VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 10, SECTION 3
Give a Little Hope, and Let Him Grind On by Himself
The end of the last section left a question. The jar at its bottom year in and year out, the account never cleared in a whole life, why does he not run. This section answers it. The answer is a thing exceedingly cheap, and exceedingly useful. So long as a person is still hoping, he will not leave. This move is the last, and the deepest, layer of this position.
First, look at an emancipation that sounds very grand
That great power of eastern Europe in the modern age is one of the most complete specimens of serfdom.
Serfdom there was made into an institution from the fifteenth century, reached its height in the seventeenth to nineteenth, close to five hundred years all told. By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole population of that country was something like seventy million, of whom the serfs on landlords’ rolls were about twenty three million, and the serfs belonging to the monarch and the state about another twenty million.
More than half the whole country were serfs of some form. Certain great noble families had more than two hundred thousand serfs on their rolls, one family holding as many people as the whole population of a middling city.
Then, in the 1860s, the monarch of that country proclaimed. Abolish serfdom.
It sounds like a grand emancipation.
Open the terms, and read slowly.
What the terms say
The serfs did gain personal freedom. This is true.
But they had to take money and buy back the patch of ground under their feet.
The price of the buyback was far above the real value of the land, commonly one and a half to two times the market price.
The serf could not lay out that sum at once. So the state advanced it for him, and then the serf repaid the state by installments.
This installment ran as long as forty nine years.
And through the repaying, the serf was bound to the land as before, called for the time being an obligated peasant, and had to pay rent to the former landlord as before.
Read this passage slower.
The way the serfs of that country gained their freedom in the 1860s was to sign a debt contract of forty nine years.
How long is forty nine years
Reckon this account.
A serf beginning to repay at twenty five must repay until seventy four.
And under the conditions of that place in the nineteenth century, the mean lifespan was only something over thirty.
Which is to say, the great majority of serfs would not, in a whole life, finish repaying this debt.
They thought they had become free. In law, they truly had.
But the fruit of their labor had, for the decades to come, to flow without cease to the state, to the bank, to the former landlord.
Only the chain was no longer a bond of the person in law.
It became an account book.
Let this line sit in the mind a while, for the twelfth chapter of this semester will meet it again. By then its name is the thirty year mortgage.
And still he signed. Why
Walk in a little closer, and look at the day he signed.
That day, his heart was warm.
His grandfather tilled a whole life on this ground, another man’s. His father tilled a whole life on this ground, another man’s. By him, this ground was to have his name written on it.
Forty nine years is long. But he thought, I can still move, I can still work. Forty nine years on, this ground will be my grandson’s.
Hear this line clear. He was not deceived. He was willing of himself.
Because in his hand, for the first time, was a thing he had never had before.
Something to look forward to.
Why hope, that thing, is so useful
Now the deepest layer of this section. Listen slowly.
When does a person run.
When he can see no way out at all. A slave will run, will rise, will scatter a pinch of something into the pot. Because looking ahead there is only black, nothing. He has nothing to lose.
When does a person not run.
When he can see a little light.
That light need not be large. It need only be there, need only be his own.
So long as he feels, hold on a little longer and next year will be better, bear up a little longer and my son’s generation will be better, he will bend his own back, grit his own teeth, hold himself up.
See this move clear, it is the most important move in the whole volume. No need to watch him, no need to beat him, no need to lock him.
Give him a little hope, and he will lock himself in there.
Is this move, then, always a bad thing
Said this far, stop, and get the words exact. The easiest place to read this section crooked is right here.
Some, hearing this far, will draw an exceedingly dark conclusion. So hope is a swindle, the thing to look forward to is a trap, that little light is the bait hung on the hook.
Do not read it so. Read it so, and you read the person dead.
Hope is real. The warmth in that serf’s heart is real. His wish to leave his grandson a patch of ground, that heart has not a fen of falseness in it. This volume respects that heart.
What this volume has to say is one line only. See clear who is giving this bit of hope, on what terms it is given, and into whose hand that light falls in the end.
The one same hope can be the fire by which a person lives through a winter. And it can be a chain that needs no guard.
Go back to the word wei. That whole way of putting hope is wei. It is the layer made by man.
Wei is neutral. Good or bad turns on the hands.
What this chapter set up, and the turn to the next chapter
This chapter is walked through, and the tenth meaning stands steady.
The first section, no longer holding you the person, holding your output. The person has a name, a family, a faith, real advances, but the mechanism underneath has not moved by one fen, and this skin was changed because it pays better, less trouble, more stable, looking legitimate. The second section, less trouble took away the risk. Risk does not vanish, it moved from the side that receives to the side that sends. And formal freedom and substantive freedom are two different things. The third section, give a little hope. A forty nine year debt is a contract of freedom. So long as a person is still hoping, he will lock himself in there, and no guard is needed.
The line this layer sets up is this. The stoutest lock is not made of iron, it is made of account. And the least laborious guard is hope.
Then, this layer of skin, the land, can it be changed again. It can. When the next layer of skin goes on, the person truly leaves. He leaves that ground, walks into the city, walks into a room called the factory.
He is free. He can sign a contract with anyone, can quit at any time.
And he stands sixteen hours a day. His child, five years old, is at the bottom of a mine.
The next chapter, the factory, how the free laborer was manufactured.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter 11. The Factory, How the Free Laborer Was Manufactured