VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 10, SECTION 2
Move the Risk, From the Side That Receives to the Side That Sends
The end of the last section stopped on the two words, less trouble. This section takes those two words apart. Take them apart, and you see that what was taken away is not trouble, it is risk. And risk, that thing, does not vanish into thin air. It moved from one end to the other. This move is the cruelest stroke in the evolution of this position.
First, set two account books side by side
Look first at the slaveholder’s book.
He bought a slave, spent the price of a house. This person eats his food, lodges in his place, and when he falls ill the master has to bring someone to tend him. Why. Because this is his property. The property spoils, and the loss is his.
The drought comes, the harvest is gone, and this slave still has to eat. The slaveholder has to take grain out of his own store to feed him. Feed him not, and the person dies, and once the person dies, the price of a whole house is poured into the water.
See it clear. Under slavery, the risk of a bad year is pressed on the master.
Now look at the landlord’s book.
The serf has his own home, his own little patch of ground. He grows his own grain, eats his own food, bears and raises his own, bears his own illness himself.
The drought comes, the harvest is gone. Did the landlord’s rent come up short.
It did not. The rent is fixed dead.
See it clear. Under serfdom, the risk of a bad year is pressed on the serf.
What this move moved away
Think this layer through.
The disasters of heaven are still the same disasters. The drought is as dry, the flood as drowning. The harvest in the ground, what is to be short is short.
The risk did not decrease by one fen. It only changed which person carries it.
When the slaveholder carried it, he would reckon. Whether to mend the irrigation channel, whether to lay in some grain, whether to store up these people’s rations before the dry year comes. He would reckon, because the loss is his.
When the landlord does not carry it, what does he reckon. He reckons when this year’s rent comes in.
As to whether there is enough water in the ground, that is the serf’s affair. The serf sees to it himself.
Hold this line, it is the hardest line in this section. When a person does not carry a risk, he will not think about that risk.
The rent is fixed dead, look at these four words clear
The serf’s labor was handed over, commonly, in two forms.
One is called rent in kind. The serf tills his own little patch, and every year hands the landlord a set amount of grain, livestock, cloth.
One is called labor rent. The serf must, every week, do a set number of days of unpaid work on the landlord’s land, typically three. The days that remain are his own ground’s turn.
Rent in kind is more common where the land is poor, and the landlord finds working it himself not worth his while. Labor rent is more common where the black earth is rich, and the landlord finds working it himself a source of profit.
Mark where each of these two sets the risk.
Rent in kind. A set amount of grain to hand over. In a good year, that amount is handed over with a little to spare. In a lean year, that amount is still that much, and what remains comes to nothing. The harvest falls by three parts in ten, the handover falls not at all, and the whole shortfall comes out of the serf’s own rations.
Labor rent. Three days a week on the landlord’s land. In a dry year, the three days are gone as before. The work on his own patch he can only crowd into the days that are left, by the dark, in the rain.
Whichever of the two, the risk of the year falls on the one same person.
The look of it in China, the tenant
China has not this name, serf, but it has this thing.
From the Han on, there was a kind of person called the buqu, in dependence under a great house. In law counted a good commoner, yet bound in person to the master, having to till the master’s ground, render labor service, even take the field in war. The buqu could be handed down generation to generation. The Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties were its height, and the buqu under some great houses outnumbered the state’s own regular army.
By the Tang and Song and after, the buqu was slowly replaced by the tenant.
The tenant, in law, was far freer than the buqu. Between him and the landlord was a relation of renting and tenancy. In theory, stop renting and he could leave.
Draw a line under those two words, in theory.
In fact, the great majority of tenants had no such choice.
He had no ground of his own, and off this field there was no other field to till. He owed the landlord a debt, the grain, the seed, the tools, and to leave was to have the debt fall due. His home was in the landlord’s village, and to leave was to abandon home and children. He had no schooling, and off the land he did not know what else he could do.
Free in theory and free in fact are two different things.
Hold this line, it is a measuring rod this volume will use over and over. Formal freedom and substantive freedom are two different things. The eleventh chapter of this semester on the factory, and the twelfth on today, use this same rod.
That account, worked out, comes to the same
In the middle and late Qing, the swallowing up of land ran hard, and great numbers of owner-farmers fell to being tenants.
The rent the landlord took commonly ran to five parts in ten of the harvest or more. Add the various extras. The interest on the loans, the labor service converted to cash, the local levies.
What the tenant could keep for himself in the end often came to less than three parts in ten of the harvest.
Set this number against the far end, Europe.
The proportion the European serf handed the landlord was almost the same.
Two pieces of ground, half a globe apart. One end called serf, one end called tenant. One end an estate, one end a tenancy. Different name, different law, different tongue, different god.
The account, worked out, is the same.
Think back to the ninth chapter of this semester. Wherever wei is made into an institution, there a thing of similar form will grow.
Here it is checked once more. Different mechanism, same result.
Walk in close and look at the tenant’s one year
Walk in a little closer.
Spring opens, and he goes to the landlord’s house, to borrow seed, borrow tools, borrow a little to tide him over to the harvest. The landlord lends it, enters it on the book, at no light interest.
Summer, and he is bent in the field. This field is not his, yet the water he pours, the weeds he pulls, the pests he drives off, are not one whit fewer. He longs for a good harvest more than anyone.
Autumn, the harvest comes down. First the landlord’s rent, five in ten. Then the seed and tools and rations borrowed at spring’s opening, principal and interest together. What is left, he pours into his own jar.
The jar is not full.
Winter, the jar reaches its bottom. Spring opens, and again he goes to the landlord’s house, to borrow seed.
See this circle clear. He is not lazy. He is not stupid. Three hundred sixty days a year, bent at the waist, he has not rested one.
This circle itself is that lock.
And on this lock, there is no iron. It is an account book.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section set up three things.
The first. Those two words, less trouble, what was taken away is risk. Risk does not vanish, it only moved from the side that receives to the side that sends. And when a person does not carry a risk, he will not think about that risk.
The second. Formal freedom and substantive freedom are two different things. The tenant, in law, could leave when he liked. But he had no ground, owed a debt, had a home, could not read. These four are stronger than an iron chain.
The third. The European serf and the Chinese tenant, different name, different law, different god, the account worked out the same. Wherever wei is made into an institution, there a thing of similar form grows.
Then, in a circle like this, why does the person not run. The jar reaching its bottom year in and year out, the account never cleared in a whole life, why does he stay there still, still bent at the waist, still longing for next year.
Because someone gave him a thing. A thing worth nothing, and yet exceedingly useful.
That thing is called hope.
The next section, give a little hope, and let him grind on by himself.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3. Give a Little Hope, and Let Him Grind On by Himself