VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 3
Quarreled to the End, It Came Out a Workable Balance
The last section heard both sides out, and found a strange thing. Both are right. So how did this quarrel close. Did one side press the other down. This section is about that result. That result where no one wholly won is the most important stroke of this chapter.
First, the ending of the quarrel
The great meeting of the year 81 before the common era finished, and the court made a decision. Scrap the monopoly on ale. Pull out a part of the iron offices inside the passes. The monopoly on salt and iron, in the main, was kept.
See this result clearly. It is not pretty. It does not look like one reasoning defeating another, and it does not look like justice crushing evil. It is a compromise. One side gave a step, one side held the greater part. No one wholly won, no one wholly lost.
A debate quarreled so fiercely, its reasoning driven so clear, and it closes into a result this unclean. Many a reader gets here and is let down. What kind of conclusion is this. What this section is out to say is exactly this. It is no conclusion at all, and it is exactly the best result.
Why one side wholly winning is the bad outcome
Push each side’s whole win all the way to the end.
Sang Hongyang wholly wins, and then. The hand of the state reaches on down, salt, iron, ale, grain, cloth, everything to the office. The administrative apparatus spreads wider and wider, the officials grow more and more, and every one of them holds a gate in his hand. The price the office fixes, the goods the office issues, and if you will not buy from him you have nowhere else to buy. The goods turn worse year on year, the price turns dearer year on year. At the last, the treasury is full and the people are empty.
The men of learning wholly win, and then. The hand of the state draws all the way back, salt and iron handed wholly to private hands. A disaster year comes, and salt climbs past eating, iron climbs past plowing. A few great merchants hold the goods in their stores, waiting for the price to fly. The state would open its granary, and the granary is empty, because the state long ago stopped minding these things. At the last, the market is alive and the people are dead.
See these two pictures clearly. One side grows sole and great, and the trouble at the other end arrives. So that unclean compromise is not the failure of the debate. It is the debate’s true fruit.
Two hands, each pressing one end
Here the volume sets a position, and hold it fast.
Sang Hongyang’s side and the men of learning’s side are not two stances. They are two hands. The one hand presses down that a market failing will cost lives. The other hand presses down that a power reaching in will rot.
These two things are there both at once, and neither will ever disappear. So of these two hands, not one may be let go. Let go of either, and that end rears up.
This is the shape of this book’s law. Put together, they complete one another, and at the same time they mind one another and pull one another back, so that no one of them grows sole and great and wrecks the whole hand.
Mark this. This is not splitting the difference. Splitting the difference is offending neither side. What is said here is, both sides are wanted, and they are to be kept pulling on each other. This is a structure, not an attitude.
The ancestors’ line said it through long ago
This position the ancestors had a line for, set there long ago. The first chapter of this semester drew on it once, and here it must be drawn on again, for this chapter is its most solid sample. All things grow together and do not harm one another. The ways run together and do not collide.
Set those fourteen characters back into that court floor. The hand of the state, and the hand of the market, run alongside one another. Not this one eating up that one, but the two hands there at once, minding each other, pulling each other.
Run together and do not collide does not mean they do not quarrel. They quarrel fiercely, and have quarreled two thousand years. Run together and do not collide means this. Quarreling and quarreling, they hold the balance up.
A court floor with only one voice left is not peace. It is danger.
This quarrel, fought all the way to today
Take this quarrel and fight it down to today.
The bill for a grave illness, how much the state pays and how much the person pays. The price of a unit of electricity, fixed by office or gone as the market goes. A schoolroom, run by the public or run privately. A house, whose house is it. The grain price fell, should the state go in and buy. The medicine is too dear, should the state press it down.
Every one of these is salt, is iron. On every one, both sides’ reasoning still stands, and not one of them has changed.
Then what is to be done. By the position of this chapter, do not ask which side is right. Ask three lines. This time, is the fire the greater or the water. This one hand, up to where does it press. And after it has pressed down, the person at the very bottom, has he been lifted up, or pressed under.
The deepest layer of this chapter
Said to here, dig down one more layer, and this layer both of the coming semesters will use.
Think back to the second chapter of this semester. The art of light and heavy is wei. The monopoly is wei. The equable transport and the price-stabilizing are wei. The whole set of the market’s rules is wei too. Every one of them is made by man, and not one of them fell out of the sky.
Wei is neutral. The same machine can be used to guard the farmer, and used to wring the farmer dry. The hand of the state can be an ever normal granary, and can be a tube that draws off blood. The hand of the market can make goods good and cheap, and can leave a person to starve outright in a disaster year.
So this quarrel was never over whether the state is good or the market is good. It was over this. This one pair of hands, coming down on the person at the very bottom, has it lifted him up, or pressed him down.
The tool has no right or wrong. The responsibility is in the hand that works it. This line, from end to end, has not shifted by one step.
What this chapter set up, and the turn to the next chapter
This chapter is walked through, and the sixth meaning stands steady.
The first section pushed open the door of that court floor in the year 81 before the common era, and saw the subject of the quarrel, whether the hand of the state should reach into the market and up to where. The second section spread both sides on the table, and found both sides right, because they stand at two positions and each has seen a real danger. The third section looked at that unclean ending, which is not a failure but two hands each pressing one end, holding the balance up.
The line this layer sets up is this. One side grows sole and great, and the trouble at the other end arrives. Run together and do not collide is not not quarreling, it is quarreling and quarreling and holding the balance up.
Here the first six chapters are walked through. Guanzi, Mencius, Sima Qian, the salt and iron, the ancestors’ root stands steady.
From the next chapter, this volume turns its body and walks back. Back to the age before a person had opened his mouth to give taking more a reason. Back to before that line, it is only right, had been spoken. How did the people of that age divide their things. In the ancestors’ books there is kept a very old memory.
The next chapter, back to the age that had no reason yet.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.