''The System of Objects'' () is a 1968 book by the sociologist

Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as ...

. The book is based on the Baudrillard's doctoral thesis under the dissertation committee of

Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of s ...

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...

, and

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence ...

.Chris Turner's introduction to ''The Intelligence of Evil'', Berg (2005), p. 2.

Content

In his early books, such as ''The System of Objects'', ''For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign'', and ''The Consumer Society'', Baudrillard's main focus is upon consumerism, and how different objects are consumed in different ways. At this time Baudrillard's political outlook was loosely associated with

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

(and

situationism The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

), but in these books he differed from

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

in one significant way. For Baudrillard, as for the situationists, it was consumption rather than production that was the main driver of

capitalist society Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private pr ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:System of Objects 1968 non-fiction books Books by Jean Baudrillard French non-fiction books Non-fiction books about consumerism Philosophy books