser hoy reconocida, según el autor, en la esfera del "consumo" y del sistema cultural en general -o sea, que todo, aun la producción artística, intelectual, científica, se produce en ella inmediatamente como signo y valor de cambio. Este conjunto de ensayos en los que encontramos la continuación de los problemas planteados en El sistema de los objetos, publicado por esta misma editorial, esboza pues, por ángulos de ataque distintos, lo que podría ser una critica de la economía política del signo.
263 pages, Paperback
First published February 16, 1972
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About the author
Jean Baudrillard
210 books1,977 followersJean Baudrillard 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 well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Nevertheless, Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism, and had distanced himself from postmodernism.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 11, 2020
First off, this edition has a lot of typographical errors — misspellings, missing and incorrect punctuation. It's a little distracting, but mostly just disappointing coming from Verso.
Secondly, early Baudrillard is actually really fascinating. I think his desire to engage with Marxist thought through an incorporation of sign value and the political economy of the sign was abandoned far too soon — it has a lot to offer Marxists who want to work with materialist conceptions of culture (lots of interesting compatibility with Pierre Bourdieu and even Raymond Williams and cultural materialism). We should absolutely be questioning what we mean by use value, and if simply returning to use value is inherently liberatory.
Baudrillard really begins to lose me at moments where he speaks of the compete domination of the code and the failure of the dialectic as a useful analytical frame. As with many French theorists who were reacting to what they saw as the failures of Marxism, he bends the stick too far in the other direction of signification and signs, foreshadowing his eventual postmodern/poststructuralist turn. Even though he justifies this by saying that we're living in a new age of capitalism where the sign has gained much more value, I don't think his justification is as sound as he makes it out to be.
This book is much more valuable for actual political/practical considerations than any of his later works, in my opinion, but his later works are fun if you want to get insanely depressed and blackpilled about doing any praxis.
Best chapters:
- Sign Function and Class Logic
- The Ideological Genesis of Needs
- Fetishism and Ideology
- For a General Theory
- Beyond Use Value
- Toward a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign
- Concerning the Fulfillment of Desire in Exchange Value
Secondly, early Baudrillard is actually really fascinating. I think his desire to engage with Marxist thought through an incorporation of sign value and the political economy of the sign was abandoned far too soon — it has a lot to offer Marxists who want to work with materialist conceptions of culture (lots of interesting compatibility with Pierre Bourdieu and even Raymond Williams and cultural materialism). We should absolutely be questioning what we mean by use value, and if simply returning to use value is inherently liberatory.
Baudrillard really begins to lose me at moments where he speaks of the compete domination of the code and the failure of the dialectic as a useful analytical frame. As with many French theorists who were reacting to what they saw as the failures of Marxism, he bends the stick too far in the other direction of signification and signs, foreshadowing his eventual postmodern/poststructuralist turn. Even though he justifies this by saying that we're living in a new age of capitalism where the sign has gained much more value, I don't think his justification is as sound as he makes it out to be.
This book is much more valuable for actual political/practical considerations than any of his later works, in my opinion, but his later works are fun if you want to get insanely depressed and blackpilled about doing any praxis.
Best chapters:
- Sign Function and Class Logic
- The Ideological Genesis of Needs
- Fetishism and Ideology
- For a General Theory
- Beyond Use Value
- Toward a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign
- Concerning the Fulfillment of Desire in Exchange Value
June 7, 2021
A bit complicated here and there but very impressive and effective as a critique of Capital. Worth brushing up on that text before this one.
I'm impressed lately with the ahead-of-their-timeness of Baudrillard and Derrida. Both authors are referring to society as increasingly cybernetic. Grammatology was published in 1967 so it's good times. B refers in this book to future politics as the cross-section of ecology and cybernetics.
Not yet sure if I necessarily agree with the big man. Will take a while for these things to sink in. But I enjoy the idea of symbolic exchange as the economic 'other'. A solution, even.
