VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 27
That four million was divided by labor
Start with the smallest thing in the whole chapter. A bowl of rice, under a pot lid, still warm, left by a mother for a child who came home late. And a pay slip, drawn on the fifteenth of the month, eight thousand for an old hand, twelve thousand for the one technician who can run the machine. Two things, sitting in one ordinary day of one ordinary life. One of them was earned. One of them was not. This chapter is the opening chapter of the term, and it does not open from a definition. It opens from that pay slip, and it saves the bowl of rice for later. Because before we can ask what is given freely, we have to reckon one line that last term left open.
Last term, in chapter sixteen, an account lay on the table. A chair factory sold ten million in a year. We chased where the leftover stretch flowed, pocket by pocket, and we spent thirteen chapters on it. But we never turned back to look at the four million that went to the workers. How was it divided. By what. On what ground did one man take more, another less. That line was never reckoned through. This term starts there.
Section one walks back into the workshop and watches the four million land. A hundred and twenty people, and not one of them gets the same. The fifteen year hand takes eight thousand. The three month apprentice takes three thousand five. The technician takes twelve thousand, because only two men in the whole place can run that machine. The floor head takes thirty thousand, because the whole line presses on his shoulders. Nobody sues the man who got more. Nobody cries out for the man who got less. Everyone holds it to be right. And when you ask what decides more and less, there is one word for it: labor. Years, trade, count of pieces, hardness of the skill to find, weight of the load carried, all folded into one word. More labor more gain, less labor less gain, no labor no gain. That way of dividing has a name, and the name is distribution by labor. Then the strange thing. Open any economics book and you read that distribution by labor is the principle of socialism. But this factory is a factory a private man runs, every bone of it a capital made bone, and here the four million is divided by labor, not one word changed, running quietly on the fifteenth of every month. The two words that were called fire and water to each other live together on one pay slip, and neither gets in the other’s way. Xunzi set this position clean more than two thousand years ago: no merit, no reward. A line that bars one end and holds up the other. No merit gets no reward, and the man who has merit must be rewarded, and no one should stand in his way.
Section two asks the harder thing: since this is so plain, why does almost no one see it. It brings the two pictures onto the table, the one that leaps up for capitalism and the one that leaps up for socialism, and it owns that they leap up faster than we can think. Then it shows how they were painted in, one stroke at a time, over forty odd years and two generations, by the textbook, the news, the film, the song, the slogan. Worn long enough, the two pictures stopped being pictures and became the eyes. We look at the world through them without knowing we have them on. Then 1991, when one camp broke up and the newspapers all printed one line, one side won, the other lost. And once a win is announced, the winner’s words turn into common sense, and common sense needs no proof, only repetition. Then the chapter takes the pictures apart. Each picture, opened up, holds five things that have nothing to do with each other: ownership, pricing, bearing of risk, distribution, choice on one side, planning, ownership, distribution, the floor under you, the ideal on the other. Five separate matters, each with its own road, bound into one bundle, tied, labeled, and handed to you with the words: choose one bundle. And the hands that tied the rope never show up in the picture. Zhuangzi holds the center of the section: the name is the guest of the real. The real comes first, the name after, a board hung up for ease of calling. Hang the board wrong and the matter in the house does not change. But we take the guest for the host, read the board at the door, and walk off holding that we have looked, without ever entering. The section closes on one man, the fifteen year hand, who has never once looked down at his own pay slip, yet fell into rank and lost a friend over the two pictures on the wall. He is not a fool and not bad. He was blocked by a pair of glasses for forty years, and the man who wrote this book wore them too.
Section three does the fiercest thing. It sets the opposition to the center and asks whether the ground under it is solid. First it defines the tool: a wei question. Not a false line you can check, but a question that never stood from the start, because the thing it asks about is not there. Ask which is straighter, the edge of the square or the edge of the circle, and you cannot answer, because the circle has no edge to weigh. Capitalism against socialism, in the position of distribution, is exactly this. The two bundles, set side by side, have their true bone in ownership, and there the answers really are opposite, there is a real contest. But distribution by labor is not ownership. One side cries more labor more gain the loudest, the other grades and sets work points and runs more labor more gain all the same. In the position of distribution, there is no battlefield, because both sides stand at the same end. The wei question takes a thing held in common, forces it onto one side, and presses you to choose. You cannot, because whichever side you pick, you live under distribution by labor. Then Confucius sets the measure, so the taking apart does not run too far. Ji Wenzi thought three times before acting, and Confucius said, twice, and that will do. Think once for the face, once for the reverse, and stop. Take the wei question apart once and see it hollow, but do not take it apart until the real contest over ownership, over plan and market, is also called nothing. Taking a wei question apart is to let the real questions show, not to smooth all questions flat. And the real questions show: how does distribution by labor actually run, how is the rule for weighing labor made, and that other thing tied in with it, distribution by need, what is it. Xunzi closes: to be able to know is the nature of man, and a man is blinded by one corner and holds he has seen the whole. Move the corner aside, and the whole stretch behind shows.
Here is the method, and here is what you carry out. The method is the one this book always uses: do not fight the name, walk into the house and look at the matter. Do not choose the bundle someone tied for you, cut the rope and look at the five things one at a time. What you carry out is a smaller and freer place to stand. You no longer have to pick a side over your own pay slip. You are a person who put in labor and wants that labor counted, and so is nearly everyone you were told to fight. The most famous opposition of the last hundred years, walked up close, in the position of distribution, is hollow underfoot. That is the ground this chapter sets. Everything after it stands on this.
SECTIONS
Section 1, Last term’s account, one line still not reckoned
Section 2, The two words argued over for more than a hundred years
Section 3, That opposition rests on a wei question
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.