VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 14, SECTION 3
The Institution of Capital Is Not the Market Economy
The first two sections took two things away: that scale, and that picture of upstairs and down. This section takes the last thing away, an equals sign. This equals sign got drawn so readily, so readily that no one asks anymore: is the institution of capital really equal to the market economy? Today we pry this equals sign open and look at what stands on its two sides, whether it is really the same thing.
One. The ID card is not the person
Look first at a most ordinary thing. On an ID card there is a name, a date of birth, a number, a photograph, and it does stand for a person, for when you handle business, others recognize the card, not the face. Now ask: this ID card, is it that person?
It is not. On it there is not the dream he had last night, not the taste of the dish his mother fried, not the scar from the fall he took at ten, not the person he is thinking of at this very moment. It has only pressed a whole living person down into a card, pressed him without error, and yet pressed him flat.
To say the institution of capital straight out as the market economy does exactly this: it presses a whole structure of positions down into one procedure within it.
Two. What positions got pressed away
So what got pressed away by this equals sign? Call them back one by one. The capitalist is doing the coordinating, doing the bearing, setting the direction for the next ten years, and the market does not do this. The worker on the line, in the office tower, makes a thing procedure by procedure, and the market does not do this either. The dozens of nodes on the supply chain, bitten front to back, handing forward relay by relay, the market does not do this.
A sum of money saved up, put into the plant, into the machines, into the people, earned back and put out again, rolled round after round into a larger strength, the market does not do this. Technology iterating year by year, the line renewed pass after pass, people relearning the craft batch after batch, the market does not do this either.
Coordinating, laboring, coordinating together, accumulating, reinvesting, iterating, this whole set of things is people doing them, it is the capitalist and the worker, doing them each in their own position. What does the market do? The market does only the last thing: it finds a price for these things that have been made.
Three. The market is one procedure, and the last one
So in this volume the market gets set back into its own position: it is one procedure within this institution, and the last one. It is a rule that measures how much others are willing to pay for the thing that was made, it is a sieve that sifts which stretch of the supply chain still holds and which should step down.
This rule carries great weight, this sieve has great force, and how much weight it carries, chapter twenty this semester takes a whole chapter to speak of, not sparing a section. But however true the rule, it does not produce, and however fierce the sieve, it does not organize. A rule cannot measure out a phone, a sieve cannot sift out a factory. The thing is made by people, the market only, on the last stretch of the road, finds a price for these things. To take the procedure for the whole institution is to take the rule that measures height for the person himself.
Four. That rule was in human hands to begin with
The ancestors saw this layer through.
Do not worry over scarcity, worry over the uneven share, do not worry over poverty, worry over the unsettled, runs the line from Confucius, in the Analects, the book of Ji. In this line of his there is one character that matters: worry. To worry is to be troubled, to take something to heart. Who takes it to heart? People take it to heart. Scarce or not, even or not, poor or not, settled or not, these are all things people must see to, must weigh, must adjust, and Confucius never once said to set the goods on the ground and they even themselves, settle themselves. The rule is dead, the one who measures with it is alive.
This layer, the last chapter this semester comes back to, back to the line the board is dead, the player is alive, and here we only bury it. For now, hold only one thing: this procedure the market is, people set it, people use it, people must set its bounds for it, it will not set its own bounds. It is only one procedure.
Five. Draw this equals sign in, and what comes of it
Perhaps someone asks: it is only an equals sign, so what if it gets drawn in? Two things come of it, and neither is small. The first, people go unseen. Draw the equals sign in and every problem in a society turns into a problem of the market: the market failed, the market overheated, the market’s mood is bad. The people are gone, the ones who coordinate are gone, the ones who do the work are gone, the ones who bear are gone, and what is left is a thing called the market, off there failing on its own, running its own fever. But the price is quoted by people, the goods are made by people, the accounts are reckoned by people, the direction is set by people, and there is no market anywhere running a fever, there are people standing in those positions, each doing his own thing.
The second, the wrong quarrel gets fought. Across this hundred years, how many have quarreled themselves red in the face: have the market, or not have it? Is the market good, or is the market not good? This quarrel was fought in the wrong place. The market is one procedure, and what is there for a procedure to be good or not good about? A kitchen knife in the cook’s hand is a kitchen knife, this need not be said again, it was said last semester: wei is neutral, good and ill lie in the hand. What is to be asked is never whether the market is good or not, what is to be asked is: this procedure, used where, used to what depth, who draws that boundary for it.
Six. The bedrock of this chapter, laid to here
The three sections of this chapter did one thing only: they laid the bedrock flat. The first section took the worker and the capitalist down off the scale, tens of thousands against tens, the many replaceable, the few not, scarce is not high. The second section took the upstairs-and-down picture down, today it is a supply chain, dozens of nodes, bitten front to back, the cheek and the jaw leaning on each other, and the two characters for worker point at a position, not the color of the collar. The third section took the equals sign down, the institution of capital is a whole structure of positions, and the market is only one procedure within it, the last one.
The meaning this chapter sets is this one line: the institution of capital is a structure of positions, not one person pressing down on another. The bedrock is laid. The next chapter goes to work, and reaches to touch the word shouted loudest across this hundred years.
Seven. What this section set, crossing to the next chapter
That word is exploitation. It points at a real thing: between what a worker makes in a day and the wage he carries home in a day, there is a gap. The gap is real, no one can deny it, and there are those whose whole learning, a lifetime of it, is built around this gap. Do not curse it, and do not defend it, do one thing only: carry this gap onto the table and reckon it out item by item.
But to reckon this gap, an earlier and harder question has to be answered first: the value of a thing, who in the end makes it? The question looks simple, so simple it will likely fly straight off the tongue: the worker makes it, of course, is the thing not made by the worker’s hands? The next chapter asks an ancestor to come out. He wrote a line more than two thousand years ago, sixteen characters in all, and these sixteen characters will part that answer-off-the-tongue open by a thin seam.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.