Hi Jerry
About advertising, you ask:
>Is it your position that advertising labour is (or can be) creative of
>surplus value?
My position is that much of advertising labour is straightforward
commodity-producing labour exchanged against capital, hence productive of
value and surplus-value. If you actually study the advertising industry
(and there are some fine books on this), you will see what I mean.
I have said before, and will say again, many commodities are produced under
capitalism of which the use-value is questionable from some moral point of
view. But that doesn't stop them from being commodities, possessing
exchange-value and use-value. Indeed, part of the critique of capitalism is
that those commodities can be produced at all (although you have to be a
bit careful with that critique so as not to step on human freedoms).
Sometimes you seem to argue that advertising is only productive if the
product it advertises is actually sold as result of the advertising. But
this seems to be as quirky to me as Michael's argument about the
productivity of his haircut in attracting students to his teaching factory.
In solidarity
Jurriaan
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