VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 29
The ancestors set that rule more than two thousand years ago
Picture a young man in a tilling house more than two thousand years ago. His head is sharp, he reckons an account dead right, and when two neighbors quarrel it is him they come to for the weighing. And his whole road is already blocked by two words, his birth. However able he is, he cannot enter the place kept for the sons of nobles. He will till a field his whole life, and that body of skill will rot in the field. Hold this young man in mind, because this whole chapter is about the door that was shut on him, and the men who, one after another across two thousand years, pushed it open. The two chapters before saw that distribution by labor is everywhere. This chapter goes back to ask whether it is a modern invention at all, and finds that the ancestors set its reasoning earlier than we did, and set it steadier.
Section one calls Mozi. He was of low birth, a pair of hands that had labored, and he stood in an age where the position passed down the bloodline, where the able son of a poor house had no door and the unable son of a noble house sat high from birth. Against this he cried four words: office holds no lasting honor, the common man is not forever low, have the ability and be raised, lack it and be set down. Look one layer deeper and you see what he really did. Between a man’s position and something else there is a button, and the button had been fastened to the bloodline. Mozi unfastened it there and fastened it to ability, to labor. Which place you fill, how much you take, how honored you are, all answer now to what you can bring off, not to whose son you are. That is the root reasoning of distribution by labor, said in the tongue of position rather than money: what you get must answer to what you put in. Put that tilling young man into today and he can rise, by the score, by the exam, by real skill storing up standing in a community that pays no money, and all those doors grew from the crack Mozi pried. But this book owns the merit of an ancestor and also points to where he did not reach, and Mozi left a knot he never untied. Have the ability and be raised, yes, but ability, who weighs it. You cannot lay ability on a scale like grain or to a measure like cloth. Who is able and who is not, by whose eyes, by what standard. That knot leads the whole next chapter.
Section two calls Xunzi, who spent a life on one question: man is weak, so on what ground does he live as the most forceful group under heaven. His force is not the ox’s, his running is not the horse’s, yet ox and horse are put to his use, and the reason is one word, the group. Man can gather into one body, the beasts cannot. But Xunzi chased one step further, the step that matters most. A group does not gather itself. A crowd pressed together, each wanting one more mouthful and one less share of force and the good place, brawls before it gathers. So what lets the group come off is the divide, the parting of the work, each man his position, each his task, each his share. String it together and it is four words, make the divide clear to form the group, a chain running from the divide told out plain, to the group gathered into a body, to the force. And that is distribution by labor exactly, the divide landed on money and share. Then Xunzi drives a layer deeper than Mozi. Mozi settled what the divide should go by, Xunzi asked why the divide must be at all, and answered that without the divide there is no group and without the group man cannot live. So the divide is not a means, it is the root of life. A village by a river makes it plain: when the flood comes, to shout every man onto the dyke is a gathering, not a group, a heap of panicked men botching the thing, but set the divide up, the strong to haul sandbags, the quick to pass them, the seasoned to watch the water and take the call, the rest to cook and see to the weak, and the same batch of men turn into a team that can wrestle the flood. The divide does not part men, it lets them truly join, and each share of force put out and kept and counted is by labor. The divide and by labor are two faces of one thing.
Section three calls Confucius, to set right a line read wrong far too long. Men hang half of it on the lip, the trouble is not scarcity but uneven share, and take it to mean the more level the better, one identical share each. Called out whole, with its partner line the trouble is not poverty but unrest, and read as Confucius meant it, the even is not a flat average at all. It is each man getting the share that ought to be his, the beam of the scale level, not the weights of one weight. So the line does not quarrel with distribution by labor, it speaks for it, since what a state should most fear is that the man who should get did not and the man who should not took for free. And the guide shows the fire that one misread word can light: read even as hacked flat, and the one who does much and the one who does little draw the same, and slowly every man leans to the doing less end, and all sink together to the lowest notch, none willing to stand out. That pot has a name the back of the term will lift the lid on, the big shared pot, and its wellspring is this one misreading. Then Confucius shows his other end, laid down here as a seed: wishing to stand yourself, help others to stand. That is no trade, no labor paid first, it is taking of your own divide and giving a little to one who has not yet. One same Confucius holds both ends, each getting his divide on the one hand, help others to stand on the other, the front of the term walking the first end and the back walking the second.
Here is the method, and here is what you carry out. The method is the one this book keeps with every ancestor: take the merit he truly set, and point without flinching to the knot he left. Mozi is given his button, and charged with the knot of who weighs ability. Xunzi is given the divide as the root of life. Confucius is given the rescue of a wrongly read word, and it is shown, not judged, how heavy the cost of the misreading runs. None of the three is set above the others, and none is cursed for what he missed. What you carry out is a spine for the whole term. Distribution by labor is not a modern contraption you may take or leave, it is old, and it is the thing that lets a weak animal gather into a body and live. And you carry out the two ends of Confucius held in one hand, so that when the back of the term turns to the bowl of rice your mother left, you already know it is not a contradiction of by labor but the other end the same man set down. The three ancestors drove the deepest root, and left one hard thing standing: labor, in the end, how is it weighed. That question hands you straight to the next chapter.
SECTIONS
Section 1, Honor the worthy, Mozi tied labor and positions together
Section 2, Make the divide clear to form the group, Xunzi set the divide as a root
Section 3, The trouble is not scarcity but uneven share, that line of Confucius read wrong
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 1, Honor the worthy, Mozi tied labor and positions together