Baudrillard’s abandonment of Marxism results in a contradiction of his own theory.

Baudrillard has lined up a number of arguments for abandoning Marxism, and perhaps as a result, his value theory has not attracted wide attention. Nevertheless, I will argue both that we can see some major weaknesses with the abandonment and also for the potential in his value theory. Although Smith (1990) dealt with Baudrillard’s arguments in MoP, additional consideration is warranted. Before this attack on Baudrillard’s late position, I want to highlight that his transition from Marxism to anti-Marxism does not mean the rejection of all his previous insights before MoP. It should be noted that the French subtitle of Mirror of Production is critique du matérialisme historique. Baudrillard concentrates his attack primarily on historical materialism, which is only a single part of the Marxian system, although some of the central tenets of dialectical materialism also get their share of critique. Baudrillard positions himself beyond needs, beyond truth, beyond ideology, and beyond revolution. Smith (1990) has convincingly refuted all these claims by showing that they are either untenable or tenable but compatible with the writings of Marx. But an important criticism not mentioned by Smith concerns Baudrillard’s critique of historical universalism. The Marxist conceptions of (for example) history and material production are developed within the temporal context of capitalism. Marx conceives history as the history of modes of production, and thus periods before capitalism can also be analyzed through production, the concept is no longer temporal, and the Marxist analysis becomes universal (see Baudrillard 1975, 48). Baudrillard objects to this universalism, peculiarly enough by merely postulating that there were no dialectics in primitive societies. Poster (1975) rightly points out that this argument is problematic in several ways. Poster’s strongest argument states that, if we accept that applying any contemporary concept to the past is a kind of universalism, Baudrillard is defeated by his own argument. Poster observes that Baudrillard’s texts are infested with such “universalism.” For instance, his semiotic concepts are problematic, as he employs them on all stages of human societies without justification. Another problem is that Baudrillard has framed his critique so that it is in need of empirical support. He claims that there are no longer any exchange-value transactions untouched by sign values. That begs for empirical evidence, and the onus is on Baudrillard, if he is to be believed, rather than other social scientists. There may be some nonempirical explanation as to why exchange-value transactions must be dominated by sign values, but that is not the way Baudrillard frames the discussion. Instead, he treats current trends and possibilities as finalities, treats tendencies as realized states (see Kellner 1989), and extrapolates wildly from interesting insights (see Smith 1990). Related to this, Baudrillard makes no qualification or delimitation as to the scope of his ideas. Indeed, he tends to totalize the system of the society. This is very problematic because totalization is the germ source that will cause Baudrillard to rule out all political strategies, including his own theoretical interventions. In his later works, Baudrillard positions himself, in Smith’s (1990) words, “beyond truth,” yet Baudrillard’s arguments (in particular those in MoP) are made in such a way as to invite empirical evidence. He extrapolates from singular cases in his search for a strategy. From studies in fashion (CS), goods consumption (MoP), and French Communist Party activity (UB), Baudrillard wildly extrapolates that every political activity has one or more sign values as its objective, making any political activity futile (including even gifts and Saussurean anagrams). But this is an unwarranted extrapolation. A political activity that is use-value-oriented is conceivable, and theorization may also be proffered as an act governed by use value. A final problem is that his later theories generally overlook or neglect many aspects of many people’s current social experience. This does not necessarily make the theory false—but it needs to be taken into account (Kellner 1989). How does Baudrillard respond to the many third-world workers who feel resentment over their labor being exploited? According to Baudrillard, they should rather be immersed in sign-value-related activity, such as identity management. He leaves unarticulated whether the perception of social injustice is exactly that. Before there is reason to take Baudrillard’s later standpoints seriously, they need to be grounded in empirical investigations, or at least theoretically justified.