VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 27, SECTION 1
Last term’s account, one line still not reckoned
Last term we took a mirror apart together. That mirror had thrown its picture for more than a hundred years. We wiped away none of what it showed. We only carried those things back, from one man’s guilt, to the plain standing of a position. This term we do not change tables. We start again from the account that lies spread on that same table. Because that account has one line, from the first to the last, that was never reckoned through.
One, an account still lies open on that table
Turn your memory back to last term, chapter sixteen. In that section an account lay open. A chair factory, and in one year the things it made sold for ten million. That ten million did not go into one man’s pocket, the man who ran the factory. The timber had to be paid, up the line to the forest and the board mill. The machines and the shed had to be carried. The goods had to be shipped out, laid onto shelves in the shops. The tax had to be paid. Next year’s new machine had to be set aside. The bank’s interest had to be returned. And the little that was left, only then did it reach the man who put up the money.
That account we reckoned, line by line. The share the workers took away, that was four million. Back then we put our whole mind on the stretch that was left, we ran after it the whole way, we watched which pockets it flowed into. Almost the full strength of thirteen chapters last term went onto that stretch, to carry it back from a word of moral judgment, into a plain map of distribution.
But from the first to the last, not once did we turn our head, to look at that four million. How was that four million divided. By what was it divided. On what ground did this man get more, that man less. This line was never reckoned through. This term, we start from this line.
Two, how that four million landed in each pair of hands
Now walk into the workshop of that chair factory. Look at the shape of that four million as it lands. The factory holds a hundred and twenty people. An old hand who has worked fifteen years takes eight thousand a month. An apprentice three months in takes three thousand five. The technician who runs the numerical machine takes twelve thousand, because in the whole factory only two people can run that machine. The polisher works by the piece, and however many chair faces he grinds out in a day, the month’s end pays him by the count. The floor head takes thirty thousand a month, because the whole line, its scheduling, its delivery dates, its reworks, all press on his one pair of shoulders.
This four million is not a matter of pulling a hundred and twenty people into one row, handing each thirty three thousand, and knocking off. It is cut into a hundred and twenty pieces of unequal size, and it lands in a hundred and twenty pairs of hands. Some get more. Some get less. No one takes the one who got more to court. No one cries out for the one who got less. Up and down the factory, all of them hold this to be right.
So think a moment, on what decides who gets more, who gets less. It is years on the job. It is the trade. It is the count of pieces made. It is how hard the skill in the hand is to find. It is how heavy the load carried on the shoulder. Put these together, and there is only one word for them: labor. Whose labor is more, takes more. Whose labor is less, takes less. Who does not come to work, takes not a cent.
Mark this. This word labor holds more than you think. It is not only the spending of force. In the old hand’s eight thousand sits fifteen years of feel in the hand. In the technician’s twelve thousand sits a skill only two men in the whole factory hold, and that is scarcity. In the floor head’s thirty thousand sits the load he carries when the whole line goes wrong. Force, years, skill, load, four things folded into one same thing, written on one sheet of paper at the month’s end. That sheet is a rule. How that rule gets made, a whole chapter later will tell.
Three, this way of dividing has a name
Hold this way of dividing fast in mind, because it has a name. More labor, more gain. Less labor, less gain. No labor, no gain. However much labor you put in, you take from this one sum the matching much. This name is distribution by labor.
Now open any book that teaches economics, and look up what stands under these words, distribution by labor. You will see a line almost word for word the same: distribution by labor is the distributive principle of socialism. This line was printed in the books, taught for decades, tested for decades. The man who wrote this book, when he read this line back then, he too read it and let it pass. He read it and let it go, and gave it no more than a passing second.
More labor, more gain, almost every person can say this from a child. The parents say it. The teacher says it. Even small children, dividing candy, will say it. It comes off the tongue so easily, so easily that no one stops to ask one line: this thing everyone hangs on the lip, and those four words the book fenced into another kind of institution, are they one thing or not. They are. They are one thing, not one word off. Now come back to the workshop of that chair factory, stand beside that numerical machine, and watch that technician who takes twelve thousand a month say that line softly once over.
Four, a strange thing runs into us right here
What kind of factory is that chair factory, in the end. It is a factory a private man runs. The shed is rented. The machines are bought. The stake was borrowed from the bank. The gain, if there is gain, goes to the man who runs it. The loss, if there is loss, that man carries too. Every bone in it is a capital-made bone. Last term spent thirteen chapters turning this kind of factory over, inside and out, from that account to that stretch, from that stretch to scarcity.
Yet right here in this factory’s workshop, that four million is divided by labor. Not one word changed, it is exactly the distributive principle written in that book, set under the name of another kind of institution.
