VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 15, SECTION 2
It Waits on the Farmer to Be Eaten, Value Handed Forward by Four Positions, Relay by Relay
The last section walked a stretch alongside a bowl of rice and saw that string of positions. This section asks an ancestor out, and he gathered this string of positions into sixteen characters. He wrote them more than twenty-one hundred years ago, and the man who wrote them bore in his life the heaviest wronging there is, yet when he wrote of the economy his eyes were cold as a rule. His name is Sima Qian.
One. Those sixteen characters
Set the line up here first.
So 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, runs the line in the Records of the Grand Historian, in the Account of the Money-Makers. Copy these sixteen characters down, for this semester we will come back to them again and again. Here Sima Qian set out four positions: the farmer, the ranger, the craftsman, the trader. Four characters, four procedures, handed forward one relay at a time. Take them one at a time.
Two. It waits on the farmer to be eaten
It waits on the farmer, and only then have people something to eat. What does the farmer do? He puts the seed into the soil and makes it grow into something that can be eaten. Said plainly, this is a turning: soil cannot be eaten, water cannot be eaten, the sun cannot be eaten, and the farmer turns these three into grain.
This is the first relay, and without this relay all the positions behind it spin empty. Sima Qian put the farmer first, and the order is set with great precision: a person must first be alive before anything else can be spoken of. This layer was heard once already last semester: when the granaries are full they know propriety, the material in front, the consciousness behind. Sima Qian and Guanzi, five hundred years apart, set out one and the same position.
Three. It waits on the ranger to be brought out
It waits on the ranger, and only then does the thing come out. What is the ranger? The ranger is the one who tends the mountains, forests, streams, and marshes, going up the hill to gather timber, down into the water to take fish, into the mine to take iron and copper. Notice, the farmer’s is grown, the ranger’s is taken. The farmer grows a living thing, one harvest a year, the soil worked ready. The ranger takes a dead thing, buried in the mountain, hidden under the water, lying motionless for tens of millions of years. To get them out, one has to know which mountain holds iron, which river holds fish, which season allows the gathering, which season calls for the ban. This is the second relay, and what it brings out is the stock. The farmer brings out food, the ranger brings out stock, and now people have something to eat, and something to use.
Four. It waits on the craftsman to be made
It waits on the craftsman, and only then does the thing become an implement. This relay matters most, so stop a moment. The ranger takes a lump of iron ore out of the mountain, and what can be done with it? Nothing at all, it is a stone, you cannot cook a meal with it, cannot plow a field, cannot cut firewood.
The craftsman comes, and he burns it, smelts it, forges it, grinds it, and then it becomes a plow. Now this stone can plow a field. The character Sima Qian used is made, and to make is to go from unusable to usable, from a heap of stock to a finished implement. This is the third relay, and what it brings out is the implement.
Five. It waits on the trader to be moved along
It waits on the trader, and only then does the thing flow. Carry the scene on forward: this plow is made, sitting in the blacksmith’s shop, and three hundred li away there is a farmer short a plow this very year. These two people will never meet in their lives. The plow lying in the shop is a dead thing, the farmer crouched at the edge of his field is a pair of idle hands.
The trader comes, and he buys the plow, walks the three hundred li, and hands it to that farmer. In that moment the plow turns from a dead thing into a living thing plowing a field. The character Sima Qian used is moved along, and to move along is to let it go where it ought to go. This is the fourth relay, and what it brings out is the flow.
Six. Four relays handed forward, and only then does the price land
Now set the four relays side by side: the farmer, brings out food, the ranger, brings out stock, the craftsman, makes the implement, the trader, moves it along. Four positions, one relay after another, and pull which relay out? Pull the farmer, people starve, and the other three positions all stop dead. Pull the ranger, and the craftsman has no stock, his hands stop in mid-air. Pull the craftsman, and that lump of ore stays a stone forever. Pull the trader, and that plow lies in the shop forever, and the farmer three hundred li away crouches at the edge of his field forever.
Four relays, miss one relay, and the price of that plow does not land. This is the line the last section felt its way to, finished by Sima Qian in sixteen characters: value is not made out of one position, it is handed forward by four positions, one relay at a time.
Seven. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section did one thing only: it took Sima Qian’s sixteen characters and pried them open one character at a time and set them out. 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 positions, handed one relay at a time, and after four relays the price lands. Notice, when Sima Qian wrote this line there was no expression on his face, he did not praise the farmer, did not run down the trader, did not say which relay is high and which is low, he only set the four positions out one at a time. Set the position, hand down no verdict, and the ancestors wrote it just so twenty-one hundred years ago.
Now, back to the line off the tongue: the thing is made by the worker, so the value is created by the worker. Read this line again slowly, and as you read, notice, from the thing is made by the worker to the value is created by the worker, is there a place where the ground underfoot is empty? The next section crouches down and looks clear at that empty place. It is the hardest stroke this semester.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.