VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 29, SECTION 1
Honor the worthy, Mozi tied labor and position together
The two chapters before saw clear that distribution by labor is everywhere. But some hearts will beat uneasy: could this be a thing only of today, a thing the factory, the market, the modern society made. This whole chapter goes back more than two thousand years, to look at the ancestors’ rule. You will find that this reasoning of by labor, the ancestors set it earlier than we did, and set it steadier too. First, we call Mozi.
One, the age Mozi stood in
To grasp how heavy Mozi’s line is, we must first know what kind of age he stood in.
In Mozi’s day, how high a man could walk in this life was mostly settled the moment he was born. Your father a noble, and you a noble. Your father a tiller of the field, and mostly you till a field your whole life. The position passed down along the bloodline. Whether a man could sit into a high place looked not at what he could do, but at whose belly he came out of. The able son of a poor house had, his whole life, no door to rise. The unable son of a noble house sat, from birth, in the high place.
Mozi himself was of very low birth. It is said he had done the work of a craftsman, a pair of hands that labored. He looked at this age, looked at the men who held high places yet could bring nothing off, looked at the men with true skill pressed down under their birth, and in his heart there sat a line. This line, he cried it out.
Two, office holds no lasting honor, the common man is not forever low
Mozi’s line, borrowed once in the last chapter, this chapter will set up whole, one word at a time. 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.
Office holds no lasting honor. The man in office is not honored on and on forever. That you sit honored in this place today is not that your sons and your grandsons sit honored too. This line is aimed at that age of the bloodline passing the position. It says, honor is not passed down, and should not be passed down.
And the common man is not forever low. The common man too is not low to the very bottom his whole life. That you are below today does not mean you are below forever. Have the skill, and you can come up. This line pries open a crack for the men pressed down under their birth.
Have the ability, and he is raised up. You have the skill, so lift you up, set you in the place you ought to fill. Lack the ability, and he is set down. You have not the skill, so set you down, do not sit holding a place whose work you cannot do. See it. These four lines of Mozi’s turned the hinge of the whole matter, from bloodline, over to ability. What you can do settles which place you fill. Not whose son you are settles which place you fill.
Three, what Mozi changed was that one button
Look one layer deeper at this change of Mozi’s. What he changed was the one button between labor and position.
What a man’s position is buttoned to is a thing as big as the sky. Button the position to the bloodline, and it is an age where the birth settles the whole life, the well born take all the good places, the able have no door. Button the position to ability, to labor, and it is another age, whoever can do it goes up, whoever cannot do the work goes down.
What Mozi did was reach out and unbutton that old button between position and bloodline, then button position anew to ability, to labor. What he wanted was this: which place a man sits in, how much he takes, how honored he is, all look at what he can bring out, what he can bring off. Is this not the very root reasoning of distribution by labor. Distribution by labor says more labor more gain, Mozi says have the ability and be raised, lack it and be set down. One speaks of money, one speaks of position, but the button underneath is the one same button: what you get must answer to what you put in, what you brought off.
Mozi, more than two thousand years ago, unbuttoned this button from the bloodline end, and buttoned it to the ability end.
Four, walk near a man, a young man who would rise and cannot
Reasoning alone hangs in the air. Walk near a man and look.
Set in Mozi’s age a young man from a tilling house. His head is very good, he reckons an account dead right, he handles a matter in good order, and in the village whoever has a dispute likes to come to him for the weighing. Yet the road of his whole life was long ago blocked by those two words, his birth. However able he is, he cannot enter that place kept for the sons of nobles. What he can do is till a field his whole life, and let that whole body of skill rot in the field.
What Mozi saw was thousands upon thousands of such young men. His one line, have the ability and be raised, cried out exactly this: lift this young man up, do not let that body of skill rot in the field. His one line, lack the ability and be set down, said this: set down that son of a noble who holds a place yet brings nothing off, that place should not belong to a man whose only skill is to have been born.
Put this young man into today. Can he come up today. He can. He can study and sit the exams, he can let a fine piece of work make others see him, he can store up standing in that community that pays no money by true skill. What opens the door for him today, the score, the exam, the speaking by real skill, all grew out of this reasoning of by labor. The crack Mozi pried open back then is today a broad road.
Five, but Mozi too left one knot he did not untie
This book keeps one rule: to speak of an ancestor is both to own the merit he set, and to point out the place he did not reach. Here Mozi left one knot, and he did not untie it himself.
Mozi says, have the ability and be raised. But a question as big as the sky comes right behind: ability, who weighs it. Who has the say that this man is able, that man is not. Mozi buttoned position to ability, and this step set a great merit. But ability is a thing you cannot see or touch. It is not like grain that can be put on the scale, not like cloth that can be laid to the measure. Who is able, who is not, by whose eyes is it seen, by what is it judged.
This knot, Mozi’s age did not untie. The men who came after thought up many ways. Some used raising up by name, letting all recommend the worthy and able. Some used the exam, taking one paper to weigh the man. Today we use performance, use scoring, use layer upon layer of assessment. These ways all try to untie for Mozi the knot he did not untie: ability, in the end, how is it weighed.
This knot is exactly the road the back of this chapter walks, and the thing the whole next chapter takes apart. Mozi buttoned labor and position together for us, and that is the root. But once buttoned, how to weigh that labor, how to fix that ability, is a great learning, and a thing hard, and easily gone wrong.
Six, what this section set, crossing to the next
Good. This section called Mozi, and set up whole, one word at a time, his line on honoring the worthy.
Mozi faced an age where the birth settled the whole life, and cried out that office holds no lasting honor, the common man is not forever low, have the ability and be raised, lack it and be set down. The most needful thing he did was to take the button of position off the bloodline end, and button it to ability, to labor. This one buttoning is the root reasoning of distribution by labor: what you get must answer to what you brought off. This button, he buttoned for us more than two thousand years ago.
But he left one knot he did not untie: ability, who weighs it. This knot leads us to the next ancestor. Mozi settled whether labor and position ought to be buttoned together. Xunzi walks one step further down, to ask: the divide between man and man, in the end how should it be set, on what ground set, and once set, why does everyone come off the better for it. The next section calls Xunzi, and his four words, make the divide clear to form the group.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 2, Make the divide clear to form the group, Xunzi set the divide as a root