Without advertising it itself cannot advertise and so may find that its own circulation falls. Advertising We are exposed to advertising daily. For many advertising is viewed benignly as nothing more than letting people know that a certain commodity is for sale but for many Marxists advertising performs other functions. The manifest function of advertising may well be to tell people what commodities are for sale but that does not mean that advertising does not have latent functions. For Miliband advertising is political, that is, it reinforces the existing social order and thereby the rule of the capitalist class.
Advertising does more than merely inform it also persuades.
It not only aims to persuade the potential customer to buy it also persuades them that capitalism is the best system. The company not only sells its commodities it also sells itself and thereby also the system of which it is a part. It cannot sell itself without also selling capitalism. An advert, whether it appears in a newspaper or on television, does more than simply inform you with the objective facts about a commodity. Nearly every advert, so it seems, involves subtle and not so subtle associations with the commodity and the company with certain dominant values and norms.