VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 28, SECTION 1
Start from one pay slip
The last chapter drew away the false wall. From this chapter on, we do an honest thing: walk the corners one by one, and see how widespread distribution by labor is. Is there any corner that is the exception. Is there any man who slips free. Start from the most familiar thing of all, one pay slip.
One, spread one pay slip open and look
If you have gone out to work, you hold this thing in your hand. If you have not yet, your parents hold it. Spread it open, and look line by line.
The top line is called base wage. This sum is what you have the moment you sit into the position, it is the floor price of this position. The next line down is called post wage, or grade wage. This sum is counted by which grade you sit on, one grade one figure. Below that, performance wage, this sum looks at how you did this month, done well you get more, done poorly you get less. Below that, overtime pay, the extra hours you stayed are counted apart. Some slips have a full attendance bonus, not a day missed in the month, and you get an extra sum.
See it. This sheet, from top to bottom, has not one line given for free. Under each line is pressed one thing: your position, your grade, your showing, your extra hours, your attendance. Change one word, and it is all labor. This sheet takes your labor of this one month, splits it into several things, folds each into money, adds them up, and hands it to you.
Two, even the lines that look unlike labor are labor underneath
You will say, are there not still some other things on the pay slip. There is a year end bonus, there are the insurances and the fund, there is that little something handed out at the festival. Are these too by labor.
Look at them one at a time. The year end bonus looks like it dropped from the sky, but it is your whole year of labor, gathered to the year end and settled at once. Work a full year, and you have it. Leave at half a year, and mostly you do not, or you get half. What it goes by is still labor, only it is the labor of a whole year.
The insurances and the fund look like a welfare. But they are deducted, and matched, by the share of your wage. Your wage high, deducted more, matched more. Your wage low, deducted less, matched less. And whether your wage is high or low was looked at at the top of this section, it comes by labor. So it takes a turn, and the root is still labor.
That little something handed out at the festival looks the most like a free gift. But if you only joined this month, or have already handed in your notice, often there is no share for you. What it goes by is whether you are on this boat, whether you still count as one share of this labor.
A pay slip, read from head to tail, you cannot find one line truly given for free. Even the few lines that look most like a free gift, walked up close, have that one word laid under them still.
Three, why Cook Ding’s knife is worth that price
Here we call back an old acquaintance. You met him last term, Cook Ding. Today look at him from another angle.
Cook Ding carved oxen for King Hui of Liang, and one knife he used for nineteen years, still like one fresh off the stone. Other cooks, the better ones change a knife a year, the poorer ones change a knife a month. Cook Ding tells it himself, in these nineteen years he has taken apart several thousand oxen, and the edge of the knife is still a thin sliver, keen as new. My knife is nineteen years old, and the oxen it has taken apart run to several thousand, yet the edge is like one fresh off the whetstone. So runs the line in the Zhuangzi.
Now think a very practical question. Suppose Cook Ding went to work at a meat plant, how much should he take this month. He and that cook who changes a knife a year, should they take the same. They should not. Everyone will say they should not. Cook Ding should take more. Why should he take more. Because his nineteen years of skill is truly and plainly knife money saved, time saved, the sure quick clean hand at the carving. This one hand is his labor, a labor others cannot learn in a while. The extra sum he takes is this one labor folded into money.
See it. Even Cook Ding, a cook from more than two thousand years ago, the one labor in his hand can be folded into a price. This price is what distribution by labor reckoned out for him.
Four, that rule weighs more than force
Cook Ding’s case breaks open one more layer. That cook who changes a knife a year, the force he spends may well be greater than Cook Ding’s. He chops till the sweat runs, he hacks till his arm goes sore. Yet he takes less than Cook Ding. Why.
Because that rule for weighing labor never weighs only how much force you spent, how much sweat you ran. It weighs how big a matter you settled, how much you saved that others cannot save, how much you made that others cannot make. Cook Ding does not spend brute force, he goes along the seams in the ox bone, almost without effort. And just because he does not strain and still does it best, his one share of labor is the dearest.
Hold this layer, because it is easily mistaken. Some hold that distribution by labor is distribution by hardship, whoever is hardest takes most. It is not. What it goes by is the worth of the labor, not the hardship of the labor. A man can be very hard worked, yet what his labor brings back is little. Another man looks at ease, yet what his labor brings back is enormous. The rule weighs the latter, the thing brought back, not the sweat run. How this rule is made, we leave to a whole chapter later. This section, you first hold that it is there.
Five, so is the whole world under this sheet
From one pay slip up to here, you may already be nodding. The man who goes to work, the man who draws a wage, truly not one slips free. But at once you will hit a comeback. What of the men who draw no wage. The student draws no wage. The homemaker draws no wage. The retired old man draws no wage. The man who runs his own little shop draws no wage, what he earns is profit, not salary. The street busker draws no wage. Are these men, then, standing outside this sheet.
This comeback is well asked, it ought to be asked. And this is just the road the next section walks. We go one by one and look: a student’s report card, a contract, a man running his own small trade, a man doing work for no pay in an open community, under each of them, is that one word laid too.
This section first sets one end firm: whoever draws a wage, not one slips free. The next section goes to look at those who draw none.
Six, taking pay without merit, the ancients looked hard at it long ago
Before closing this section, call one more ancestor. This widespread by labor, the ancestors set it out long ago, only they spoke it from the reverse.
In the Book of Songs there is a poem, the Cutting of the Sandalwood. The man who cuts the sandalwood sings as he works, and what does he sing. He looks at the men who do not work yet sit and reap, and he sings: you neither sow nor reap, on what ground do you take three hundred sheaves of grain. So runs the line in the Book of Songs, the Airs of Wei.
Put it plain. You neither sow nor reap, you do not plant the field nor bring in the harvest. On what ground do you take three hundred sheaves. This woodcutter, a full load of force on his back, looks at the man who reaps without labor, and asks the plainest, most forceful line: you did not put in this labor, on what ground do you take this grain.
This line has been asked for more than two thousand years. What it asks is the other face of distribution by labor. The front is, the one with labor gets. The reverse is, the one without labor should not get. This woodcutter knows no ism, he knows only one reasoning: the one who spent force should have rice to eat, the one who spent none should not take for free. This reasoning is older than any textbook, and harder than any textbook too.
Seven, what this section set, crossing to the next
Good. This section did one thing: it spread a pay slip open, read it line by line to the bottom, and saw clear that not one line is given for free, all of it labor folded into money. Even the few lines that look most like welfare, walked up close, have labor laid under them still.
It also broke open one layer along the way: that rule for weighing labor weighs the worth of the labor, not the hardship of the labor. Cook Ding spends no brute force, yet his one share of labor is the dearest.
The position this section set is: whoever draws a wage, not one man slips free of the two words, by labor.
But the world is full of men who draw no wage. The student, the homemaker, the old man, the one who runs a small trade, the one who works for no pay. Are they standing outside this sheet. The next section leaves the pay slip, and walks to the school, to the field, to the hospital, to a technical community that hands out no money, and looks one by one, whether under them is laid that one word too.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 2, The school, the hospital, the field, and that community that pays no money