For a Critique would easily be a lot more difficult, painful to get through were it not written by Baudrillard, who has a wonderful style and is very happy to supply with plenty of examples.
'It is useless to fantasise about state projection of police control through TV [as in 1984]: TV, by virtue of its mere presence, is a social control in itself. There is no need to imagine it as a state 'periscope' spying on everyone's private life - the situation as it stands is more efficient than that: it is the certainty that people are no longer speaking to each other, that they are definitively isolated in the face of a speech without response.'
I'm impressed lately with the ahead-of-their-timeness of Baudrillard and Derrida. Both authors are referring to society as increasingly cybernetic. Grammatology was published in 1967 so it's good times. B refers in this book to future politics as the cross-section of ecology and cybernetics.
Not yet sure if I necessarily agree with the big man. Will take a while for these things to sink in. But I enjoy the idea of symbolic exchange as the economic 'other'. A solution, even.
For a Critique would easily be a lot more difficult, painful to get through were it not written by Baudrillard, who has a wonderful style and is very happy to supply with plenty of examples.
'It is useless to fantasise about state projection of police control through TV [as in 1984]: TV, by virtue of its mere presence, is a social control in itself. There is no need to imagine it as a state 'periscope' spying on everyone's private life - the situation as it stands is more efficient than that: it is the certainty that people are no longer speaking to each other, that they are definitively isolated in the face of a speech without response.'
September 5, 2015
This book is a clear continuation of The System of Objects and was fairly digestible (especially compared to some of Baudrillard's later writing). The couple chapters on semiotics were a little lost on me (anyone have recommendations on where to start, or should I just read Saussure and Barthes?), especially the in-depth descriptions of the parallels between use-value and exchange-value and signified and signifiers. One of the points I did find useful to think about is that when psychology and semiotics are incorporated into Marxist or politico-economic analyses, use-value becomes a concept to de(con)struct. As in, there is a symbolic value to use-value that lets it act as a sign to other individuals, even though in a strict Marxist categorization, use-value is that thing that only has value to oneself.
July 6, 2025
Woah ig marx overlooked some stuff….use value doesnt matter bro….. reciprocity bro, everything is a game man. Whatever id rather just be on my phone listening to podcasts
September 21, 2020
This is my least favourite book by Baudrillard. In it the early Baudrillard confronts Marxism, offering criticisms and then either alternatives or additions to Marxist theory. But his criticisms do not really hold up, they are either born out of Baudrillard's idealist insecurities in the theory or out of objections to Marx on things that did not really concern him, primarily information science and media theory, an example would be when Marx is said to be made obsolete already with the invention of the telegraph. As for original ideas proposed, if you like Baudrillard you will like what he has to say, but a lot of it can be found elsewhere in his works, here it is written in a more dry and systematic style which makes the book hard to read and the opposition to Marx is unnecessary. I would not say this is a bad book, but I would not recommend it unless you're a fan of Baudrillard and want to go through all of his works and it is disappointing.
November 12, 2020
I'm up for every proposal of abolishing value (especially exchange value) that is discussed in here, however, not sure with the proposal of symbolic value. Got a bit lost on the actual discussion of sign and value.
October 17, 2024
ESSAYS FROM THE ‘60s AND ‘70s
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French philosopher, sociologist, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer most associated with the “Postmodern” movement.
These essays were written by Baudrillard from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, and they were first published as a volume in France in 1972.
