VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 20, SECTION 3
Which Things Need Not Be Sent to the Market to Be Measured
At the end of the last section a chill rose in the heart: since that rule is so exact, so fierce, then should not everything be taken to be measured, read for how much it is worth? This section holds this question down and answers it slowly. Once it is answered, this whole chapter stands firm. For how much use a rule has depends on where you set it, and depends too on where you do not set it.
One. Look first at this rule’s true merit
Before answering that question, set out this rule’s merit first, honestly, and here the market is not cursed, from beginning to end it is not cursed. Sima Qian, more than twenty-one hundred years ago, saw this face of it clear.
If the farmer does not come out, food runs short, if the craftsman does not come out, the work cannot be done, if the trader does not come out, the three treasures are cut off, runs the line in the Records of the Grand Historian, in the Account of the Money-Makers. The farmer not coming out, and people have nothing to eat, the craftsman not coming out, and things cannot be made, the trader not coming out, and these three treasures are cut off. Notice that character cut off, it is not grown few, it is severed. Chapter fifteen spoke of that plow: lying in the blacksmith’s shop it is dead, and the trader sends it to that farmer three hundred li off, and only then does it live. And by what does the trader know that the plow should be sent there? By that rule. Where the plow is dear, there the plow is short, and where the plow is short, there the fields wait for a hand to work them. That rule looks cold, yet what it does is a matter as great as heaven: it lets a thing walk into the hand of the one who needs it most.
Two. Yet some things, once on the rule, change
The merit is set out. Now put that question straight. Look at a few things. That breakfast your mother made this morning, how much is it worth? Should it be taken to be measured? By the price on the market, a bowl of noodles is a few dollars, add an egg, add the half hour of her rising early, reckoned at the rate of an hourly worker, and a number is reckoned out. This number, is it the price of that breakfast?
Look at another. That bond between you and a friend, how much is it worth? If one truly began to reckon this number, say he helped you three times last year and you helped him twice, one still owed. Then answer honestly: from the moment that account begins to be reckoned, is that bond still there or not?
Three. Once on the rule, it is no longer the thing it was
Here is a most strange matter, see it clear. Those two things just now, it is not that they cannot be measured exactly, not that the rule is not fine enough, not that the number was reckoned wrong, it is that the moment they go onto the rule, they turn into another thing.
That breakfast of your mother’s, the moment a price is marked on it, turns from your mother’s breakfast into a breakfast sold to you, and its price may be not wrong by a hair, yet the one most crucial thing inside it is gone. That bond, the moment the accounting begins, turns from a bond into a running of accounts, and the account may be kept clean and clear, yet the bond is not there. Remember this line: some things, the moment they are sent onto that rule, the rule is not wrong, it is the thing itself that has changed.
Four. Then, where is the line drawn
Then where is the line drawn? Here is a dumb but very usable way of asking. Ask one line: this thing, is it a thing that stands up because it was reckoned clear? A trade, yes, you pay so much, I give so much goods, reckoned clear, both sides at ease, the clearer the better. A wage, yes, you did so much work, I give so much money, reckoned clear, this is duty. Last semester it was spoken: freedom in form is that he has the right to say no, freedom in substance is that he has the means to say no. The wage reckoned clear, and only then does a person have the means to say no.
But a bond of mother and child is not, it is not a thing that stands up because it was reckoned clear, it stands up precisely because of the not-reckoning. A trust laid in one’s hands, a faith, a promise kept many years, none of them are. The line is right here: whatever must lean on being reckoned clear to stand up, send it onto that rule and the rule will help you, and whatever must lean on not-reckoning to stand up, the moment that rule touches it, it shatters.
Five. This layer joins the ceding of last semester
Join this layer to that position of last semester. Last semester, chapter twelve, spoke of the twenty-four hours of a day, at once inside eight nets. What those nets do is exactly this thing: they carry the things that were not on the rule, one by one, onto the rule. Your idle time, measured into hours spent online, your words with a friend, measured into the count of exchanges, your attention, measured into the seconds of your staying.
Every number measured out is real. Yet has it been noticed that the thing being measured is quietly changing? A word of greeting between friends turns into a click, an afternoon of a person sitting and staring turns into a stretch of wasted time. Last semester nailed a line: wei the more refined is the harder to recognize. A rule is wei, and to what point the rule is stretched is a matter of the hand. This volume never curses that rule, it asks one line only: this rule, who holds it, stretched to where, who draws that edge for it?
Six. The meaning this chapter sets
This chapter is walked through, so set the meaning down. The first section, back to that office in 1975, saw a coarse and clumsy thing pressed down, and the ones who pressed it were not bad people, each did his duty, and thirty-seven years on that trade was gone, no one beat it down, only no one came to buy. The second section asked Guanzi out: the market is the standard of goods, the market is not a place, it is a rule, and the reading done, the sieve moves. Laozi’s line is colder: heaven and earth are not kind, they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs, it carries no feeling, it only reads the number. This section held that rule down: what it does is a matter as great as heaven, letting a thing walk into the hand of the one who needs it most, yet it cannot be stretched into every place, for some things, once on the rule, are no longer themselves. The meaning this chapter sets is this line: the market is one procedure in this institution, it is a rule, the rule is dead, the hand that holds the rule is alive.
Seven. What this section set, crossing to the next chapter
Walked to here, this semester is already near half through. It has set out the positions of the worker and the capitalist, reckoned that gap, looked at the card in the worker’s hand, turned over capital’s three layers of hide and hair, counted the five chains on the capitalist, and measured the market with its rule.
Now turn and look back over these seven chapters, and one thing comes into view: it has spoken all along of positions, of relations, of people. Yet one thing has never been spoken to its face, it is called capital itself. What in the end is it? Across this hundred years and more, one line has been shouted loudest, shouted through every street and lane until everyone can say it, and that line is four characters only. The next chapter takes these four characters and sets them under the lamp, and looks at them clear, one character at a time. Those four characters are: capital sucks blood.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.