VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 27, SECTION 3
That opposition rests on a wei question
The last section took the two pictures apart, and saw in each five things unrelated. This section does a fiercer thing: it sets the opposition argued over for more than a hundred years to the center of the table, and looks at the ground under its feet, at whether that ground is solid. Because for an opposition to stand, there must first be one thing the two sides truly contest in the one same position.
One, first say clearly what a wei question is
The word wei was set last term. Man plus doing, that is wei. What is made by human hands, that is called wei. It is neutral, the good or bad is in the pair of hands.
So what is a wei question. Hear this clear. A wei question does not mean this line is a false line. A false line has a true and a false, you can go and check it. A wei question is another matter: it is a question that never stood on its feet from the start, and you cannot answer it, because the thing it asks about does not exist at all.
Take a likeness. Someone asks you: the square and the circle, which one’s edge is straighter. You cannot answer. Not because you do not know, but because the question itself is hollowed out. The square has edges, the circle has no edge. You take the square’s edge to weigh against the circle’s edge, and on the circle’s side there is no such thing for you to weigh. This question, asked with all gravity, is empty.
Hold this likeness in mind. What this section means to prove is: capitalism against socialism, in the position of distribution, is just such a question, asked with all gravity, hollow underfoot.
Two, what each side truly holds are different things
Back to the two bundles of the last section. Now set the two side by side, look at them thing against thing.
The first picture’s bundle, its true bone, is ownership. It is whether the factory belongs to the private man, or to all. That is the question it means to answer. The second picture’s bundle, its true bone is also ownership, only the answer runs backward, it holds that the factory belongs to all.
See it. The place where these two pictures are truly needle against needle is ownership. Whom the factory belongs to, that is a solid, real question, and the two sides give truly opposite answers. Here is a real contest.
But distribution. These four words, distribution by labor, were set under the name of the second picture. The man who wrote the textbook counted it as the principle of socialism. Yet it and ownership are two matters. Whom the factory belongs to is one thing. By what the money handed out in the factory is divided, is another thing.
The first picture’s side never once held that inside the factory there must be no distribution by labor. Just the reverse, that side cries more labor more gain the loudest. The second picture’s side never once truly reached not dividing by labor. It grades all the same, sets work points all the same, more labor more gain all the same.
Three, so that opposition never rested on distribution
Now the thing is clear. The true battlefield of that opposition is in ownership, in plan or market, in whether the state holds the floor. In these places the two sides truly can quarrel, because the two sides truly stand in opposite positions. These are real questions, and later they will each be looked at one by one.
But in the position of distribution by labor, there is no battlefield. Because the two sides stand at the same end. Both hold more labor more gain, both run more labor more gain, both take gain without labor for a fault to be cured.
It is as if someone insists you choose one of two men, and says they are set against each other to the death. You walk near and look, and these two men, on the matter of distribution by labor, say one same line, do one same thing. Their being set against each other is over other matters. Yet someone hangs the board of distribution by labor on one of the two men’s necks, and then says: you either back distribution by labor, or you back that one man.
This is that wei question. It takes a thing the two sides hold in common, forces it onto one side, and then presses you to choose sides over a thing held in common. You cannot choose. Because whichever side you choose, you are living your days under distribution by labor.
Four, Ji Wenzi’s three thinkings, the measure in the line of Confucius
Here we must call an ancestor, to set the measure of this place straight. Because in taking apart a wei question, it is easy to take it apart too far, apart until in the end nothing matters, anything goes. That is wrong again.
In the Analects is set down a thing. In the state of Lu there was a great officer named Ji Wenzi, who on any matter would think three times before he acted. Confucius heard of it and ran a line: twice, and that will do. So runs the line in the Analects.
Put it plain. Twice is the second time. That will do is enough as it stands. Confucius means: think twice, and it is enough.
You hear it and find it strange. Is thinking three times not the more careful, why does Confucius say twice is enough. There is a measure in it. Think once, too rushed, easy to bolt. Think twice, once for the face, once for the reverse, and the matter is basically whole. Think to the third, the fourth, the tenth time, and it is no longer thinking the matter clear, it is spinning in place, it is finding yourself a way out, it is thinking until the thing you ought to do is thought away.
This is one reasoning with the taking apart of a wei question. Take it apart once, see clear that it is hollow underfoot, this is right. But do not take it apart a second time, a third time, apart until even the real contest over ownership is called false, even the real contest over plan and market is called no matter. That slides from seeing clear, into owning nothing at all.
Taking a wei question apart is to let the real questions show, not to smooth all questions flat.
Five, the true questions come into view
Once the wei question of distribution by labor is taken apart, the true questions underneath show. This term, this is the road it walks.
The first true question: distribution by labor is so widespread, widespread to every corner, so how in the end does it run, on what ground this man more, that man less, how is that rule for weighing labor made. This is the work of several chapters coming.
The second true question: that other thing set under the name of the second picture, tied together with distribution by labor, distribution by need, what is it in turn. Is it too, like distribution by labor, a thing that has always lived in every society, only not recognized. This is the work of the back half of this term.
Mark it. What is taken apart is the false opposition, not the two things themselves. By labor is real, it runs every day. By need is real too, the bowl of rice your mother left is one. Of the real things, not one is fewer. Only that false wall, between these two real things, is drawn away.
Six, on this one matter the ancestors had a line long ago
What this whole chapter tells, one line of the ancestors in fact tells to the end. Xunzi runs: to be able to know, that is the nature of man. What can be known, that is the pattern of things. So runs the line in the Xunzi.
Put it plain. To be able to know, that is the nature of man, man by birth wants to make things clear. What can be known, that is the pattern of things, and what can be known clear is the reasoning of the thing itself. This line of Xunzi’s is on how a man comes to be blinded.
He goes on: the failing a man is easiest to fall into is to be blinded by one corner, blocked by one corner and holding that he has seen the whole. Those two pictures, those two words, that opposition, are that one corner. We were blocked by it for decades, holding that we had seen the whole of the economic institution. What this chapter does is move aside that one corner blocking the eye, and let the whole stretch behind it show.
Seven, what this section set, crossing to the next chapter
Good. This whole chapter set the first layer of ground for this term. Now say it firm.
On last term’s account, that four million was divided by labor. Distribution by labor was set under the name of another kind of institution for more than a hundred years, yet it runs every day in the capital-made workshop. Those two pictures glaring at each other were painted into our heads over forty odd years. Take the pictures apart, and the five things are unrelated. And capitalism against socialism, in the position of distribution, is a wei question, because the two sides stand at the same end.
This is the layer chapter twenty seven set firm: that most famous opposition is hollow underfoot.
So, since distribution by labor is so widespread, the next step is to count, honestly, just how widespread it is. Is it truly in every corner. Is there truly no one who slips free. The next chapter walks the corners one by one, from a pay slip, to a report card, to the playing field, to a technical community that pays not a cent. To see with its own eyes whether there is an exception.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.