Jean Baudrillard, recognized as one of the most significant thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, made a notable contribution to the global re-evaluation of society in the era of late capitalism, which would later be known as postmodernism, though Baudrillard himself rejected this term. His work is particularly interested in explaining how society copes with the loss of the real. Baudrillard developed an elaborate system of symbolic meaning to account for Western society's apparent addiction to commodities, arguing that consumption has become a new form of the sacred. This perspective is central to his theory of consumer society. His book, _The System of Objects_ (Le Système des Objets, 1968), translated as _For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign_ (1981), is one of three works that established him as a major figure. In this work, Baudrillard seeks to analyze the complex relationship between people and the objects that surround them. Rather than focusing solely on the functions of objects or categorizing them based on traditional criteria like size, functionality, form, or material, the book is concerned with "the processes whereby people relate to them and with the systems of human behaviour and relationships that result therefrom". Baudrillard notes the rapid proliferation of objects in urban civilization and the difficulty in classifying a constantly changing world of objects. He observes that traditional methods of classification, like functional analysis, fail to address how objects are experienced, what non-functional needs they satisfy, what mental structures are interwoven with their functional ones, or the cultural systems that underpin their everydayness. Baudrillard suggests that understanding the "system of objects" requires looking at a "spoken" system of meanings that objects institute, which operates on a plane distinct from and transcending the functional account – a structural and technological plane. He discusses different ways objects are systematized, including objectively through interior design and atmosphere, and subjectively through collecting. When considering "serial objects," those produced uniformly like those in a typical office, Baudrillard suggests that functional discourse is reduced. These objects appear as dispersed, impoverished elements arranged in calculated ways, often based on "penury". He argues that for modern objects, man must cease projecting his own image onto things and instead project his "game plan, his calculations, his discourse," investing these maneuvers with the sense of a message to self and others. This transforms the mode of existence of everyday objects, shifting focus, for instance, from a sociology of furnishing to a sociology of interior design. Beyond systematization, Baudrillard also examines the connotations of objects. He identifies "formal connotation," epitomized by the word FASHION, and "technical connotation," epitomized by the notion of AUTOMATISM. Automatism represents the "mechanistic triumphalism" of the modern object and is described as the ideal of its mythology, signifying that the object's particular function takes on the connotation of an absolute. A significant aspect of _The System of Objects_ is its analysis of advertising. Baudrillard argues that advertising is not merely an external addition but an "irremovable aspect" of the system of objects, precisely because of its disproportionateness. He views advertising as a "useless and unnecessary universe," "pure connotation," which adds nothing to production or the practical application of things. Despite this, it is integral to the system, not just because it relates to consumption, but because it becomes an object for consumption itself. Advertising acts as a "discourse on the object" and a "discourse-as-object". As a "useless, unnecessary discourse," it becomes consumable as a cultural object. Advertising, with its heavily connoted, often allegorical images and discourse, supplies the "ideal object" and offers revealing insights into what people consume through objects. Baudrillard questions whether this system of objects and advertising truly constitutes a language. He notes the prevailing idea, potentially a "self-serving idealization of managers," that modern products are so differentiated that they become complex beings, making the relationship of buying and consuming equivalent to a human relationship. However, he raises the crucial questions: is there a "living syntax" in this system? Do objects genuinely inform and structure needs in new ways? Do needs, mediated by objects and their production, inform new social structures?. This analysis in _The System of Objects_ connects to Baudrillard's broader critiques of consumer capitalism and the spectacle. He argues that consumption is treated as a new form of the sacred, but the commodified object is dematerialized because its value depends on belief rather than intrinsic qualities. This leads to a paradox where longing for a commodity is more important than possessing it, driving Western culture. Commodity fetishism, a key concept in Marxist and post-Marxist theory, is central to Baudrillard's theory of consumer society, building on the work of thinkers like György Lukács and Guy Debord. Debord famously argued that the final form of the commodity would be the image. Baudrillard extends this by suggesting the spectacle, which is an expression of commodity fetishism, replaces the concrete world with images and abstractions, resulting in a "loss of quality" and reified thinking. In the society of the spectacle, communication mediated by bureaucratic agencies turns people into passive receivers of information. Baudrillard's early views, particularly in _The System of Objects_, align with critiques that view consumers as subject to alienating dictates and as internalizing the system's values through consumption. Objects, in this view, act as categories that "tyrannically induce categories of persons," policing social meanings and materializing a social order under the sign of affluence. Baudrillard's overall approach is characterized by provocative and sometimes deliberately inflammatory claims, which he uses to challenge readers to confront the systems they inhabit and the "codes" that shape their social reality. His project involves examining the increasing distance between reality and appearance, forcing an engagement with the "disappearance of the world" into hyperreality. This critical stance is evident in his questioning of fundamental categories, such as whether the military operations in the Gulf War constituted a war, arguing that the technological disparity made it more of a police operation. For Baudrillard, the real was ahead of its representations, requiring new concepts to describe novel events.