----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Perelman <michael@ECST.CSUCHICO.EDU>
To: <ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 1999 3:59 PM
Subject: [OPE-L:1309] Re: more re advertising and productive labour
> To the extent that advertising makes a person willing to pay more for a
good than s/he
> would otherwise, to call advertising productive would seem to reflect the
old profit
> upon alienation theory (circulation based) rather than Marx's idea about
the surplus
> from the dual nature of labor.
This is not my point at all. If someone (e.g. the marketting department at
Coke Corp) is prepared to pay for advertising services, then they are
potentially in the commodity form, and the labour that produces them is in
principle productive. 'Profit' is not here made upon the mere act of
alienation (that being a zero sum game), but (potentially) upon the
production and sale of services the demand for which (use-value) is
generated by the processes of alienation. My account of the effects of
advertising [which, you will remember I carefully bracketted as not strictly
germane to the (un)productive labour distinction] was merely intended to
rationalise the use-value that advertising services might have for the
marketing department.
Comradely ...,
Michael
____________________
Dr Michael Williams
Economics and Social Sciences
De Montfort University
Milton Keynes
UK
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