VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 3
It Waits on the Farmer to Be Eaten, Value Is Passed Down Through Four Positions
In the last two sections Sima Qian owned the ground of people chasing gain. This section asks a harder question. A thing sits before you, and its value, who made it. The whole of the second semester will wrestle with this question. But its answer, Sima Qian set down two thousand years ago, in sixteen characters.
First, the sixteen characters
It waits on the farmer to be eaten, on the ranger to be brought out, on the craftsman to be made, on the trader to be moved along.
Take it a phrase at a time in plain speech. It waits on the farmer to be eaten, only by the farmer growing it do people have anything to eat. It waits on the ranger to be brought out, the ranger is the one who keeps the hills and the waters, and only by him are the things of the mountain and the forest and the river drawn out. It waits on the craftsman to be made, only by the craftsman are these materials made into things a person can use. It waits on the trader to be moved along, only by the trader are things carried from where they are plentiful to where they are short.
Four positions, one passing the baton to the next.
Mark the word Sima Qian uses, waits. To wait is to lean on, to depend, to fail without. Four waits, four links, and not one of them can be missing.
Set the sixteen characters on a table
Look at the bowl of rice before you.
The rice in this bowl, a farmer grew. He sowed around the spring, he bent his back weeding through the dog days with the sun on his neck, he reaped in the autumn, one crop a year and no more.
The rice has to go in a pot, and that takes a pot. The pot is made of iron. The iron comes out of the hills, and someone has to go and open the mine and bring the ore up from underground. This is the ranger.
The ore is not a pot. Someone has to set up a furnace, melt the iron down, beat it into a pot. This is the craftsman.
The pot is by that hill, the rice is in that field, you are in this city. Someone has to carry them here, set them where you can buy them. This is the trader.
Four people, four steps of work, four positions. Take any one of them away, and this bowl of rice does not reach your mouth.
Now answer one question. This bowl of rice, its value, who made it.
This question is the threshold of a whole semester
Hold this question in your mind a while longer. Because next semester a whole famous equation gets stuck right here.
That equation says, the product is made by the worker, so the value of the product belongs to the worker.
Take those two lines apart, one at a time.
The first line, the worker made the product. This speaks of a physical process. The worker swings the hammer, the iron becomes a pot. This line is true.
The second line, the value of the product is created by the worker. This speaks of where the value belongs.
The two lines look much alike. But between them runs a very deep ditch. The first says whose hand moved. The second says on whose account this thing is to be set.
That equation steps clean across the ditch in one stride.
Sima Qian’s sixteen characters are a lamp on that ditch. They tell you. Without the farmer you have nothing even to eat. Without the ranger the craftsman has no iron in his hand. Without the craftsman that iron is only a lump of iron. Without the trader that pot rots at the foot of the hill.
Value is not made by one position. Value is passed down, baton by baton, through four positions.
Sima Qian ranks no one
Here is a layer finer than the last. Watch closely.
When Sima Qian sets these four positions out, he ranks no one.
He does not say the farmer is the most important, and does not say the trader is the basest. He only says, it waits on the farmer to be eaten, on the ranger to be brought out, on the craftsman to be made, on the trader to be moved along. Four waits, each as weighty as the rest.
Set this against the men he wrote in that chapter. He wrote Fan Li in trade, he wrote Zigong in trade, he wrote Bai Gui in trade. He cursed them not by one word. In an age that set the farmer in front and pressed the trader behind, Sima Qian set the trader, openly and squarely, into that chain, standing in the same row as the farmer and the craftsman.
This is the old line of the volume. Position is only a difference in the division of work. No high and low, no noble and base.
The farmer has mud on his hands, the trader an abacus in his, the craftsman calluses on his. Three hands, three kinds of work. Let any one of the hands stop, and that bowl of rice does not reach your mouth.
Then where did the extra stretch go
Now one step further. Walk this step and the chapter reaches bottom.
A pot, from ore to your hand, the price climbs the whole way. The ore is very cheap, the iron a little dearer, the pot dearer still, set on a shop shelf in the city, dearer again.
That extra stretch in the middle, where did it go.
The second semester will work this account out stroke by stroke, into seven shares. Here, only one line. That stretch did not grow out of thin air, and it was not seized in one grab by any one person. It was divided down along that chain, one link at a time. The miner takes a share, the smith takes a share, the carter takes a share, the shop-hand takes a share, the state takes a share, and one more share turns around and is thrown back in, to open the next mine, to raise the next furnace.
Say the one word exploitation, and it feels good, and these seven accounts never get worked again.
Hold this line, for it is the most important line of the second semester. Exploitation is a moral verdict. Distribution is a fact of position. This volume only sets out positions, it does not hand down verdicts.
This chain has not broken in two thousand years
When Sima Qian wrote those sixteen characters, the people on that chain were a farmer, a hunter, a smith, a traveling trader.
And today. Look at the thing in your hand. The ore is underground in Africa, and someone digs it out. The board is in a factory in East Asia, and someone solders it up. The program is in an office tower on another continent, and someone types it out. The cargo ship rode a month on the sea, and someone kept watch aboard it. The delivery man climbed six flights and set it at your door.
Four positions have become dozens of positions, scattered across half the globe. But the line has not changed by one character. It waits on the farmer to be eaten, on the ranger to be brought out, on the craftsman to be made, on the trader to be moved along.
Only one thing has changed. The chain grew longer, and people can no longer see one another. The miner does not know what the thing he dug became in the end, and you do not know whose hand first touched the thing in your hand.
Not seen, and so taken for not there. This is one more layer of skin wei has changed into. The twelfth chapter of this semester will come back here.
What this chapter set up, and the turn to the next chapter
This chapter is walked through, and the fifth meaning stands steady.
The first section, all the world comes crowding, and all of it for gain. The chasing of gain is a rule that cuts through every rank. First own what a person is, then speak of what to do. The second section, to be rich is human temperament, wanted without learning. Wanting riches is nature and cannot be scrubbed out, and wanting to be rich and how one gets rich are two things. The third section, it waits on the farmer to be eaten. Value is not made by one position, it is passed down baton by baton through four.
What Sima Qian set under this volume comes down, in the end, to this pair of eyes. Cold, not cursing anyone, and so able to see the person.
Then, should a state go down into the ring itself, put its hand into buying and selling, into salt, into iron. This question was truly fought out, on a court floor two thousand years ago, one side the high official over the money, the other side more than sixty men of letters. That quarrel, once finished, left a book behind.
The next chapter, into the city of Chang’an in the year 81 before the common era, to sit in on that debate.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter 6. The Salt and Iron Debate, the First Meeting of State and Market