VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 28, SECTION 3
So why has no one ever told you this
The last section walked a great round, from the pay slip to that community that pays no money, and found not one pure exception. Distribution by labor is everywhere. Yet this raises a stranger question: since it is so widespread, widespread that from the age of six you live inside it, why has not one man ever told you so plainly. This section comes to chase this one thing.
One, the more a thing is seen every day, the less anyone tells you of it
First a reasoning. There are some things that, just because they are too widespread, too daily, no one will point them out to you on purpose.
Has anyone taught you from small that there is oxygen in the air, that every breath you draw uses it. Mostly not. You came to know it only after you grew, from reading. Yet from your first breath at birth, you have been breathing without stop. The air is too widespread, so widespread that it became the background, the thing you would never mark. Men point out to you only the special, the rare, the thing unlike the ordinary. The thing that is there every day hides instead in the most open place, hidden where no one can see.
Distribution by labor is such a thing. It is too widespread. You are inside it at school, inside it at work, inside it leveling up in a game. It became the background of your days. The background is a thing no one will point out on purpose. So it is not that someone hides it from you on purpose, it is that it is too ordinary, so ordinary that no one felt it needed saying.
Two, but ordinary alone does not explain the whole
Yet then again, the two words ordinary alone cannot cover the whole. Because this matter of distribution by labor, it is not only that no one points it out to you, it was on purpose locked into one place, locked into one institution’s name, locked for more than a hundred years. This is no longer a thing ordinary can explain. In between, a hand has moved.
The last chapter said those two pictures were painted into our heads over forty odd years. The men who paint the pictures want the two pictures split clean, a clear line, one side is one side. But distribution by labor is a thing that both sides have, both sides use. It is a thing straddling the line.
Think. When you mean to paint two camps set against each other to the death, what do you fear most. You fear most a thing that both sides have. That thing set out, and your line is shown up, everyone looks and says, so the two sides are the same after all. So what does the painter do. He must drag this thing straddling the line hard to one side, and say it belongs to this side alone, that the other side has none. Only so is the line drawn clean.
Distribution by labor is the thing dragged over so. It plainly is on both sides, yet it was dragged to the socialist side, hung with a board, called the principle of socialism. This one drag, and the line is clean. But the truth, too, is covered by that board.
Three, calling a thing held in common the private goods of one side
This move, look at it clear, because it is not used on this one matter alone. To call a thing held in common by all the private goods of my one side, this is the most common move for drawing camps. When you want to seem unlike the far side, the quickest way is not truly to find something unlike, it is to seize a good thing held in common, stick your own label on it.
Take being hardworking, take being thrifty, take being filial to the parents, which people has not one of these. Yet there is always someone who says, being hardworking is the virtue our people alone hold. That said, being hardworking becomes a flag, a flag for drawing a line against others. The truth is, the people next door are hardworking all the same.
Distribution by labor was handled so. It is by nature a reasoning held in common by all under heaven, the one with labor should get, the one without should not, this reasoning runs everywhere. Yet it was seized, stuck with one institution’s label, made a flag. From then on, men see this flag and hold it the private goods of that side, forgetting it was by nature held in common by all under heaven.
What this book does this term, said plain, is set this flag down, and give it back to all under heaven. It belongs to no one side. It belongs to every man who put out force, and hopes his share of force is counted.
Four, when the name is not set right, the words do not run smooth
On this matter of a name stuck wrong, seized away, Confucius has a line, and it is the stone pressed at the very bottom. When the name is not set right, the words do not run smooth. When the words do not run smooth, the thing is not brought off. So runs the line in the Analects.
Put it plain. When the name is not set right, when the name and title are set crooked, put wrong. Then the words do not run smooth, the words spoken cannot run through, they catch at every turn. When the words do not run smooth, the thing is not brought off, when the words cannot even run smooth, the thing is all the less to be done.
Put this line onto this matter. Distribution by labor, its name is set wrong. It plainly is a reasoning held in common by all under heaven, yet it was hung with the name of socialism alone. The name once wrong, all after it runs into a tangle. You mean to make it clear to a man that a factory a private man runs also distributes by labor, and he does not believe you, because the name is wrong, the board says this is the far side’s thing. You mean to make it clear that those two words in fact stand at the same end on distribution, and he hears it and finds it catch, because the name does not run smooth. The name once wrong, a whole set of words runs untrue after it.
In Confucius’s day, this setting the name right was held in the highest regard. What a thing is called, what a position ought to look like, all had to be set straight. Set straight, and the words run, the thing comes off. What this whole chapter does is, in fact, to set right the name of distribution by labor. Take away the name stuck on wrong, and let it show its own face: a reasoning of distribution held in common by all under heaven, following the man.
Five, once the name is set right, you see a whole stretch
Once the name is set right, before your eyes it opens wide, and you see a whole stretch you could not see before.
You will see that you need no longer take a side over those two words. You live under distribution by labor, and this has nothing at all to do with which side you back, which side you fight. You are only a man who put out force, and hopes his share of force is counted. Such a man, ancient or modern, of the east or the west, is all one. That wall pressing you to choose a side, drawn away, and the ground under your feet grows wider instead.
You will also see that the men who argued over these two words till their faces went red and their necks went thick, who broke friendships, who split households, were mostly arguing over a board stuck on wrong. They held that they were fighting for two ways of living, when on the matter of by labor, they lived one same life, drew one same pay slip, believed one same reasoning that putting out force should earn.
This is the use of setting the name right. It adds you no new thing, it only takes away a name stuck on wrong. The name once taken away, between you and the many who by nature stood with you, that false wall is gone.
Six, what this chapter set, crossing to the next
Good. Chapter twenty eight walks to here, and this layer can be said firm.
Section one spread the pay slip open, and saw clear that the men who draw a wage, not one slips free. Section two went out the door of the pay slip, the school, the field, the hospital, that community that pays no money, and found not one pure exception. Section three chased why no one ever told you, and chased out two layers: one, that it is too ordinary, ordinary until it became the background. And one, that it was on purpose dragged across the line, stuck with one institution’s board, locked for more than a hundred years.
What this chapter set firm is: every man lives under distribution by labor, no corner is the exception, no man slips free. And the reason it cannot be seen is half because it is too ordinary, half because the name was set wrong. This chapter set its name right.
So, once the name is set right, the truly hard question floats up. Distribution by labor, said out, is more labor more gain. But labor, in the end, how is it weighed. Cook Ding’s one share of labor and that knife changing cook’s one share, on what ground is a high and low set between them. That rule for weighing labor, how in the end is it made. The next chapter goes to take this rule apart.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter 29, The ancestors set that rule more than two thousand years ago