VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 19
The Capitalist Is a Slave Too
Start with the freest person on the whole floor. He built the company with his own hands over twenty years, the plant is his, the machines are his, the money on the books is his, and at one word several hundred people move. Seen from far off, no one is freer. The whole chapter is about what happens when you refuse the far-off look and walk close, down into what is under him, and it makes good on a line nailed down at the end of last semester that has been heard but never fully spent: the one who takes the constraint is the slave, the one who lays the constraint is the master, the slaveholder is a slave too, the higher the position, the more the constraints. The chapter finds five chains on this freest man, sets them out one by one, and shows that on all five there is not a single bad person, and that the way out was never a climbing higher.
The first section stands the picture up and sets out three of the chains. The market is the first: the money on his books cannot sit unmoved, because unmoved it shrinks, a slow leaking away, so he must put it out, and putting it out means passing the market’s gate, and this is not a wanting but a cannot-not. The section carries Sima Qian forward, that to be rich is the temper of human nature, unlearned yet wanted by all, and adds the second half for the person in this position, that the chasing of gain is a must and the moment he stops the thing in his hand rots, with the Book of Changes underneath it, the sun at noon then declines, the moon at the full then eclipses, the one at the high place first to feel the downward pull. The second chain is technology’s iteration, and it is fiercer because it takes not the wrongdoer but the whole table, and the section makes it concrete with film, the whole chain of plants and shops and masters that was a thick steady hide for decades, gone once the taking of photographs moved into a single pane of glass, and nobody on that chain did anything wrong. The third chain is the team, the other face of the last chapter’s Cook Ding and hired emperor seen now from the boss’s side: he must knock on the doors of the few who hold up the work, listen to their terms, sit through the night when they would leave, and the deepest turn is that he raised them himself, spent ten years making a novice into a Cook Ding, and the raising is what hands them the card. The section closes the three by naming what they share, that none of them is a bad person out to harm him, the market only a rule, technology only walking forward, the leaving few only arrived at their own scarcity, and all three lock the same thing, that he has not one day he may let go.
The second section sets out the two chains that lock his nights. Debt is the fourth: he borrows because his own money cannot expand the output or take the larger order or move before the rival, and the borrowing is no bad thing, the first coat of hair that keeps his factory from staying a small workshop forever, but through the door with the money comes the thing called on time, which does not ask whether he earned this year or whether the market was good, and in the good year the borrowed money is a help that tempts him to borrow more, while in the bad year the orders fall and the customer holds the payment and the bank will not shift by a day, and he must sell the new machine, sell the land, cut down to the people who followed him ten years, the firmest lock not iron but the account, open on his own desk. The family is the fifth and heaviest, the one few speak of: at sixty, with the factory grown from two machines to two hundred, he faces the plain hard question of to whom it goes, since he was only ever passing it through his hand, and the child who must catch it has lacked nothing, never gone hungry, never stood three hours at a door for a payment, because that is exactly what he strove a lifetime to give, and that gift is exactly why the child cannot grow the frame that could catch it. The section shows the winding lock: give the child the best and the child cannot grow his sinew and bone, and then he cannot hand it out, and then he cannot stop, the man of sixty still chasing customers, and the chain put on him not by market or bank or rival but by his own love, with Laozi cold and exact, gold and jade filling the hall, no one is able to keep it, the character being keep and not get, for getting rests on a lifetime’s labor and keeping rests on the next generation’s frame, grown only out of the very bitterness he was least willing to let the child eat. Then it sets all five out in full and counts the bad people on them, not one, and returns to the slaveholder who could not cook, this man’s days handed to the market, to technology, to the few who hold the work, to the bank’s account, to his own child’s sinew and bone, the same one answer from last semester to today, positions differ only in the division of labor.
The third section refuses to leave the chapter in grievance and picks up the second half of Laozi’s line, the half that gives a way out. Gold and jade filling the hall, no one is able to keep it, and then, the work done, the person withdraws, this is the way of Heaven, and Laozi is not saying do no work or do not be rich but once it is done, draw back, for what locked the man was never the doing but the not being able to stop. And the section brings out a person who lived it, Fan Li, who endured more than twenty years with King Goujian until Yue destroyed Wu, and on the very day of the victory, at the highest place of his life with the greatest merit and the ruler’s deepest trust, gathered his things and left, telling his colleague that this ruler was one to share hardship with and not ease, walking away at the top of his own will. After leaving he changed his name and did business, and Sima Qian gives the weighty line, in nineteen years three times reaching a thousand in gold and twice scattering it among his poor friends and distant kin, the three meaning he scattered twice, earned and gave clean away and began again from empty hands, and later ages kept him in honor as the Lord of Tao. The section shows him untying the five chains one by one, the empty-handed having nothing that can rot, the man who never welds himself to one trade untouched by technology’s table-clearing, the small trader who borrows nothing never knocked on by on time, the father who leaves not gold and jade but the way of starting three times from nothing, and it is careful to say what he untied was not the doing but the keeping.
Then the section does the honest turn that keeps this from becoming a lesson to scatter one’s holdings. Fan Li’s road is his position, holding his life and his ease heavier than gold and jade, knowing where sitting on would seat him, and so rising. The man of sixty still chasing customers has his position too, several hundred rice bowls behind him and a factory built from two machines and a child not yet grown its frame, welded to the chair because the moment he rises the month’s end of those several hundred hangs in the air. Neither is praised nor laughed at, the two positions set side by side for the reader to weigh. The chapter sets its meaning down, the five chains and not one bad person, and makes good on last semester’s last layer, the slaveholder is a slave too, the way out not in the rising but in the clear seeing, Fan Li the clear-seeing one who did not climb higher but walked away.
What you carry out of this chapter is the completion of a line you already half-knew and a correction to how you picture power. The freest-looking position on the floor is roped by five chains, and freedom read from the far-off look is not freedom read from close up. And the chapter closes by pointing at the one chain it has not yet truly seen, the market, of which it has only said he cannot stop and stopped it rots without ever asking what the market is, by what it locks the man, by what it carries a whole trade away in a single night. The next chapter lifts that one procedure out on its own and goes back to 1975, to Rochester, to the company that ruled the world’s light-sensitive industry for a hundred years, and a young engineer who made a thing, carried it up to those above, and watched them press it down.
SECTIONS
Section 1 The Market, the Iteration of Technology, the Team, the First Three Chains
Section 2 Debt and the Family, the Last Two Chains
Section 3 Gold and Jade Filling the Hall, No One Can Keep It, the Move of the Lord of Tao
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 1 The Market, the Iteration of Technology, the Team, the First Three Chains