VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 16, SECTION 3
That One Share, No One May Swallow Alone
At the end of the last section the account turned to the last, and one thing remained with no position to claim it: that machine three times faster, that line where one holds three, the extra share, not made by any pair of hands in the workshop today. This section goes to find it. To find it, we have to go to a place and walk a stretch, a place in Sichuan, more than twenty-two hundred years now, the water still flowing.
One. That weir, watering the fields for twenty-three hundred years
Around 256 BC a governor came to the commandery of Shu, named Li Bing. When he arrived it was a bitter land: the Min River rushed down out of the mountains and flooded year on year, washing away the crops, drowning the people, and yet in the dry season the fields had no water. One river, taking lives when it swelled, and giving not a mouthful when it fell.
Li Bing did one thing. He did not go and build a higher dike to dam the water back, he parted the river down the middle. In the heart of the river he heaped up a long dike, its head pointed like the mouth of a fish, and the river water rushing against that pointed head parted itself into two streams, one running outward, one running inward. The outer stream carries the flood, the inner stream enters the plain to water the fields. When the water is high, the excess spills itself away, when the water is low, the stream coming in is enough. This weir is called Dujiangyan, and after it was built the Chengdu plain knew famine no more. From 256 BC to today, more than twenty-two hundred years, that water has flowed without stop, and those fields have yielded without stop.
Two. These twenty-two hundred years of harvest, whose labor’s gain is it
Now we ask a very cold question. First think of Li Bing: he died long ago, dead more than twenty-two hundred years, he never farmed a single mu, and of every year’s rice the Dujiangyan watered, he touched not one grain. Then these twenty-two hundred years of harvest, whose labor’s gain are they?
They are the farmers’, they set the seedlings, watched the water, cut the rice, this is their labor, this is their gain. But go and ask the neighboring place that had no Dujiangyan: the same strength, the same year, the same pair of hands, and the harvest is not the same. That extra share is not worked out by their hands doing more. That share is the fruit borne of that one thought of Li Bing’s. And Li Bing died twenty-two hundred years ago.
Three. That one thought, a person cannot even explain his own
Go one layer deeper, and a harder question has to be asked. Why could Li Bing think of parting, rather than damming? Why did he set that fish mouth at exactly that spot, not a li upstream, not a li down? Say he surveyed it, yes, he surveyed it. But of all under heaven the ones who surveyed that river across two thousand years and more are past counting. That one thought, where did it come from? Ask back further: why could Yu the Great think of channeling, rather than following his father’s old road of damming? It cannot be traced. Truly it cannot be traced, and Li Bing himself could not say it clear, and go and ask him, and he could not answer either. A person cannot explain his own one thought.
Four. What cannot be explained, a person gives a source to
So what does a person do? A person gives it a source: heaven bestowed it, a dream revealed it, the River Chart, the Luo Writing, an immortal come down to earth. Yu the Great tamed the flood, and the ancestors say a spirit gave him a scroll of chart, Li Bing built the weir, and later people set him into a temple and called him the Lord of the River, and offered to him year by year.
Look clear at this thing. Last semester one character was spoken: wei, the thing done by a person is called wei, neutral. Now this source too is wei: heaven-bestowed is set by people, dream-revealed is set by people, the temple is built by people, the spirit is invited up by people. This is not superstition, this is a most clear-eyed thing the ancestors did: they knew that one thought, no one person can shoulder, and they knew the fruit borne of that one thought, no one person is fit to swallow alone.
Five. And so that founding line lands
Now carry this layer back to the economy, back to that machine three times faster. Why is it three times faster? Because someone improved it, and the one who improved it stood on the shoulders of the generation before, and that generation stood on the shoulders of the one before them. Count all the way back, to the one who made the first machine, and count back further, to the craftsman who beat out the first plow.
That one extra share of output flowed from this whole long river down to today. It is not made by the hands of these hundred workers today, and not thought up by that boss alone, it belongs to no one person’s labor. Write these characters down: gain not of labor. Then, gain not of labor, whom does it belong to? The answer the ancestors gave is: it belongs to the spirits. Turned into plain speech, it belongs to the public. Belongs to the spirits, belongs to the common, belongs to no private person at all.
Six. And so that line grows heavy too
Speaking to here, a layer nailed down last semester lights up again. Last semester, chapter seven, spoke of it: the starting point of humankind is not selfishness, it is sharing. Only half the line was spoken then, and today the other half is added: gain not of labor belongs to the public.
Look clear at how clean this founding line is. Your labor, belongs to you: the seedlings you set, the rice you cut, those eight hours of yours in the workshop, no one can take. But the threefold speed that machine gained, the fields that weir watered for twenty-three hundred years, that whole long river flowing from the ancestors down to today, that share, is not your labor, and not his labor, and that share, no one may swallow alone. This layer, across a hundred years of that argument about the gap, neither side stood at: one side said the gap is the worker’s, one side said the gap is capital’s. The ancestors stood two thousand years ago, shook their heads, and said one line: there is a share that is no one’s.
Seven. What this section set, crossing to the next chapter
This chapter reckoned that gap out, one entry at a time. Seven accounts, flowing out cell by cell, and what lands at last in the boss’s hand is a small share, and a share that must eat the loss. Exploitation is a moral verdict, distribution is a fact of position. But turn the account to the last and one share still remains, and on the account there is no position to claim it, and it flowed from very far off, the fruit borne of Li Bing’s one thought, Yu the Great’s one thought, the one thought of countless nameless craftsmen. That share is gain not of labor, and gain not of labor belongs to the public. Carry this layer along, and every chapter behind it this semester comes back to it.
Now turn the eyes back into the workshop. Those hundred workers, standing there, do they really have only the one cell they are apportioned? In their hands, do they really hold no card at all? The next chapter asks a cook out. The tool in his hand has been used nineteen years, and its edge is still like a fresh whetting, and the moment he lays hand on it, the position turns over.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.