He says, “objects are not the locus of the satisfaction of needs, but of a symbolic labor, of a ‘production’ in both senses of the term: PRO-ducers---they are fabricated, but they are also produced as a PROOF. They are the locus of the concentration of an effort, or an uninterrupted performance, of a stress for achievement, aiming always at providing the continual and tangible proof of social value.” (Pg. 33)
He states, “Reciprocally, the cult of the ephemeral is ideologically connoted by the privilege of the avant-garde: according to the eternal logic of cultural distinction, a privileged fraction savors the instantaneous and mobile character of architectural structures at the moment when others just gain access to the square between their walls. Only the privileged classes have the right to the reality of models. The others will have the right to them when these models have already changed.” (Pg. 52)
He argues, “Any function that one may wish to assign to art (among others, that of critical realism and of any form of commitment) must be measured with respect to this basic structure, and thus to the limit of meaning. Otherwise, the artist condemns himself to a pious ideology…: the eternal illusion of the philosophic consciousness, which makes him live his work as an absolute uniqueness that CONFRONTS the world and is responsible for bearing witness to it… Having said that, modern art is no less contemporary but its contemporaneity is neither direct nor critical: if it fully describes what we are, it does so by its very ambiguity.” (Pg. 107-108)
He observes, “political economy is this immense transmutation of all values… This aspect of the analysis has been privileged … Thus the equally essential, equally generalized process has been largely neglected… that immense process of the transmutation of economic exchange value into sign exchange value. This is the process of consumption considered as a system of sign exchange value: not consumption as traditional political economy defines it… but consumption considered as the conversion of economic exchange value into sign exchange value.” (Pg. 113)
He concludes the 8th chapter with the statement, “All the repressive and reductive strategies of power systems are already present in the internal logic of the sign, as well as those of exchange value and political economy. Only total revolution, theoretical and practical, can restore the symbolic in the demise of the sign and of value. Even signs must burn.” (Pg. 163)
This early work is more “political” and “philosophical” than Baudrillard’s later, more “postmodernist” and “cultural” works. But it will be of keen interest to anyone studying the development of Baudrillard’s thought.
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French philosopher, sociologist, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer most associated with the “Postmodern” movement.
These essays were written by Baudrillard from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, and they were first published as a volume in France in 1972.
He says, “objects are not the locus of the satisfaction of needs, but of a symbolic labor, of a ‘production’ in both senses of the term: PRO-ducers---they are fabricated, but they are also produced as a PROOF. They are the locus of the concentration of an effort, or an uninterrupted performance, of a stress for achievement, aiming always at providing the continual and tangible proof of social value.” (Pg. 33)
He states, “Reciprocally, the cult of the ephemeral is ideologically connoted by the privilege of the avant-garde: according to the eternal logic of cultural distinction, a privileged fraction savors the instantaneous and mobile character of architectural structures at the moment when others just gain access to the square between their walls. Only the privileged classes have the right to the reality of models. The others will have the right to them when these models have already changed.” (Pg. 52)
He argues, “Any function that one may wish to assign to art (among others, that of critical realism and of any form of commitment) must be measured with respect to this basic structure, and thus to the limit of meaning. Otherwise, the artist condemns himself to a pious ideology…: the eternal illusion of the philosophic consciousness, which makes him live his work as an absolute uniqueness that CONFRONTS the world and is responsible for bearing witness to it… Having said that, modern art is no less contemporary but its contemporaneity is neither direct nor critical: if it fully describes what we are, it does so by its very ambiguity.” (Pg. 107-108)
He observes, “political economy is this immense transmutation of all values… This aspect of the analysis has been privileged … Thus the equally essential, equally generalized process has been largely neglected… that immense process of the transmutation of economic exchange value into sign exchange value. This is the process of consumption considered as a system of sign exchange value: not consumption as traditional political economy defines it… but consumption considered as the conversion of economic exchange value into sign exchange value.” (Pg. 113)
He concludes the 8th chapter with the statement, “All the repressive and reductive strategies of power systems are already present in the internal logic of the sign, as well as those of exchange value and political economy. Only total revolution, theoretical and practical, can restore the symbolic in the demise of the sign and of value. Even signs must burn.” (Pg. 163)
This early work is more “political” and “philosophical” than Baudrillard’s later, more “postmodernist” and “cultural” works. But it will be of keen interest to anyone studying the development of Baudrillard’s thought.
