Here we want to ask ourselves a simple question that may not have a simple answer. Can a work of art such as the one we intend to carry out intrinsically acquire an added value? Let’s clarify a little more: A work that results from the cooperative work of thousands of people at the same time: Does it have the same value as if those people sold each of their works separately? Is the price simply the sum of the parts?
Classical anarchists like Bakunin and Proudhon always found simple examples to tell us about complex ideas. One of these examples may be interesting for our purposes. In one of his texts, to talk about “social work” Proudhon tells us the “king’s story” which would be approximately like this:
A king learns of an impending attack on his castle. Then the ruler goes to the center of the town and gathers all the inhabitants. Paying a coin to each person who wants to help get 100 men to build a wall in just one day. The men set to the task and manage to complete it before the arrival of the enemies, who are successfully repelled. The king then pays each man the coin as agreed and they go home happy to spend their money.
But then the author asks us a question: Has the king paid what the work done is worth? In the first instance, the reader tends to say yes, that each man has received the promised coin for his work. But then he asks us: Isn’t there something extra that you haven’t paid for? and continues: Assuming that the king had to build the wall by himself. Assuming even that he had 100 days to do it, would he have made it? At this point the question is reconfigured to reduce to: Can a man in 100 days do what 100 did in one? Well no. And then what is that extra that the king has not paid? He affirms: Social work, that which can only arise when individuals join forces and work cooperatively to achieve something that they would not have been able to do on their own.

Going now to the living artwork. Is the value of it the simple sum of the individual value of each work of each of the individuals who participate or can we think that there will be an added value that would not have been achieved otherwise? Can the cooperative work of common men exceed the value of the work of a single established artist? It is interesting to even consider these questions. Let’s close with one last one: Can a man in 60 thousand days build what 60 thousand will constitute in one? And let’s multiply by all the days to come!