VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1

What the Economic Institution Is, and That Oldest Position of All

This semester of the course speaks of the economic institution. The third volume, from end to end, discusses only four: the institution of enslavement, the capital doctrine, the socialist doctrine, the communist doctrine.

Hold one line first, for every word of this volume grows out of it. These four are not four stages set out along a line of time. They are four elements, living at once in every society today, living at once in every person today. None replaces another, none stands higher than another. They walk alongside. These three semesters walk them one at a time, and this semester walks the first, the institution of enslavement.

Why begin with the most-cursed one

Of the four, enslavement is the one cursed the hardest. Speak its name, and two ranks of people rise at once in the heart, one rank pitiable, one rank hateful, the chain, the whip, the burial pit. Curse them, and the matter is closed. What this semester means to do is exactly to take off those cursing spectacles. Because cursing is of no use. Pull one slaveholder down, put another up, and sitting in the one same position he does the one same thing, and he does not feel he is doing a bad thing. He feels the thing was always meant to be so. This semester teaches one thing only. Look at the position, not the person.

It begins from a scene. A slaveholder who could not cook, and a slave who cooked for him. The master holds the slave’s deed of sale, the slave holds the master’s three meals, his stomach, his life, and a pinch of something scattered into that pot, and the master is finished. Two constraints, running in opposite directions, biting each the other. So in the institution of enslavement there is no rich and poor, no high and low, no noble and base. There is only a difference of position, only a difference in the division of work. Set that line beside a thing many people take for granted, that where there is a slave and a master, surely there is the base and the honored. This volume says, no. Between them there is a difference of position, and onto that difference a layer of high and low was pasted by force, and that paste is wei. Peel it, and underneath are two people, each holding one end of the other’s rope.

What road this semester walks

Thirteen chapters, in three stretches.

The first six chapters call the ancestors onto the stage. First the word wei is stood up, the layer made by man, and neutral, for it made the culture of ritual and righteousness, and it made that lock too. Then Guanzi, Mencius, Sima Qian are called, to set down these positions one at a time. Matter comes first and mind after, so the granaries are full before propriety is known. The people must first be made rich, for with no steady holding there is no steady heart. And value is passed forward through four positions, one handing to the next. Then we sit down in that court of the year 81 before the common era, and hear the argument over salt and iron, the first meeting of state and market, an argument that ended with neither side wholly winning, which was exactly the best result.

The middle six chapters walk alongside that position as it goes. They set out from the age before people had opened their mouths to add a reason for taking more, where the lion pride and the wolf pack and the vampire bat divided their food by need, older than mankind. Then they walk through the Shang and Zhou and Qin and Han, across to the far side of the Mediterranean, into the serf on the estate, into the child in the factory, all the way to this morning’s alarm at six thirty, watching that position change its skin layer upon layer, each layer more refined, and the more refined the harder to recognize. The Shang held the person, the Zhou held the person by law, the Han held the person by the market, Rome wrote the person into the column of things, the serf was held not in person but in his output, the factory held nothing and only pulled the board from under his feet, and today it does nothing at all, and the person walks over of himself and signs.

The last chapter sets down the stroke of this whole semester. The one who takes the constraint is the slave, the one who lays the constraint is the master. Slave and master are positions, not identities. And the deepest line is this. The slaveholder is a slave too. The master position is a constraint too, and often the heavier one, the one harder to lay down. So the road out was never a climbing higher. It was a seeing clear.

Where this semester will close

Enslavement will never pass away. Because the home slave, the car slave, the cat slave, the dog slave, the child slave, the wealth slave, the wealth-guarding slave, the obedience slave, the algorithm slave, this crowd, living and breathing, will go on forever. It was not abolished. It only changed its skin, changed until you cannot know it again. This is not a word of despair. It is a word to open the eyes. A person who thinks enslavement was done away with long ago will not go and look at the nets on his own body. A person who knows that position never walked far off will at least stop and ask himself what he is handing over, what he is getting back, and whether he owns that account.

What the four institutions look like set together

This semester walks one only. Capital, socialism, communism, each has a semester of its own, walked one after another in the semesters ahead. And what the four look like set together, what one full picture they make, how they aid and complete one another, how they watch over one another and hold one another back so that no single one grows sole and great, all this is left to the overview of the whole third volume, the overview above the semesters, where it is spoken of in full.

Here, one thing is worth setting down early, so the frame does not go crooked. To walk enslavement first is not to say enslavement is the worst, nor the earliest, nor the one to be swept away before the rest can stand. It is walked first because it is the most cursed, and the most cursed is where the cursing spectacles must first come off. Learn on the hardest case to look at position instead of person, and the eye is ready for the three institutions that follow, each of which will look, at first, far more reasonable, far more willing, far harder to see through. Capital is signed for by two willing hands, socialism takes in the name of the public, communism holds out a coming day of each taking by need, and every one of them wears a more decent coat than the chain. It is exactly because they are decent that they call the more for the eye this semester was spent training. This semester, first see that oldest position of all, and see it clear.

The chapters of this semester

Chapter 1. Economy, a Tree Grown Out of Culture

Chapter 2. Wei, the Layer Made by Man

Chapter 3. Guanzi, the Same Position Set Two Thousand Years Early

Chapter 4. Steady Holding and Steady Heart, the Order Mencius Set

Chapter 5. Sima Qian and the Cold Eyes That Watch Gain

Chapter 6. The Salt and Iron Debate, the First Meeting of State and Market

Chapter 7. The Age That Had No Reason Yet

Chapter 8. Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, and the Position Stood Up

Chapter 9. The Far Side of the Mediterranean, the One Same Position

Chapter 10. The Serf, That Position Changes a Layer of Skin

Chapter 11. The Factory, How the Free Laborer Was Manufactured