July 7, 2023
Oh yeah babey that’s my boy. Coming from reading S&S and some of his more famous essays, it was rly great to read a more systematic account of his philosophy, I’d say this is probably a great second book to read from baudrillard, really illuminates his thought. It is still pretty unforgiving at times tho, dense, almost hairbrained at times but quite a rewarding read. It took me a little bit to long to read it, so some of the content from the first few chapters, which are probably the best excluding the final two, is a little hazy for me. Overall I really do think baudrillard has one of, if not the most, prescient diagnosis of the then emerging “postmodern” culture and his work still resonates in a horrifying way today. He just keeps being right and it sucks sometimes.
Also I had the newer verso printing of this and it had a bunch of weird errors like missing punctuation and capitalization. Made it hard to read sometimes and the binding on the last 20ish pages just fell out by the time I was reading them. :/
Also I had the newer verso printing of this and it had a bunch of weird errors like missing punctuation and capitalization. Made it hard to read sometimes and the binding on the last 20ish pages just fell out by the time I was reading them. :/
December 7, 2021
"Like the concept of need, which is presented as the link between the utility of an object and the demand of a subject, ideology appears as the relation between the projection of a consciousness and the ideality of~-vaguely--an idea, or a value. Transposed from the analysis of material goods to collective representations and values, the same little magic footbridge is suspended between artificial, even metaphysical, concepts.] In fact, ideology is the process of reducing and abstracting symbolic material into a form. But this reductive abstraction is given immediately as value (autonomous), as content (transcendent), and as a representation of consciousness (signified). It is the same process that lends the commodity an appearance of autonomous value and transcendent reality--a process that involves the misunderstanding of the form of the commodity and of the abstraction of social labor that it operates."
No one actually read this book but those who did likely took the time to decode it for the economics. They might have become intrigued by the metaphysics in the process, or so I'd hope. Baudy uses extended metaphor quite a bit but he more rarely spells it out like this. This above passage is brilliant in its candor. Sometimes we all need a little help comparing sociology to the economy and then to metaphysics. This part actually helps the reader. Maybe why the book is rated much higher than his average book. It's somewhat readable.
No one actually read this book but those who did likely took the time to decode it for the economics. They might have become intrigued by the metaphysics in the process, or so I'd hope. Baudy uses extended metaphor quite a bit but he more rarely spells it out like this. This above passage is brilliant in its candor. Sometimes we all need a little help comparing sociology to the economy and then to metaphysics. This part actually helps the reader. Maybe why the book is rated much higher than his average book. It's somewhat readable.
September 12, 2023
Espectacular tratado de sociología estructuralista. Por ahí lo mejor de esa tradición: el uso que hace de la noción de intercambio simbólico, la radicalización del marxismo a través de la crítica del valor de uso, el cruce entre psicoanálisis y semiótica, todos los elementos clásicos están puestos al servicio de una teoría coherente. Por supuesto que el Baudrillard posterior es más polémico y más interesante, pero primero tenía que pasar por acá.
Además, tiene una crítica al biologicismo que, veinte años antes de Butler, sorprende por la claridad y la fuerza.
Además, tiene una crítica al biologicismo que, veinte años antes de Butler, sorprende por la claridad y la fuerza.
August 29, 2023
Continuing his object-as-signifier project... This book was rather dull. I have read all the Marxist theory I want at this point, and Baudrillard's analysis of his concepts utilizing Marx is not to my tastes. I won't critique his scholarship or conclusions, I will only say I was extremely bored and struggled to finish this one.
February 12, 2021
Now this a radical break with Marx that contains some coherency. Although Baudrillard is able to build off this, it offers a fantastic bridge from Marxism to post-modernism.
January 6, 2022
Das obras do Baudrillard a que menos gosto. Parece uma espécie de apêndice de sistema dos objetos. Segue ao menos com pontos interessantes entre as mediações do gosto e dos objetos através de aparatos ideológicos. Do problema da autenticidade e do utilitarismo na arquitetura, etc. Talvez faça uma review mais extensa em outro momento.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews