Papers > By author > Potts Nick

I write this to remind all that Marx's value theory was precisely designed to address how mechanisation fits into a world where new value is solely created by living labour, with the source of profit solely being the surplus-value extracted from living labour. In addition the paper is a response to Pitts (2014) in particular, and in general to all, who feel that the creative industries are another reason to dismiss, or modify Marx's theory of value. Pitts (2014) takes a value-form position from Heinrich's (2012) new reading of Marx. Labour becomes abstract labour only in the social validation process of exchange i.e. when the commodity is sold. As creative industries, such as advertising, contribute to making this exchange possible at the price it occurs at, they, like all the other labour involved in the commodity's production and exchange in the market, help produce the commodity's value. I argue that this interpretation of Marx is both unnecessary and unhelpful to our understanding of the role of unproductive (and productive) creative industries. In contrast Marx's labour-theory of value, as a remarkable complete theory of capitalism, allows us to understand all the elements of capitalism, without losing sight of their connections in the overall picture of how our society tends to work. So, for example, if we simply think advanced countries ‘produce' all the value they appropriate, then we cannot see how the success of the advanced is built on capturing value from (robbing) everyone else i.e. we would thus make growing global inequality appear to be ‘fair'!