It is sometimes argued that advertising really does little harm…

It is sometimes argued that advertising really does little harm because no one believes it any more anyway. We consider this view to be erroneous. The greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects, their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves do not believe, and that it teaches [in the words of Leo Marx] ‘the essential meaninglessness of all creations of the mind: words, images, and ideas.’ The real danger from advertising is that it helps to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious non-material possessions: the confidence in the existence of meaningful purposes of human activity and respect for the integrity of man.

Sourced

Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, 1964. quoted by Robert W. McChesney & John Bellamy Foster in “The Commercial Tidal Wave” in Monthly Review (3/2003)

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