The Mirror of Production

by Baudrillard, Jean (1975)

Abstract

Are the concepts of labor and of production adaptable to a developing industrial society? What is the meaning of "pre-industrial organization"? In attempting to answer these questions, Jean Baudrillard examines the lessons of Marxism which has created a productivist model and a fetishism of labor. He argues that we must break the mirror of production which "reflects all of Western metaphysics," and free the Marxist logic from the restrictive context of political economy whence it was born. A book certain to provide serious and much needed debate. -- publisher description.

Key Passage

By the same token, the double potentiality of man as needs and labor power, this double "generic" face of universal man, is only man as produced by the system of political economy. And productivity is not primarily a generic dimension, a human and social kernel of all wealth to be extracted from the husk of capitalist relations of production (the eternal empiricist illusion). Instead, all this must be overturned to see that the abstract and generalized development of productivity (the developed form of political economy) is what makes the concept of production itself appear as man's movement and generic end (or better, as the concept of man as producer). (p.30)

Links to Reference

• https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/32812884

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