VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 28, SECTION 2
The school, the hospital, the field, and that community that pays no money
The last section finished with the men who draw a wage, not one slips free. This section leaves the pay slip and goes to find the men who draw none. The student, the player, the one being treated, the one who works for no pay. We walk near each, and look at whether under them too is laid that one word.
One, the school: a report card is a rule too
Go into the school first. The student draws no wage, but the student holds a thing that looks exactly like a pay slip, the report card.
A report card, line by line, one score behind each subject. Where does this score come from. From the paper you handed in, from the problems you worked, from the books you memorized, from the nights you sat up. The effort you spent is more, the score is more. The effort you spent is less, the score is less. You spent none, the score is a zero. Is this more labor more gain, less labor less gain, no labor no gain. It is.
The score is not the end. Above the score is the ranking, the scholarship, the place for direct entry, which better school you can go to. These things are all handed down against that report card. A scholarship is the sum distribution by labor reckoned out for a student. It is not called a wage, but what it goes by is the same reasoning.
From small to grown, you live under this rule every day. You hold that you are studying, but you too are on a line of distribution by labor. What you hand in is labor, what you draw back is a score. The score turns into a place, into a chance, into that real pay slip of the days to come. This line, from the year you were six, has already begun to run.
Two, the field: why one man takes ten million a year, another sits a whole season on the bench
Go into the playing field next. Here the by labor is set the barest, and the least sparing of feeling.
On one team, one man takes tens of millions a year, one man takes hundreds of thousands, the same jersey, the same training every day. On what ground does it differ this much. On the ground that the man who takes the tens of millions can, at the most needed instant, put the ball in, can by himself change the win or loss of a whole game. His one share of labor is the only one of its kind among the dozens on the team, it cannot be bought, cannot be traded for, it is scarce. So his one share of labor is worth that price.
And the man who sat a whole season on the bench. He too trains every day, he too runs the same sweat, he too has staked his youth on this. Yet his minutes on the field add up to little, and his one share of labor has for now brought back not enough. So he takes less. Here there is no feeling, no sparing, only that one share of labor, worth however much, is however much.
The field is fierce right here. It weighs distribution by labor’s rule clean and clear, and sets it before tens of thousands, before the screens. You play well, the whole world sees. You play poorly, the whole world sees too. It gives you nowhere to hide. Here, to the last cent, it is by labor.
But hold also that layer of Cook Ding from the last section. What is weighed here, again, is not who is most worn. The man on the bench may well carry the heaviest training load on the team. What is weighed is the thing that one share of labor brings back, the goal at that instant, the win or loss of that game. The rule always weighs the worth, not the hardship.
Three, the hospital: is a bed that does not ask about money the exception
Now go into the hospital. Here it seems an exception shows.
A man is carried into the emergency room at midnight, close to gone. The hospital saves the man first, and does not ask whether he has money, does not ask what his standing is. This one bed seems not to come by labor. This near dying man, at that instant, put out no labor at all, yet he got the whole emergency room’s full rescue. Is this not by need, how is this by labor.
You see it very true. Here another thing has indeed slipped in. And this other thing is exactly the lead player of the back half of this term, held down for now. But walk one step nearer.
The doctor who rescues him, the nurse who wheels him into the operating room, what do they draw. A wage. A wage reckoned out line by line, by their grade, by their years, by whether this one operation was done well. On the patient’s end, at that instant it is by need. But on the doctor’s and the nurse’s end, from head to tail it is by labor. On one same bed, two ends stand two different words.
Hold this layer fast, it matters greatly. By labor and by need are not two countries, not two institutions. They are things that can, on one same bed, in one same instant, stand one at each end, alive together. What this book means to see clear this term, from head to tail, is this one thing.
Four, that community that pays not a cent
At the last go to the strangest place of all. This place has no wage, no score, no contract, yet it runs distribution by labor all the same, and runs it cleaner than anywhere.
There is a way of doing things like this. A group of men, from all over, not knowing one another, make one thing together, say a set of software anyone can take and use for free. No one pays them money. After work, on their own time, they add a little to it, patch a little, mend a little.
So on what ground is the high and low ranked here. On the ground of whether the thing you added is of use, whether the fault you mended was hard, whether what you wrote others take up. You do more, do well, and slowly others begin to hear you speak, your word carries weight, a matter of importance is put to you for a word, you become one of the few here whose word settles the thing. You do less, or do it rough, and you have not this weight.
Here there is not a cent, yet here it is all the same more labor more gain, less labor less gain, no labor no gain. Only what is handed out here is not money, it is the weight that makes others willing to hear you speak, it is standing. Standing too is a thing drawn back, it too is handed down by labor. What you put in is labor, what you draw back is the trust of others.
This place is the cleanest. Because here there is no money to muddy it, you cannot hide, you cannot fake. Just how many pounds your one share of labor weighs hangs there plain, and everyone can see.
Five, honor the worthy, Mozi pointed out this road two thousand years ago
This way of dividing, that looks not at birth but only at what you have made, was not born today. More than two thousand years ago, Mozi cried it out. The two words he cried were honor the worthy. Office holds no lasting honor, and the common man is not forever low. Have the ability, and he is raised up. Lack the ability, and he is set down. So runs the line in the Mozi, Honoring the Worthy.
Put it plain, one word at a time. Office holds no lasting honor, the man in office is not honored forever. And the common man is not forever low, the common man too is not low to the end. Have the ability, and he is raised up, you have the skill, and you are lifted up. Lack the ability, and he is set down, you have not the skill, and you are set down.
See this line of Mozi’s. He took the whole layer of birth and drew it away. He says, whether you are honored or not does not look at who your father is, it looks at what you can do. You can do it, you go up. You cannot do it, you go down. Is this not the very thing we just saw in that community. A crowd of strangers from all over, none asking after the other’s birth, only looking at whether the thing you added is of use. Of use, you go up. Of no use, you go down.
This line of Mozi’s, and that community, across more than two thousand years, tell one same thing. The road of distribution by labor, the ancestors pointed it out long ago. Only when they pointed it, they went not by money, they went by the worthy, by the able, by what in the end you have made.
Six, what did we find, walking one round
From the pay slip we set out, and walked through the school, the field, the hospital, and at the last to that community that pays no money. Now stop, and look back once at this road.
The one who draws a wage, by labor. The one at school, by labor, only what he draws is a score. The one who plays, by labor, set the barest. The one being treated, at that instant by need, but the one who saves him, still by labor. The community that pays no money, by labor, and what is drawn is standing.
Count them. So many places walked, and how many pure exceptions found. Not one. Even that bed at the hospital, the one most like an exception, walked up close, is one end by need, one end by labor, two words alive together.
This thing, distribution by labor, is not inside some one institution. It is in the school, on the field, in the hospital’s changing room, in a technical community that has not even a name. It is everywhere. It follows the man. As long as men are together doing things, as long as there is a thing to divide, it is there.
Seven, what this section set, crossing to the next
Good. This section went out the door of the pay slip and walked a great round. The school, the field, the hospital, the community, one by one, and not one pure exception found.
The position this section set is: distribution by labor is not a thing any one institution owns alone, it follows the man, and as long as men work together and there is a thing to divide, it is there. Up to the player who takes ten million a year, down to a common man who works for no pay, not one stands outside it.
But this makes it stranger still. Since it is so widespread, widespread to every corner, widespread that from the age of six you live inside it, then why has not one man ever told you so plainly. Why did the textbook lock it into one institution’s name, lock it for more than a hundred years. What happened in between. The next section goes to chase this one question.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.