“It was capital which was the first to feed throughout its history on the destruction of every referential, of every human goal, which shattered every ideal distinction between true and false, good and evil, in order to establish a radical law of equivalence and exchange, the iron law of its power. It was the first to practice deterrence, abstraction, disconnection, deterritorialization, etc.; and if it was capital which fostered reality, the reality principle, it was also the first to liquidate it in the extermination of every use value, of every real equivalence, of production and wealth, in the very sensation we have of the unreality of the stakes and the omnipotence of manipulation. Now, it is this very logic, which is today hardened even more against it. And when it wants to fight this catastrophic spiral by secreting one last glimmer of reality, on which to found one last glimmer of power, it only multiplies the signs and accelerates the play of simulation.” (Baudrillard).
Capital was first to destroy the meaning of the sign because it broke down binaries for the purpose of aiding equivalence and exchange. Capital had to break down value to reconfigure it for its economic production. As result the meaning of a product’s use became conflated with its value. As capitalism attempts to reinstate the meaning of the sign, it cannot because its original meaning under early capitalism was based on something unreal, its value.
