VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, AFTERWORD
The Socialist Institution and the Communist Institution
This term, here, is walked to its end. Before you close the book, let the one who wrote it turn round with you, and look one more time at what, in the end, we did this whole way.
One, what we did this term
This term, we spoke of two things. One, taken by men for an enemy, cursed for a hundred years. One, taken by men for a phantom dream, laughed at for a hundred years. One is called distribution by labor, one is called communism.
For a hundred and more years, these two things were stuffed into two pictures glaring at each other. In one picture, they are that side’s banner. In the other picture, they are this side’s crime. Men took sides over these two pictures, quarreled, cut friendships, even bled. Yet almost no one was willing to lower his head, walk near them, and look at what, under them, in the end was there.
What we did this term is lower that head. We walked near those two things, and looked down under them. We found they are not one bit the look in the pictures. Distribution by labor is no private goods of any one institution, it is right there on your pay slip, on your report card, on the playing field, in the changing room of the hospital, everywhere, and no man slips free. Communism is no state to come or gone, it is right there in that bowl of rice your mother left for you, under a street lamp, in an emergency room that asks not money and saves the man first, alive all along, alive from the first day man gathered to warm together.
What we did was never to take a side for any, never to judge who is right, who is wrong. What we did is take these two things, out of those two pictures, one by one, and return them to their own positions. Their own positions are two rules the human world uses at once: one weighs the putting out, one weighs the need.
Two, the things this term set firm
String together the things this term set firm, and you will see a road clear and clean.
We set out from that account of last term not reckoned, found that four million was divided by labor, took apart that false wall of capitalism against socialism, and saw clear that opposition, in the position of distribution, is a wei question. We counted the by labor through, called Mozi, Xunzi, Confucius to strike for it a root of two thousand years, and drove into that word weighing, set out six rules, two frames. We watched the flow of labor, dug to that dark lock of the chance, walked to the bound of the by labor, saw the labor that cannot be weighed, and at the last closed on living labor, landed on the man, landed on that little kind in the heart of man.
Then we turned about, and called out the by need. We saved it from the two pictures of heaven and nightmare, restored it to a thing as plain as a bowl of rice, counted it living in all places, all relations, tidied for it a history ancient and ever new, set it a bound, fitted it a check, and saw clear the wholly single by need is a wei question, because man is born with the private. At the last, we dug all the way to the deepest: what makes all this come alive is not the mechanism, it is character, and character belongs to culture.
This road, from a pay slip, to a soil of culture. What it walked is that old line of this book: walk near and look, look down under him.
Three, there is one thing we have not spoken through
But at the close of this term, the one who wrote it must, honestly, tell you a thing: there is one thing we have not spoken through, and it is on purpose left not spoken through.
This whole volume, from head to tail, speaks of four things only: the slave, capital, the by labor, the by need. The first term spoke the slave, the second term spoke capital, this term spoke the by labor and the by need. Four things, now all spoken, all returned, one by one, to their positions. But we have all along spoken them one by one, apart. When we spoke the slave, we lifted the slave out alone to look. When we spoke the by need, we lifted the by need out alone to look.
But in the true world, these four things are never apart. They live at once in every society, live at once in one man’s single day. By day you are in a capital made company, drawing a wage by labor. You turn to care for a sick family member, and that moment is by need. When you pay your mortgage you are a house slave through and through. When you manage those under you, you sit again in the master’s seat. These four things, on you, in every society, are wound together, running at once. So put together, what in the end is the shape of that map. How do they help and complete one another, how mind one another, how hold one another, letting no one thing grow big alone. This whole map, this term, we did not spread open.
Four, the road ahead, we spread that whole map open
That whole map is exactly what the road ahead is to do.
The road ahead, we take these four things, four rules, and spread them together on the table, and look at how they join into one whole map. The slave’s rule, capital’s rule, the by labor’s rule, the by need’s rule, when the four run at once, how do they fit one another, check one another, lean on one another. Why, short one of the four, it will not do. Why, any one grown big alone, disorder breaks. This whole map is the last, and the most needful, piece of this volume’s puzzle.
And the road ahead is to dig one layer deeper still. At this term’s end, we dug to that soil of culture, dug to that character is reared by culture, that culture is the common root of the economy, the polity, the law. But this soil, how in the end it holds these four institutions up, how it rears them, and how, among them, it does that deepest check, this layer, this term we dug only to the mouth of the root, we did not dig deep down. The road ahead is to follow this mouth, and turn that soil of culture well over. The one who wrote this book, in the last section of this term, on purpose left this mouth wide open, unsealed, exactly so that the hand of the road ahead can take it up smoothly.
This is the one hand this term hands, to you, and to the road ahead. This term, we wiped clean these two rules, the by labor and the by need, and returned them, one by one, to their positions. The road ahead spreads the four rules open together, and looks at how they join into one whole map that helps and completes, holds each other in check, and turns deep open that soil of culture that holds all this up.
See you on the road ahead.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.