VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 13
The One Who Takes the Constraint Is the Slave, the One Who Lays the Constraint Is the Master
Start with twelve characters. The one who takes the constraint is the slave, the one who lays the constraint is the master. Those twelve characters are where this chapter begins, because twelve chapters have walked that position from the master who could not cook to this morning’s alarm through seven or eight layers of skin, and now the most important stroke of the whole semester is set down in due form, that slave and master are not two kinds of people but two positions.
The chapter comes in three sections.
The first section stands up the twelve characters as a description of position and not a judgment of person, saying nothing of who is good or noble or to be pitied and one thing only, the direction of the constraint, whoever takes it in this relation at this moment on this matter standing in the slave’s position and whoever lays it in the master’s, the whole volume’s way of working drawn to one line, position things and never judge them. It says position and not identity because identity sticks to the person and cannot come off while position is on the matter and changes as the matter changes, and the eleven chapters spent their strength proving the high and low pasted on the person is all wei, so peel the paint and there is no one born a slave and no one born a master. Off the twelve characters grow four corollaries, that one person holds several slave and master positions at once so the question is he a slave has no answer, that in one relation the two are each the other’s slave and master as the master holds the slave’s deed on the matter of the body while the slave holds the master’s life on the matter of staying alive and the check runs both ways, that the unit of reckoning is the relation and not the person so much that was tangled comes untied, and that the whole legal system is a great codebook writing down who may lay a constraint on whom and to what degree, Roman law the coldest entry and today’s eight hour day a warmer one won back inch by inch. And the section guards against flattening, since to see by position is not to speak the mother raising her child and the mine owner working a five year old in one breath, their weights never for an instant the same, measured by the rod of whether the one taking the constraint keeps the means to say no, to see by position being to put down the club of cursing and pick up the rod of weighing.
The second section lays down the deepest stroke, that the one who lays the constraint is not therefore free, the master position a constraint too and often the heavier one harder to lay down, the master who could not cook holding the deed and held fast by the one whose deed he holds, watching the slave eat first and sleeping ill for fear the slave runs or turns, unable to cast the position off because the day he casts it off he cannot feed himself, what a man has has him. Laozi saw it long ago, being favored is a fright and being disgraced is a fright because the high seat sets the heart trembling in dread of the fall, the great trouble being the having of a self and all the things one dreads to lose, and gold and jade filling the hall that none can keep turning the holder into the one guard who cannot leave his post. Zhuangzi carried it on, be not a corpse for name nor a storehouse for scheming nor a taker of charge for affairs nor a lord for knowing, guarding against a man nailed fast by the seat he sits in and setting against it no-self, the antidote the last section picks up. And the layer that matters most, that the climbing man thinks he goes toward freedom while every rise is one more master position taken on and one more constraint that cannot be laid down, the clerk bound by his boss climbing to bind the whole team’s showing and then eight hundred families’ bread onto his own body, the factory owner not the bad man but driven by market and profit and shareholders, every rise a change from one slave position into another only handsomer and dearer, no position of pure gain and the higher the seat the heavier the constraint, which is why the volume curses no slaveholder, a man bound in a position dreading the long night, curse him and you have understood nothing.
The third section walks the whole line once more from the lion that took the big share and argued nothing to the person who added the line it is only right, the seed from which every layer grew, the Shang altar and Aristotle’s nature and Rome’s column and the lord’s protection and the mill’s own will and the bank’s free contract, the core never changing, I take more and it is only right, only the reason growing more decent and delicate and harder to knock down, wei the more refined the harder to recognize. Walked to its end the position needs no wicked man, only a clerk who follows the rules and an engineer who tunes the algorithm and a parent who loves the child and a worn person who scrolls to rest, not one of them bad and each keeping the position turning smooth, the knife gone and the position turning better than ever, wei the sum of a crowd of good men each doing his right-looking share, so the club of cursing has no one to swing at. Hence enslavement will never pass away, not because men are bad but because the taking and laying of the constraint is woven into how people live alongside one another, the home slave and the algorithm slave living and breathing forever, not abolished but changed in skin, a line to wake a man and not to sink him. The semester hands over three tools, a pair of eyes that look at the position not the person, a rod that weighs the clear-eyed against the unwitting by the three lines, and the one line that wei the more refined is the harder to recognize, and asks that one thing not be carried, hatred, which blinds the eye and fixes on a villain while the position is the only thing worth seeing, keeping instead the way of walking in close where every label fails to stick. Then it points to next semester, capital, and the well-known line that the worker makes the product so the value is the worker’s, to be taken apart by Sima Qian’s sixteen characters since value is passed forward through many positions, with three steps ahead, the worker’s card of scarcity, the capital holder a slave too, and the deepest matter of who is let to make scarcity, the diamond made scarce by a hand, the root not in the economy at all but running down into the fourth volume.
That is the method this chapter hands you. When a relation looks purely one-way, look for the rope running back the other way, and when a man sits high, look for the constraint that seat lays on him, and when a thing looks entirely natural, turn it over once to see the position underneath. What you carry away are the three tools, the eyes and the rod and the one line, and the line beneath the whole semester, that enslavement will not pass away but can be seen clear, and that the road out was never a climbing higher but a seeing clear.
SECTIONS:
SECTION 1. Slave and Master Are Positions, Not Identities
SECTION 2. The Slaveholder Is a Slave Too, the Master Position Is a Constraint Too
SECTION 3. Wei the More Refined the Harder to Recognize, and the Road of Next Semester
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.