Jean Baudrillard vs. Marxism

In this episode, I expound on Baudrillard's criticisms of Marxism.

If you want to support me, you can do that with these links:

Twitter: @DavidGuignion
IG: @theory_and_philosophy

[postsolarpunk]

Auto CC: "hey hey everyone back again today I'm going to talk about jumbo jared's critique..." :)

[邓梓薇]

It’s all dialectics fault: that duality between body and soul between use value and exchange value between male and female, isn’t soul just body? Isn’t exchange value also a use? Isn’t male the same with female…

[fogfish]

One thing Id point out is the categorization of capitalists attempting to rob workers of the “actual value” of their labor to gain profit isn’t really technically true. In Capital and Critique of the Gotha Programme we see how Marx lays out that surplus is extracted via the fact that laborers can never own their own labor and are selling their ability to work which is being paid it’s “correct” (exchange) value for. specifically in Gotha Program Marx points out that “fair days work for a fair days wage” and similar slogans are not the point of the Communist movement instead of just the abolition of payment in general

[rhizomaticmemer]

A lot of these criticisms are valid. They don't fully undermine the marxist project as much as they show the need for new approaches that build upon and expand marxist ideas (Deleuze did this pretty well imo).

Regarding Baudrillard's critique of Marx reducing all value to human labor: It is important to note that Marx didn't see value as something that is simply innate to human labor (as though it were independent from social & historical contingency), but instead that the value of human labor is something socially agreed upon. This means Marx his idea of value coming from human labor is far less essentialist than it might seem.

Banger video as always David!

[leinaamatsuji-berry]

I’ve been on a Baudrillard kick lately so I appreciate your work even more than usual. Have you looked at McKenzie Wark’s Capital is Dead (late 2019 I think)? She does a good bit of Baudrillard and Virilio in her work.

[scriptea]

Heh, super agree at the end there. While it's super easy now to pick apart Marx, we have to understand the ground he was trying to break to realize the strides he made.

[dontbeafool]

Content creator union hahahhaa. You only make money from ads because you exploit people's attention (which youtube aggregates for you). Without the attention, you dont make revenue, should we start a watcher union, so our collective attention labor generating this revenue is split fairly?

[navonil]

One advice from a fellow researcher Brother : you have the world's audience, and that is why you should pronounce a little more clearly and speak a little bit slowly. I found your that video on dialectics (Plato....Marx) very helpful and it was easier to understand for me than this one.

[sunraylight]

You are a learner bortha trust goodness and dont trust wrong mindset of athiesm hahaha

[JAMAICADOCK]

Marx was writing about a different world, a 19th century Victorian milieu of what today would be called Third World poverty.

By the 60s much of Victorian capitalism was eradicated, at least in a Western sense, which ostensibly made many of Marx's ideas appear redundant. .

Capitalist production seemed to outperform communist production, seemed to offer workers a better quality of life than communist production. Sure workers were relatively impoverished, but they were better off than workers in the communist countries.

However, if we take Wallenstein's One World System into account. Victorian capitalism essentially is still here, it's just been expanded by globalization

Wherein workers in the First World, closest to the hubs of surplus value, have been co-opted into the wealth generated by global capitalism.

Essentially the world of Marx and Engels is still with us, it's just not in the West anymore, it's in El Salvador. Guatemala, the Philippines, Nigeria, South Africa etc etc.

Now if we were in splendid isolation from such exploitation, we could claim that the success of Western capitalism is autonomous, but obviously if the goods are manufactured in the Third World, we are benefiting from said exploitation,

In fact, you might make the argument, that we are the global bourgeois to the Third World's proletariat.

In that respect, Baudrillard hardly looks at the bigger picture of capitalism. His critiques of Marxism are all within a First World context. Baudrillard only saw the success of capitalism through a Western lens. Very much a superficial reading, not that dissimilar to standard Western tropes on the failures of Marxism.

Moreover, you might say that Baudrillard himself is a hollow simulacra of Western philosophy. A Western sophist engaging in theoretical masturbation, as the Sorkal affair exposed.

That said his essential superficiality gave him insights into the direction Western capital was moving.

Even though he missed the bigger picture, he's useful in describing the essential hollowness of Western capitalism. A hollowness he put down to technological developments in mass media, advertising, computers etc, whereas Marx would have seen it as 'all that is Holy is profaned, all that is solid, melts into air'.

As the West becomes wealthier on the back of globalization, it becomes evermore cosmetic, ersatz. Simulation once only the preserve of the aristocracy and the rich, leaks down into every facet of the West, envelops the entire society, The simulation once contained within the Neo Classical, the Neo Gothic, Mock Tudor, now infects all culture, all politics - everything.

We need to remember that ruling classes never lived in reality, they preferred simulation to hide the truth of their mendacity, Hence people getting rich off the back of slavery built Neo Classical villas alluding to ancient Greece and Rome, or romanticized the medieval period.

Or think prince Ludwig building his Wagnerian castles in Bavaria, or Marie Antoinette living her life as a milk maid in Rambouilliet, or Henry Ford's Greenfield village - the simulation of his Victorian homestead.

Simulacra albeit on a far more modest scale, is now present everywhere in the West giving the lie to the realpolitik laying beneath globalization and post modernity.

[philv]

Record at a higher volume I can't hear s***

[scrumpD]

Damn, uploaded just one day after I submitted my essay - where there's a section contrasting Baudrillard's ideas with Marxism.

[allan]

Comment for the comment gods! I'm really excited to hear this one!

[skateboard]

Hey man, great video. Thank you for making it.

[January-ptci]

Baudrillard’s critique kinda sucks tbh. Seems like he didn’t understand Marx’s project. Does he talk about Althusser? His critique only applies to historicist and humanist readings, which just kinda suck themselves. The point about the luddites is wrong as well, didn’t he read the chapter on machinery or the working day on capital? He directly addresses how strikes relate to productivity.

[feralscents]

"it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature" - Joseph Dejacque

[weatherlylinn-adams]

Great video, but I take issue with the idea that communism award workers with the "full value of their labor". I don't have specifics quotes off the top of my head to reference, but from my reading, Marx basically says that work as such is abolished. Instead of labor being *required* for some social need but *performed* in order to get compensation, labor is done "according to one's ability" (however much a person or maybe community can or wants to labor), to fulfill whatever social need is present, and then one is able to receive "according to their need". If laborers are still being "compensated" as a direct reward in exchange for labor performed, then alienation persists, as does value in some form.

[kacperbilozor]

A small inaccuracy: YouTube is your distributor, not your employer.

[VirtueInEternity]

In which text or book does Baudrillard explain these criticisms?

[ArmorofTruth]

Very much appreciate your commitment to and obvious passion for philosophy- that sounds redundant... but I'm grateful for your work. This is what makes YouTube valuable (in my biased opinion).
Thanks👍