VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 10, SECTION 1
No Longer Holding You the Person, Holding Your Output
The last chapter walked through, and that position had gone bare to the bottom. The person was written into the column of things. This chapter looks at the first layer of skin it changes. Once this layer of skin goes on, the chain truly vanishes. The person has a name, has a family, has a little patch of his own ground. He belongs to no one. And still he cannot leave.
First, take one reflex apart
Many people, the moment they see the two words serf and bondage, have four other words jump into the head at once. Feudal society. Slave society, feudal society, capital society, several stages lined up in a row, and the serf filed into the feudal box.
This volume does not accept that lineup.
The institution of serfdom is an economic institution. The feudal institution is a political institution. To bind these two by force is a later simplification in theory, not a fact of history.
There are three pieces of evidence.
The first. There are places that had the feudal, and yet no developed serfdom. The parceling out of land among warriors under the Kamakura shogunate in Japan was feudal, and yet a large part of the people who labored on the Japanese estates were not, in the strict sense, serfs.
The second. There are places that had developed serfdom, and yet were not, in politics, feudal. A certain great power of eastern Europe in the modern age saw serfdom reach its height in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, and in that period that country was a highly centralized monarchical autocracy.
The third. China. China from the Qin was a centralized system of commanderies and counties, and yet through long stretches of China’s history there existed, on a great scale, laborers bound in personal dependence. The buqu, the household dependents, the tenant farmers.
Then where exactly is China’s feudal society. This question troubled the Chinese historians of the last century for a full hundred years, and out of countless papers, in the end no conclusion came.
The reason no conclusion came is that the question itself was framed wrong.
Take the two things apart
Serfdom is not the economic base of the feudal, and the feudal is not the upper structure of serfdom. These two are each of them independent. They can exist at once, and they can exist apart.
Take them apart, and it comes clear.
Serfdom asks, the fruit of the weak one’s labor, to whom does it go. This is an economic question.
The feudal asks, how is political power parceled out among the lords. This is a political question.
This chapter minds only the first. The second is left to the fourth volume, where the political institution is spoken of.
Hold this move. When a question yields no conclusion, it is often not that the answer is hard to find, it is that the question was bound wrong. Take the two things that were bound together apart, and the answer floats up on its own.
Where this layer of skin is changed
The mechanism of serfdom can be said in one line.
The side that receives the labor no longer holds the person who sends the labor, it holds the output of his labor once he is bound to the land.
Set it side by side with the slavery of the last chapter.
Slavery. The receiving side holds the sending side directly. The sending side is property. The whole of his labor goes to the receiving side, and the receiving side is answerable for keeping him barely alive.
Serfdom. The receiving side does not hold the sending side directly. The sending side is, in law, a person, with a family, with a name, with a faith. But he is bound to the land, he cannot leave, cannot freely move, cannot freely choose what to do, in some places cannot even freely marry. His labor is split into two shares, one handed to the landlord, one kept for himself, to feed a family of old and young.
Mark this change. On the surface, it is an advance. The slave has become a person. The slave has a family. The slave can keep a part of the fruit of his labor. The slave is no longer put to death at a whim.
These changes are all real. On this the volume is not vague.
But the mechanism underneath has not changed. The receiving side is still holding the labor of the sending side. What changed is only the form of the holding.
This layer of skin has three goods for the master
Now the layer that matters most in this section. Listen slowly.
Do not think this was the master growing a kind heart. This layer of skin went on because it paid better.
The first, it is less trouble.
Under slavery, the master had to see to the slave’s food and lodging, had to set someone to watch him, had to guard against his running, and when the slave fell ill or died, had to take the loss himself.
Under serfdom, all this falls to the serf. The serf has his own home, grows his own grain, bears and raises his own, bears his own illness himself. The landlord minds one thing only. Collect the rent on time.
Read this line once over in your mind. The landlord minds one thing only, collecting the rent on time.
The second, it is stable.
A slave held down by force to his work has no wish to bring children into this world to suffer the same. So the population of slaves must be filled, over and over, from outside, by war captives, by trade. The wars end, the trade is cut, and the source of slaves dries up. This is a bind certain ancient empires ran into, solidly, in their late days.
The serf is not so. The serf breeds of himself. He has a home, has ground, has a minimal space to keep alive in. He will bear children, will raise them, will leave them to the next landlord to till on.
The serf is a labor power that can reproduce itself. This is a thing slavery could not do.
The third good is the most important, it looks legitimate
The third good is the bone of this whole chapter.
Slavery is too bare. The receiving side says plainly, I hold you.
That bareness makes slavery, by its nature, unstable. So long as the one who is held keeps a shred of clarity, he will be thinking of changing places.
Serfdom is not so. It can be dressed up in all manner of legitimate shapes.
Call it tradition. The serf’s forefathers tilled on this ground, he himself tills on this ground, the thing was always meant to be so.
Call it protection. The landlord protects the serf from the harm of outside enemies, protects the serf from starving in a famine. The rent the serf pays is his return for that protection.
Call it order. A society must have order, each person at rest in his place. The serf’s place is to till the landlord’s field.
Call it faith. In some places, the mainstream teaching told the serf, the suffering you bear on this ground is part of some higher arrangement. Bear through this life, and the next life has its reward.
Set these four side by side.
In the age of slavery, the reason was, the slave is not a person.
In the age of serfdom, the reason changed to tradition, protection, order, faith.
The reason grew softer, more diffuse, and harder to knock down in one line.
This is an upgrade of wei.
Walk in close and look at that landlord
Walk in a little closer, and look at that landlord collecting his rent.
He is not a villain. He rises every morning, looks at the sky, worries over this year’s rain. He built a bridge for the village. In a lean year he truly did open his granary, and kept a few households alive. He goes to church, he sincerely feels he is keeping this ground and these people on heaven’s behalf.
When he collects the rent, there is not a shred of guilt in his heart. Because his grandfather collected it so, his father collected it so, on this ground the thing was always this way.
Hold this line, for every chapter to come will use it. That position, walked to its end, does not need a bad man.
It needs only a crowd of people who feel the thing was always meant to be this way.
This is why this volume, from end to end, curses no one. Cursing is of no use. Pull this landlord down, put another up, and sitting in the one same position he does the one same thing, and he too does not feel he is doing a bad thing.
What is to be looked at is the position. Not the person.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section set up three things.
The first. Serfdom is an economic institution, the feudal is a political institution. Bound wrong, a hundred years of argument yielded no conclusion. Asked apart, the answer floats up on its own.
The second. Where this layer of skin is changed. No longer holding you the person, holding the output of your labor once you are bound to the land. The person has a name, a family, a faith, and these are real advances. But the mechanism underneath has not moved by one fen.
The third. This layer of skin is not a kind heart, it is that it pays better. Less trouble, more stable, and it looks legitimate. The reason changed from the slave is not a person to tradition, protection, order, faith. Softer, and harder to knock down.
Then, those two words, less trouble, what exactly did they take away. What was taken away is risk. A slave falls ill and dies, the loss is the master’s. A serf falls ill and dies, it is the serf’s own affair. The drought comes, the harvest is gone, and the rent is still that much.
This move is the cruelest stroke in the evolution of this position. It moved the risk from the side that receives, over to the side that sends.
The next section is on exactly this stroke.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 2. Move the Risk, From the Side That Receives to the Side That Sends