It is not in some country that has declared itself socialist. It is right here in this chair factory a private man runs. It does not run once every five years when a meeting is held. It runs once every month on the fifteenth, quietly, along with each of those pay slips. From the factory’s first month of work it has run, and it runs to this day.
Turn it around, and it is the same. In those countries that call themselves socialist, do the factories then not pay wages. They pay, and they divide finer. The trade is graded, the skill is ranked, from a first grade worker to an eighth grade worker, one grade one price. An old hand graded to the eighth, that is a thing the whole factory passes around. That too is distribution by labor, divided without one loose thread.
So those two words, argued over for more than a hundred years, called fire and water to each other, cut into two camps, written into countless essays cursing back and forth, they in fact live together in one same workshop, on one same pay slip, and neither has ever gotten in the other’s way. That opposition, seen from the highest place, looks earth shaking. But you walk near, walk into the workshop, walk to the day the wage is paid, and it is gone.
Five, no merit no reward, the ancestors set this position long ago
If this strikes you as fresh, that is not because it is new. It is because we stand too far from the ancestors. This position was set more than two thousand years ago, set cleaner than any book teaches today. Xunzi, in the Regulations of a King, ran a line like this. No worth, no rank. No ability, no office. No merit, no reward. No offense, no punishment. So runs the line in the Xunzi.
Take it one word at a time. No worth, no rank: the man whose conduct falls short, do not give him the honored place. No ability, no office: the man who cannot handle the work, do not seat him in that office. No merit, no reward: the man who has laid down no merit, do not hand him a reward. No offense, no punishment: the man who has done no wrong, do not go and punish him. Four lines, four positions, set clean.
Fix your eye on the third: no merit, no reward. Turned into today’s plain speech, it is this: if you have not put in this share of labor, you should not take this share of pay. This half, everyone can hear.
But this line of Xunzi’s runs both ways. It bars one end, and it holds up the other. No merit gets no reward, that is the bar. The man who has merit, then he must be rewarded, no one should stand in the way, that is the holding up. Xunzi goes on: in the court no man by luck holds his position, among the people no man by luck lives his days. Each stands on his own share of labor, in the place where he ought to stand. These two ends together, that is the whole meaning of distribution by labor.
These four lines Xunzi wrote for the man who governs a state. He wrote them in the Warring States. He did not know that two thousand two hundred years on there would be a chair factory, a numerical machine, a pay slip handed down on the fifteenth of each month. But he set that position down. Once a position is set, it does not mind the year. It stands all the way to today, to the man beside that machine.
Six, this term we ask two questions
From this section on, the road this term walks starts from that four million. On the road are two questions, each harder than the last.
The first question: in this world, is there in the end one man who slips free of these two words, by labor. You will say, I do not go to work, I draw no wage, I slip free. Then walk the corners one by one and look. A student’s report card, by what is it counted. A scholarship, by what is it given. A player’s contract, by what is it signed, why does one man take ten million a year and another sit a whole season on the bench. A man who takes not a cent, in an open technical community, on what does he store up the weight that makes others willing to hear him speak. Look and see, whether there is any one corner that is the exception.
The second question is harder: a man who gives a thing away for no reason, asking not a cent in return, is this too a thing that has always lived in every society.
The bowl of rice a mother leaves in the pot for the child who comes home late, is that divided by labor. What did that child do that day, to be worth that bowl of rice. He did nothing. He only came home late. Yet the rice is there, under the lid, still warm. This bowl of rice, by whatever rule you measure it, cannot be measured out.
These two questions ask you to believe nothing. This book from the first to the last has asked no one to believe anything. It only asks you to walk a little nearer, and look at your own days. Look at that pay slip of yours, then look at the bowl of rice your mother left you. One by labor, one not by labor, two things living at once in one of your days, living well. The first, the next section starts to chase. The second, we set into the back half of this term.
Seven, what this section set, crossing to the next
Good. This section did one thing only: it turned up the one line on last term’s account that was never reckoned through, and looked at it once.
What it saw is this. That four million is divided by labor. And these four words, distribution by labor, were set under the name of another kind of institution, set there for more than a hundred years, written into the textbooks, written into the exams. Yet it is plainly right here, in this capital-made chair factory, running month by month, and it has not stopped for one month. That opposition, argued over for more than a hundred years, its first crack splits open right here.
But then again. Since this thing is so plain, why does almost every person, hearing those two words, still have two armies leap up in the head, fire and water to each other. One in this dress, one in that. One wins, the other must lose. Those two pictures, where did they grow into our heads, and who planted them there. The next section brings those two pictures out, sets them on the table, and looks at them line by line, to see where they came from, and who planted them in our heads.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 2, The two words argued over for more than a hundred years