VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 27, SECTION 2
The two words argued over for more than a hundred years
The last section, in the workshop of that chair factory, saw a crack. A capital-made factory, running distribution by labor. This thing is plain, laid on the pay slip of the fifteenth of every month. But this section asks a more troublesome question: since it is so plain, why does almost no one see it this way. Those two pictures, how in the end did they grow into our heads.
One, first bring those two pictures onto the table
Now think of nothing, only hear these two words. The first word, capitalism. The second word, socialism. When you have heard them, close your eyes three seconds, and see what leaps up in the head.
Most likely, the first word leaps up a set like this: the free market, private property, the man who runs the factory, the man who dares the risk, the man who overnight makes big money, the hundred and thirty kinds of toothpaste on the shop shelf. The second word leaps up another set: the state’s plan of production, the factory owned by all, one share to each in the flat, the ideal of all men equal, the guarantee that a sickness is seen to and an old age is kept.
These two sets, in most heads, are not two lists, they are two pictures. And two pictures glaring at each other. One stands this side, one stands that side, a line drawn between. On the two sides of this line, two armies, fire and water. One wins, the other must lose.
Do not rush to say whether these two pictures are right. First own one thing: they truly are in your head, and the speed they leap up at is far faster than the speed you think. Before you have begun to think, they have already fallen into rank. That is the place that truly matters.
Two, how these two pictures got painted into our heads
These two pictures you did not paint yourself. When you were born, your head was a blank sheet, nothing on it. These two pictures were painted in, one stroke at a time.
In the forty odd years after the Second World War finished, the whole earth was split into two halves. One half called this camp, one half called that camp. Between the two camps, no formal war broke out, yet across a wall they stood off, struck at, cursed at each other for forty odd years. In these forty odd years, the brush never stopped moving.
The textbook paints. The child, from the first years of school, is taught which side is us, which side is them. The news paints. Each day’s paper picks out the bad thing that happened on the far side and blows it large, picks out the good thing that happened on this side and blows it large. The film paints too. The man in the film who speaks with the far side’s accent, the moment he walks on, the whole hall knows he is the bad one, no need to wait for him to open his mouth. The song paints, the slogan paints, even the few words pasted on the door at the new year, they paint.
Forty odd years, two generations. By the time these two generations grew up, these two pictures were no longer pictures. They had become the eyes. You do not look at those two pictures with your eyes. You look at the whole world through those two pictures.
Mark this layer. A pair of glasses worn long enough, you forget you have glasses on. You take what you see for the way the world itself is. The one thing this book means to do, from the first to the last, is ask you to take the glasses off, set them on the table, and look at the glasses themselves.
Three, the one announcement of 1991
In 1991, the camp on that side broke up. It broke up very suddenly. The flag came down, one great state split into a dozen and more, a wall was chiseled open block by block, and the chiseled pieces were taken for keepsakes, set on stalls, sold to tourists.
That year, on the newspapers of the whole world, almost all printed different wordings of one same line: one side won, the other side lost.
From that year, in many places, the word socialism became a word not quite easy to say aloud. It got bound together with queuing, with ration tickets, with the big shared pot, with low output, with empty shelves. Some truly believed it so. Some were taught to believe it so. And very many more, they simply could not be bothered to think again.
Mark this well: once a win and a loss is announced, a dangerous thing happens. What the winning side says turns into common sense. And common sense needs no proof. Common sense argues no reason, it only needs to be repeated. Repeated long enough, no one asks why again.
Four, take the two pictures apart and look
Now do a thing. Bring the two pictures down, take them apart one by one.
Take the first apart first. In it there is: whom the factory belongs to, that is the matter of ownership. What price the goods sell at, that is the matter of pricing. Who bears the risk of the factory losing money, that is the matter of bearing. Whom the earned money goes to, that is the matter of distribution. How many kinds of toothpaste on the shelf, that is the matter of choice. Count them, five. Five matters each different from the other.
Take the second apart. In it there is: who sets how many machines are made in a year, that is the matter of planning. Whom the factory belongs to, that is the matter of ownership. How wages are paid, that is the matter of distribution. Who pays when a sickness comes, that is the matter of the floor under you. Whether men are born equally worthy, that is a wish, an ideal. Count again, also five. Also five matters each different.
