VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 11, SECTION 3
Formal Freedom, and Substantive Freedom
The end of the last section left a line. A person having the right to say no, and a person having the means to say no, are two different things. This section is out to part these two things wholly. Parted, this layer of skin, the factory, is seen all the way through. This layer is also the most important measuring rod of the whole volume.
First, own the share that is real
Say it straight first. This section is easily read crooked, and here is where.
The worker’s freedom is real.
He is no longer property. No one can buy or sell him, no one can pledge him out, no one can, because he ran, drag him back to be punished. He has a name, a household registration, the right to bring suit. He can leave this house today and go to that house tomorrow. He can sign a contract with a boss to his face, the two of them setting brush to paper at the one same time.
Weigh these several things.
The slave of the Shang had not one of them. The slave of Rome had not one of them. The serf had not one of them.
This is the first time in thousands of years. The person is no longer bound to a person, nor bound to the land.
This share is real. It is extraordinary. On this the volume is not vague, not one character discounted.
Then set the other share out too
But look once more at this free person.
What has he in his hand.
No ground. The ground was enclosed. No tools. The tools are in the factory. No stored grain. The wage is just enough to eat to the next payday. No skill. He knows one thing only, to stand before that machine.
What is at home. A wife waiting for the pot to be filled, three children, an ailing mother.
Now, the boss says to him. From tomorrow, two hours more a day, no more wage.
He has the right to say no. On this the law shields him, not a fen false.
Ask, will he say no.
He says no, and tomorrow the whole family has no rice. He walks out this factory gate, and outside stand fifty people waiting for his position. They too have no ground, no tools, no stored grain.
And so he says, all right.
See this scene clear. No one pressed him, no one locked him with iron. That word all right, he spoke of himself.
This all right was spoken by a free person.
The rod
Here the volume sets a rod. Hold it fast.
Formal freedom is that he has the right to say no.
Substantive freedom is that he has the means to say no.
That means is what. It is the board under his feet. It is the room left in his hand.
Think back to the third chapter of this semester. Rich is not how many coins he has, it is how much room is left in his hand. Room is whether he still dares to say no.
Think back to the fourth chapter, Mencius’s line. With no steady holding there is no steady heart.
The board pulled out, and he falls. Hand him a paper with the word freedom on it, and he falls all the same.
That paper cannot catch him.
This step is wei’s most beautiful evolution
Now the deepest of this section.
Set the four steps in a row, and see how this position sheds its skin layer by layer.
Slavery. The master had to see to the slave’s food and lodging, had to bring someone to tend his illness. The slave died, the loss was the master’s.
Serfdom. The landlord no longer saw to food and lodging. The serf had his own home, grew his own grain, bore his own illness. The landlord minded only the rent on time. The risk moved to the serf.
The factory. The factory does not even take rent. It only pays the wage. The wage is just enough to keep the worker alive, able to come to work again.
As to how the worker lives on that bit of money, that is the worker’s own affair.
The worker falls ill, the factory does not mind. The worker is hurt, the factory does not mind. The worker grows old and can no longer work, the factory does not mind. The worker dies, hire another. The city has farmers who lost their ground to spare.
See the substance of this step of evolution clear. The most important step wei completed in the factory system was to move the responsibility of keeping a person alive, from the side that receives, over to the side that sends.
The slaveholder still had to keep the slave alive. The factory owner need not.
This move is cleverer than every move before. Because it cut off the last thread of relation too. Between slaveholder and slave there was still a lifeline joining them. Between factory and worker there is only a pay slip left.
But the factory owner is not the bad man either
Say it straight once more.
The factory owner himself is only a person occupying a position in this structure too.
He is driven along too. Driven by the competition of the market, driven by the pressure of profit, driven by the shareholders who put up the money. Were he to raise the workers’ wage while the house next door did not, the house next door’s goods would be cheaper, his own goods would not sell, his factory would go under, and the eight hundred people in it would lose their work together.
He too cannot sleep at midnight. He too is afraid. In his hand too is clenched an account that cannot be cleared.
To understand this thing as the factory owner’s wickedness misses the point.
Go back to the room at the opening of this volume. That master who could not cook, his life held in the cook’s hand. This factory owner, his life held in the market’s hand.
The master’s position is a constraint too. And often a heavier one, harder to lay down.
This layer the thirteenth chapter of this semester will speak of on purpose. Here, only hold this. The slaveholder is a slave too.
Those numbers
At the last of this section, set those few numbers out. This layer of skin, its final look, is these few numbers.
The money the worker earned, rent paid, food bought, left nothing. The whole of his labor bought only the one thing, staying alive.
Where he lived. Cellars, attics, slums. A family of six squeezed into one room of a dozen square meters. The cellar of one building held fifty to a hundred people. A whole block shared one public privy, the drains running straight into the street.
Cholera broke out over and over in such surroundings. In 1832, that country’s capital had a great cholera epidemic, about six thousand five hundred dead, mostly in the quarters where the workers lived close-packed. In 1848 it broke out again, about fifteen thousand dead.
Then the last number.
At the time of early industrialization, the workers of a certain industrial town of that country, their mean life expectancy was what.
Seventeen.
This number holds in it a great mass of infant death, and so it runs low. But even setting the infants aside, the mean lifespan of the worker after reaching adulthood was only thirty to forty.
In the same period, the agricultural laborer in that country’s countryside had a mean age at death of about thirty eight. In the same period, the upper society of that country had a mean lifespan of about sixty.
The person who went into the factory had a lifespan half that of the person tilling ground in the country.
This is the look of that paper with the word freedom on it, once it is cashed in.
What this chapter set up, and the turn to the next chapter
This chapter is walked through, and the eleventh meaning stands steady.
The first section, why the farmer left the countryside. Not because the city was good, but because the last board under his feet was pulled out by four thousand and more bills. That free laborer was manufactured. The second section, sixteen hours a day, the five year old at the bottom of the mine. That position needs no bad man, it needs only an account reckoned very clear. The third section, the rod. Formal freedom is that he has the right to say no, substantive freedom is that he has the means to say no. The factory system, in this step, threw the responsibility of keeping a person alive from the side that receives to the side that sends.
The line this layer sets up is this. A paper with freedom on it cannot catch a person who has no board under his feet.
Then, walked to today. Today there is no enclosure. Today there is no five year old at the bottom of a mine. Today there is the eight hour day, there is the weekend, there is the holiday, there is labor law. These are real, won back inch by inch over generations, and this volume respects that share.
But go home tonight, and look once at that number on your phone. This month’s bill, how much is due.
And look once at the time you spent today on that screen.
That position, by today, has walked to its most refined layer. So refined you cannot see it. So refined that on the day you signed, you were still glad.
The next chapter, the present age, that position can no longer be seen.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter 12. The Present Age, That Position Can No Longer Be Seen