VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 2
First Make the People Rich, the Regime Hangs on the People’s Belly
The last section had Guanzi say, full granaries and then propriety. So to fill the granaries, who does the filling. This section is about Guanzi’s second position. He hangs the very life of a regime on the belly of the common people, and does it in barely more than a dozen characters.
Guanzi’s line
Guanzi, in the piece called Governing the State, says this. In every way of governing a state, the first thing is to make the people rich. Rich, and the state is easy to govern. Poor, and the state is hard to govern.
Take it in plain speech. Of all the roads for running a state, the first is to let the common people grow rich. When the common people are rich, this state is easy to hold in order. When the common people are poor, this state is hard to hold in order. A line that sets the tie between the people’s living and the steadiness of the regime out clean, without one character to spare.
Mark the tone of it. He does not say that making the people rich is good government. He does not say it is benevolence. He does not say it is what a ruler ought to do. He says one thing only. Poor, and the state is hard to govern. This is a cold line, an accounting line. He is not urging anyone to do a good deed. He is telling the one in power, if you do not feed them full, your seat will not hold.
Where the line is cold, and where it is kind
This layer, think it through slowly.
Guanzi could easily have said it prettier. He could have said, the ruler should cherish the people, for the people are heaven’s own children. He did not. He said it hard, said it solid, said it in a way that is not nice to hear. Poor, and the state is hard to govern.
A line that sounds cold, brought down to where things are done, turns out to guard people best. Why. Because a moral exhortation can be ignored. The ruler heeds it on a good day and drops it on a bad one. But a rule of arithmetic cannot be ignored. Guanzi does not ask the one in power to grow a kind heart. He nails making the people rich onto the self interest of the one in power. Do not enrich them and you are finished. Would you keep your seat steady, then feed them full first. And with that, making the people rich no longer leans on anyone’s conscience. It leans on the position itself.
This move of the ancestors shows the most skill. To urge with morals is to stake the whole hope on one man’s character. To set the position out clean is to let the thing keep turning no matter what kind of man it runs into.
This one position, handed down unbroken for two thousand years
Once first make the people rich was set down, the ancestors after him carried it on, and the direction never once shifted.
Confucius said it most sparely. He went to the state of Wei, and saw how many people there were, and a student asked him, the people are this many already, what next. Confucius answered, enrich them. The student asked again, and once they are rich. Confucius answered, teach them. Look hard at that order, it is the very same as Guanzi’s. First rich, then taught. Confucius did not say teach first and enrich after. He knew you cannot teach a hungry man.
Mencius carried it on with settling the people in a livelihood, that the people must have a steady holding before there can be talk of a steady heart, and that layer is held for the next chapter. Later ages brought the line of light corvee and light taxes. All of them are the one same position. Settle the belly of the people first, and only then does the regime sit steady, only then can there be talk of teaching. Rich first, governed after. That order of first and after did not change in two thousand years and more.
People today have checked the same thing by another method
In political science today there is a whole line of study that goes to check the tie between economic conditions and the steadiness of a regime. Their method is nothing like Guanzi’s. The material is the numbers of dozens of countries across dozens of years, and the means is statistical regression, worked out one line at a time.
The method differs. Guanzi leaned on the experience of governing, and people today lean on the data. But reckoned to the end, the direction is one and the same. A regime that leaves its people unable to eat their fill does not last.
Keep this in mind. One position can be felt out from experience, and it can be reckoned out from numbers. The ancestors felt it early, and felt it plain. Those after reckoned it late, and reckoned it fine. This is a difference in the division of work, not of higher and lower. The one strange thing is only this. When the history of political economy chases this proposition back to its source, it almost never chases it back to Guanzi.
Turn the line into today’s shape
So first make the people rich, brought down to today, is what.
Go back to the man with the thirty year loan from the first chapter. His wage comes in, and a large piece of it is drawn off first, on its own. What is left is enough to eat, enough to house him, not enough to fall ill, not enough to grow old, not enough for a second child. He dares not quit, dares not cross his boss.
By Guanzi’s reading, is this rich. It is not. The rich Guanzi means is not how many coins a man has. It is how much room is left in his hand. Room is whether he still dares to say no. A full granary is full not only of rice. It is full of the standing to say no.
A man with no room in his hand can only be moved about at another’s will, and this is the slave position. A country where the people as a whole have no room, that country is the one where the poor are hard to govern. Those characters of Guanzi’s, written on bamboo strips more than two thousand years ago, read today are not the least bit old.
But here is a very deep threshold
Said this far, stop, and drive one thing all the way through, or the section turns to empty words.
Making the people rich, everyone approves it at a hearing. But bring it down to the ground, and it runs straight into a hard question. Where does the money come from. For the people to have room in hand, the state’s store must first have something in it. For the state’s store to have something in it, it must be taken from somewhere. Take too much, and the people go poor. Take too little, and the store goes empty, and when a lean year comes it cannot save a single soul.
Guanzi did not dodge this threshold. He does not shout slogans, he goes and works the accounts. In the piece called Light and Heavy, all he talks is how this account is worked. When to gather in, when to let go, what to do when the price is dear, what to do when the price is cheap. He takes the economy as a set of workings that can be tuned and managed, not as one line of a stance.
This is where the ancestors are at their most remarkable. He speaks of making the people rich, and he does not stop at the two words making rich. He walks one step down, into the workings.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section set up three things.
The first. First make the people rich. Guanzi hung the life of a regime on the belly of the common people. He does not lean on urging anyone to kindness, he nails it onto the self interest of the one in power. Poor, and the state is hard to govern. A line that sounds cold guards people best.
The second. This order did not change in two thousand years. Confucius said enrich them and then teach them, Mencius said settle the people in a livelihood, later ages said light corvee and light taxes, and people today reckoned it through the numbers of dozens of countries and came out at the same direction. One position, different people each feeling out a corner, a difference in the division of work, no higher and lower.
The third. Rich is not how many coins are in the hand. It is how much room is left in the hand. Room is whether he still dares to say no.
Then how exactly is that account worked. Grain cheap to the point that no one wants it, grain dear to the point that no one can buy, can the state iron it flat. Guanzi has a set of methods, and that set of methods ran in China for two thousand years and more, and twenty five centuries later an Englishman wrote the same logic into a formula.
The next section is about light and heavy, and the state store.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3. Light and Heavy, the State Store, the Economy Is a Tunable Manageable Set of Workings