Now see it clear. Ownership is one matter, pricing is another, distribution is a third, the floor under you is a fourth, the ideal is a fifth. These five matters each walk their own road, each have their own problem, their own answer. Between them there is no iron chain locking one to the next. A factory a private man runs can distribute by labor, the last section saw it with its own eyes. A factory owned by all must pay wages all the same, must grade all the same, more labor more gain all the same.
Yet those two pictures bind the five things into one bundle, tie the bundle, paste a label, and tell you: this bundle and that bundle, you may choose only one bundle.
This is the true shape of that quarrel argued over for a hundred years. It is not two institutions fighting. It is two bundles, tied up by someone, fighting. And the pair of hands that tied the rope has never once shown up in the picture.
Five, the name is the guest of the real
Zhuangzi, in the Zhuangzi, ran a line of the highest weight. The name is the guest of the real. So runs the line in the Zhuangzi.
Take it one word at a time. The name is the name, the label, those two words. The real is the matter itself, the pay slip handed down in the workshop, the hundred and thirty kinds of toothpaste on the shelf, the emergency bed that saves you first and asks about money never. The guest is the guest. The host sits in the house. The guest comes after, knocks and then enters.
Zhuangzi’s meaning is this: the name is the guest of the real. The real is first, the name is after. First the matter, then the name. The name is a board hung up for the matter, so it can be called out with ease. Hang the board wrong, and the matter in the house does not change one bit.
But man has a failing, and it is a failing as big as the sky: given time, he takes the guest for the host, the board for the house. He no longer looks at what happens in the workshop, he looks only at what is written on the board. The board says capitalism, so he says, here there can be no distribution by labor. The board says socialism, so he says, here no man can make big money.
The board hangs at the door, the matter runs in the house. Yet he will not even enter the door. He stands at the door, reads the board once through, and having read it, walks off, still holding that he has already looked.
Six, walk near and look at that one man
This book has run a line: to look at a man, do not look from far off, walk near, look down under him. Now walk near one man.
There is an old hand who has worked fifteen years in a chair factory. He has never left the province. What he has done this life is turn a block of timber into a chair a man can sit on. On the fifteenth of each month he draws eight thousand, and he holds that sum to be worthy of his fifteen years of feel in the hand. He has never once thought on which line of reasoning the sum he draws each month rests, nor what that reasoning is called.
Yet one day, at the dinner table, someone brought up those two words, and all at once he fell into rank. He fell in fast and hard, argued with the man till his face went red and his neck went thick, and ate a whole meal poorly. What he argued was those two pictures. He took fire over those two pictures, fell out with the man at the same table over them.
Walk near him, look down under him. Those two words he argued for, he has not lived one day inside the pure version of either. He lives inside a pay slip. And on that pay slip, the two words live together, quiet, neither in the other’s way. But he does not know it. Because he has never lowered his head to look at that sheet of paper. He has kept his head up the whole time, looking at those two pictures on the wall.
This man is not a fool. This man is not bad either. He was only blocked by that pair of glasses for forty years. And the man wearing these glasses is not he alone, it is very many people, the man who wrote this book among them, who wore them many years too.
Seven, what this section set, crossing to the next
Good. This section did three things.
First, it brought those two pictures onto the table, owned their being there, and owned that they leap up faster than we think. Second, it saw clear that these two pictures did not grow themselves, they were painted in over forty odd years, two generations, one stroke at a time. Third, it took the pictures apart, and saw that in each is tied five things unrelated to one another, while that pair of hands tying the rope has never shown up in the picture.
The position this section set is only Zhuangzi’s one line: the name is the guest of the real. But we have taken the guest for the host, and left the host cold outside the door.
So the next question comes hard. Since these two bundles were tied by someone, since on that workshop pay slip the two words live together, then that opposition, argued over for more than a hundred years, split many a family, cut many a friendship, is it a solid, real thing, or a question that never stood from the start. The next section sets this opposition to the center of the table, and looks at its root, at what thing in the end it stands upon.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.