ABSTRACT
This chapter maps some central aspects of Jean Baudrillard's engagement with Marxism in his vainglorious search for a radical theory of contemporary cultural studies. From Baudrillard's structural Marxism to an epistemological break with political economy, and finally to his announcement of the death of Marxist categories, it assesses Baudrillard's revolutionary praxis. Baudrillard's work thus lacks the critical element of subjective agency or critical self-reflexivity in his theory of consumption. A central concern of Baudrillard's work is the extension of Marx's concept of "commodity fetishism". The commodity fetishism provides a diversion for the ideological production of things and their concomitant social relations. By endowing commodities with mystical powers, individuals or groups mystify the process of labor extraction in capitalism. The increasing separation of the social from the agent promulgated by late capitalism inflects the meaning of social relations by promoting an ethics of distinction. This is accomplished through the abstract function of the sign and its displacement of the concrete.
