Re: Simon and Garfunkel

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 7/2/2004 5:54:30 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Let's imagine the crew does all their work.  They set up the special sound and light systems, etc.  However, Simon and Garfunkel get into a fight and refuse to perform, so the show is cancelled and all ticket are refunded.  The next night, Simon and Garfunkel reunite.  The crew, pissed off, refuses to do any work.  So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system, and notwithstanding the lack of special lighting, a backup band, etc., the two of them perform for 18,000 people who pay $2.7 million. I am not sure what my questions are.  In what sense is the crew producing surplus value?  What value did they produce on night one?  What exactly is the value that is being created? Isn't all the value, for all practical purposes, being created by Simon and Garfunkel?  Isn't the crews' value purely contextual and unrelated to their labor per se?   Comment   I assume your question is honest.   "So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system,  . . .the two of them perform  . . ."   The existing sound system is a given state of technology and labor that exist as the infrastructure of the arena or there would be nothing to plug into. We can say that this preexisting infrastructure is so much dead labor . . . but it once was the work and effort of real human beings and a real technology. This dead labor - the infrastructure that Simon and Garfunkel are plugging into has been factored into the rent of the stadium.   Dead labor is excited to life by living labor in the process that makes money.   Even without special lighting they are standing on a stage - platform, that is the result of human labor and technology and the arena has seats that is the result of human labor and technology and represents what might be called "constant capital" or represents the results of labor that can be called "dead labor." This dead labor is excited to life by human activity or the people paying their money, sitting in the seats, the artists plugging into the sound system and entertaining.     What is so difficult about this?   Someone is running the lighting so that the people can see and they are going to be paid. Someone is selling hot dogs and beer and the people performing the administration of these things are being paid wages. The people who clean the bathrooms are being paid wages that comes out of the yearly revenues of the arena. The same applies to the parking attendants, the guards and folks punching your ticket and the ushers escorting one to their seats.   This is not Marxism but elementary common economic sense.   There is an unreal element to this entire conversation and far to many individually conceived ideas are attributed to Marx. Simon and Garfunkel get paid and their pay may come from a sponsor - Chrysler, and a thousand tickets as a block may have been purchased by the Miller Brewing Company or a dozen different scenarios.   When Committeeman I would always run into convert ticket from vendors, hats, ink pens, calendars and an assortment of things that represented profit or surplus value to the producer. The system or economy is a totality and not one group of guys that may or may not work on any given Sunday.   There is a combination of dead and living labor in everything . . . and one can always loss in the market and go out of business.   Should we not think things out a little more rather than point an accusing finger at Marx . . . especially if one has not gotten further than Marxism 101?   The thing I enjoyed about negotiating with the company at the upper levels is that they tend to be honest about cost and wages. They are very clear about dead labor - machinery and buildings, or fixed cost or constant capital.   The categories swing back and forth because individuals want to call advertisement a fixed cost because it is indispensable to selling products. There are conceptional difference between real life definitions and Marx approach. Hell, if you call advertisement a fixed cost I am not going to argue with you from across the table.   The finance guys are always screaming about cost because that is their jobs to stop the spending before the bottom of the bell curve becomes reality. In the auto industry more than half of management hate the finance guys and their perpetual cost cutting. Simon and Garfunkel plugged their equipment into something that already existed as part of the infrastructure and its cost is already factored into rent. However, all this dead shit takes real people . . . living human beings and living labor to exist to life as production of surplus value. ] Then you can go out of business.     Melvin P.