VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, AFTERWORD
The semester walks to here, walked through. Thirteen chapters, thirty-nine sections. This afterword speaks no new thing, it does one matter only: it sets out again the things taken apart along this road, and then points a finger at where the next semester goes.
One. This semester, what was taken apart is a mirror
At the head of this semester it was said, to walk into the factory, into the company. Yet look back now, and you will find what was truly done is another matter: the taking apart of a mirror.
That mirror reflected for a hundred years and more, held half the earth’s people. The world a person saw in that mirror was like this: one side the capitalist, one side the worker, one upstairs, one down, one sucking, one sucked, and the gap in between the proof of a crime. Every single thing in this mirror, this semester, was taken down one at a time. Taken down was that scale: tens of thousands against tens, the many replaceable, the few not, scarce is not high. Taken down was that picture of upstairs and down: today it is a supply chain, dozens of nodes, bitten front and back, the cheek and the jaw leaning on each other, the lip gone and the teeth going cold. Taken down was that equals sign: the market is one procedure in this institution, not the institution itself. Taken down were those four characters, capital sucks blood: capital has no eyes, no heart, no notion of its own, an action wants intent, and it has none.
Two. Yet not one thing was wiped away
Here the words must be said very heavy. To take down that mirror is not to take down the things the mirror reflected.
That gap is real: the worker makes a hundred in a day, carries home forty in a day, and that stretch in between, not one part is false. Those matters in the nineteenth-century factories are real: sixteen hours a day, the five-year-old child down the shaft, real. That forty-year-old weaver, the ground gone from under his feet, real. That wall behind that diamond, real. What this semester did was never to wipe these away, what it did was: to return them from a person’s crime to the true state of a position. Remember these two lines, they are the bones of this semester: exploitation is a moral verdict, distribution is a fact of position. A verdict, one line and it is done, a fact, page after page to be turned.
Three. To that gentleman, the words used are of respect
This semester touched on one gentleman, Mr. Marx. Remember the register toward him, do not let one character go askew: what is spoken is his bound, not his right and wrong.
Own his merit, and own it heavy. He was the first to take this machine apart and set it on the table, he put the material before the consciousness, and this position is set most exact, across twenty-four hundred years from Guanzi setting one and the same, he was the first to fix his eyes on that gap and not let go once fixed. These three merits, no one can take away. What is pointed out is that his category was set a little late, and a little narrow. He stood in the nineteenth-century workshop, before his eyes the black masses of machines, the sixteen-hour day, and the face he saw was real, real to the point of blood. He did not stand in the position Sima Qian once stood in. This is no matter of high and low, it is a difference in the division of labor. This volume hands down no verdict on his right and wrong.
Four. The meanings this semester set down
Gather the meanings this semester set down into ten lines, carry them away. One, value is handed out by four positions one relay at a time, not made by one position. Two, that sum jumps between two sentences: the worker made the product speaks of a physical process, the value of the product is created by the worker speaks of the belonging of value. Three, exploitation is a moral verdict, distribution is a fact of position.
Four, in that gap there is a share the account has no position to claim, it is gain not of labor, and gain not of labor belongs to the public. Five, the worker is not only the cell he is apportioned, scarce enough the position turns over, and the back of scarcity is replaceable. Six, capital splits into three layers, the hide gone on what will the hair rest, the position must know its own position. Seven, the slaveholder is a slave too, on the five chains not one bad person, the way out is not in the rising, it is in the clear seeing.
Eight, the market is a rule and a sieve too, the rule is dead and the hand that holds the rule is alive, some things once on the rule are no longer themselves. Nine, capital is not a person, it has no consciousness, no stance, no good and evil, it is a force, like water, like wind, like electricity. Ten, scarcity is the board of this game, born scarcity is dead, made scarcity is someone having built a wall, and making scarcity walked to the innermost roots not in the economy.
Five. The deepest stroke of this semester
Outside the ten lines, there is one stroke more, the deepest of this whole volume. It appeared twice. The first time, in chapter twenty-three: the two frames, the merit coming to one home by roads apart, the cost also of one root, dug to the bottom, one loosed past measure, one governed past measure, seeming two directions yet in truth one and the same error, crossed the line. The second time, in chapter twenty-five: the three moves of making scarcity, each more labor-sparing than the last, each nearer to power, dug to the bottom, the root not in the economy.
Two roads, one pit. That line is: the economy is not politics. Not in that position, one does not plan that position’s governing. This stroke, carry it to the next volume. Volume four, the Political Institution, and volume five, the Legal Institution, will draw this boundary out inch by inch.
Six. The next semester, where it goes
At the last, point a finger at the road of the next semester. Go back to chapter sixteen, back to the account book of that chair factory. In the first account, that four million of wages, by what was it divided? It was divided by labor: the one who did more takes more, the one whose craft is hard takes more.
Distribution by labor, in the sayings of many, is the way of dividing of another institution. Yet it is right here, it is in this workshop of the capitalist institution, running every day. The next semester goes to look at one matter: is there in this world one person who can escape those two characters, by labor. The code writer takes pay by rank, the one who argues cases charges by the hour, the one who studies is judged a scholarship by marks, the one who plays games levels up by hours, and not one corner is an exception. Then that quarrel of a hundred years and more, this set against that set, what in the end is left of it? And a harder question to ask besides: a person, giving a thing out for no cause, seeking no return, is this matter too living all along in every society? The next semester, the answer is seen.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Semester 3: Socialist and Communist Systems (Chapters 27 to 39)