Analysis Of Jean Baudrillard's Historical Materialism Critique

Jean Baudrillard is not only a famous French philosopher,but also a thougt master in modern society. He has a wide range of academic influence in European and American countries.His social critique theory experienced a changing process from Western Marxism to anti Marxist. According to the research contents's steering, it generally went through three stages:the critique of the consumer society period, production theory of critical period, symbol exchange theory during the creation. From the the critique to production theory, Baudrillard embarked on the road of historical materialism's critique which is anti Marxism."Symbolic Exchange and Death" revealed the ultimate goal of the critical theory, with symbolic exchange system as general principles of interpretation in society.Baudrillard's critical theory of historical materialism has its own historical background and theoretical origin.The contemporary capitalist society after World War ? has new names: the consumer society, the post modern society and so on.Baudrillard personally experienced these changes, embark his way of social criticism with the concept of the "thing". Witnessed "May Storm" in Paris, Baudrillard was influenced by the thought of Structuralism, and began to doubt the practical effectiveness of the theory of Marx.Absorbed the research theory achievement of Lacan, Barth et al. Baudrillard began the criticism of historical materialism. His critical theory takes the analysis and criticism of the concept of labor production as the breakthrough point,he believed that Marx used the concept of production to set up a mirror, so that people have to go through this mirror in order to know themselves, understand the nature, understand the history of the entire human. And the image that people come to the conclusion that is the essence of man is the labor force, the natural existence of the purpose is to be conquered by the human transformation and human history is the history of production.Then he accused that Marxism has human center doctrine and the anti natural tendency.In the theory of labor production, whether it is the use of the concept or the construction of the theory system, the political economy of capitalism is followed.So Baudrillard believed that Marx did not really overstep capitalism, meanwhile he opposesed position to the methodology of "backward thinking".The description of the characteristics of the times in Baudrillard's theory has a reasonable and realistic, to the contemporary Chinese modernity construction to have the practical significance. The theory can help people recognize the correct relationship between the production and consumption, establish a correct view of consumption. To a certain extent, it enrich the research space of Marxism. But Baudrillard's research method of the dialectical thinking is not desirable, and the social criticism of the cultural level can not penetrate the truth of social contradictions. The reason why Jean Baudrillard had faulse option to historical materialism is that he misread the basic concepts of historical materialism and limited these concepts in in the field of economics without understanding historical materialism's profoundness in the field of social historical criticism.He tried in vain to use symbolic exchange system to in place of the production principle and the explanation of social universal principles, only to achieve a theoretical Utopia.