On Baudrillard's Theory Of Symbolic Consumption And Its Theoretical Dilemma

Marx's historical materialism reveals the general law of human social development,pointing out that material production,as the first need for human survival and development,is the fundamental prerequisite for human and social existence,and the development of productive forces is the fundamental driving force for human social progress.From production,he scientifically divides the production of social products into four links: production,distribution,exchange and consumption.Among them,production plays a dominant role.Only when all social products are produced,can the realization of the following three links become possible.The final completion of consumption is also the completion of production process,which means the realization of human beings themselves.With the continuous development of production,the material wealth in society has changed from shortage to abundance.Consumption accompanied by production has become an indispensable activity in people's life.Postmodern thinker Baudrillard pointed out that behind the prevalence of consumption is essentially the decline of production function.Postmodern capitalist society has been transformed from a production society as Marx thought to a consumption society with great material and spiritual wealth.This is a new society fundamentally different from the traditional production society.In this society,the dominant position of production in society has given way to consumption,and consumption has become the dominant role of all activities in society.Through the study of Baudrillard's symbolic consumption theory,this paper tries to clarify the realistic tension of Baudrillard's theory and its relationship with Marx's political economy from four aspects,and correctly interpret Baudrillard's symbolic consumption theory from the historical and human dimensions.The first part introduces the consumer society which is different from the production society.Baudrillard believes that Marx's materialized critical theory should be replaced by the symbolic critical theory.The second part introduces the phenomenon of symbolic consumption and social codification in a consumption-oriented society when "symbol-object" becomes the main consumer.Starting from the realistic perspective,this paper tries to reveal that in the society characterized by consumption,symbols have become the symbol of people's personality,taste and social status.People are ostensibly consumers,but in fact,they use things to highlight their own consumption phenomenon and clarify the existing situation of people in the consumer society.The third part discusses Baudrillard's theory of symbolic manipulation,interprets the consumer society in depth from the theoretical facts put forward by Baudrillard,and illustrates that in the consumer society dominated by symbols,consumption as a new means of social control,realizes the manipulation of the whole society through the support of mass media technology.The fourth part clarifies Baudrillard's misunderstanding of Marx's critical theory of political economy in two aspects.On the one hand,Baudrillard believes that Marx's theory of fetishism has theoretical defects that can not be ignored,that is,he did not incorporate the use of value fetishism into his theoretical system of fetishism;on the other hand,Baudrillard's criticism of Marx's theory of fetishism as a whole,he is firm.Marxist fetishism theory has no real soil for existence and should be replaced by symbolic Signifier Fetishism theory.The theoretical task of this paper is to reveal the leading logic and contemporary value of Baudrillard's theory of symbolic consumption,and then to break Baudrillard's dogmatic understanding of Marx's critical theory of political economy and to generate the contemporary value of Marxism.