VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 34
Communism is not a kind of state, it is a kind of element
Start with a kitchen knife. A man wounds another with it, and someone says the knife is by birth a weapon of killing and should be thrown away. But the knife was made for cutting vegetables, and what used it badly was the pair of hands, not the knife. Hold that small picture, because this chapter is about a word that has been handled exactly this way for a hundred years, communism, a word painted into two extreme pictures, one a heaven and one a nightmare, that must both be wiped clean before its own face can be seen. The back half of the term opens here, calling out that other half of the human world, the thing that cannot be reckoned into the account yet lets a man live like a man, and it cannot be looked at straight until the two paintings come down off the wall.
Section one brings the two pictures down. The first paints communism into a heaven on earth, no poor, no grabbing, every man taking what he needs, near as one family, a fair dream that never wakes, a picture that roused men without number to give up home and even life. But painted too fair is itself a signal, and its great fault is that it forgot the man, setting it down that all are unselfish and none idles, when the front half of the term showed again and again that man has a private heart at the level of life, so the picture hangs in the air, kindly men painting their fairest wish onto the thing. The second paints it into a nightmare, endless queues, bare shelves, the big shared pot, every man idling and all sunk to the lowest, man held down and not allowed his own things. That picture did not come from the void either, those things truly happened and will be looked at later, but its fault is to take the look of some places and some times where the word was used to ruin as the word’s own and only face, one botched practice mistaken for the nature of the thing. And set side by side the two pictures, which look set against each other to the death, commit one same error. Both pull the thing up by the root from man’s everyday and puff it into, or run it down into, a great state, a great institution to cover all, one thinking that wrong premise to the extreme of good and one to the extreme of bad, both standing on one same wrong ground. Laozi sets the clearness, great argument seems slow of tongue, so that the truly clear is in no hurry to speak the thing full or lay down a verdict, and whatever is spoken both extremely fair and extremely absolute is mostly not where the truth is.
Section two clears the table and asks the plain question, and peels communism to four words, distribution by need, a rule that weighs how much you need and not how much labor you put out, laid abreast of the by labor which weighs the putting out. It is no dark deep thing and no fearsome thing, only another way the human world divides. And it is a rule you have used from a child, at the family table where the belly meat with the fewest bones is picked for the smallest child or the old one with poor teeth, neither of whom earned it, by need and not by labor, and in the care you got at three when you could put out no labor at all, guarded by this rule these many years without ever calling it by this name. Spoken whole it is eight words, from each what he is able, to each what he needs, and the order in them is the most needful thing of the whole half term, the former the cause and the latter the fruit, since the fish must be earned and cooked before there is talk of whose bowl the best piece goes into, and a bare table divides nothing by need. And the guide joins back the lower half of that line of Confucius from the front half, with the divide even there is no poverty, with concord no want, where concord is the minding of one another, so that Confucius long ago laid the by labor of each getting his divide and the by need of minding one another together.
Section three drives the order home, because the sorest lessons of a hundred years chase back to one error, turning it backward. The right order is capacity first and distribution after, first a crowd making the things enough with some to spare, then dividing by need, and you can divide only what you have already made, so the true goal was never that way of dividing but capacity enough, of which distribution by need is only the fruit that comes of itself like water arriving and the channel forming. The turned backward order takes the fruit for the cause and would divide the fish first and then have the fish grow, declaring that all may take what they need before the things are made, so that the things are not near enough and men queue or grab, and worse, since I take what I need whether I work or not, I lean to doing less, and capacity caves in, and the house of by need crashes into exactly those nightmare pictures. A village makes it plain, agreeing to divide the year end grain by need but then drawing open handed from the store now, until men reckon that they draw the same whether they work or not, slack together, and drag a village that could have eaten its fill down to starving together, crashed not by the rule but by drawing out the cause, from each what he is able, before the things were made. The ancestors name it, a tree with no root and water with no source, green and flowing a while and then dead and dry, since distribution by need cut off the root of capacity and stood alone as a goal or a state must crash, which sees clear through the heaven side, no bad thing but a turning of cause and fruit, the treetop taken for the root.
Here is the method, and here is what you carry out. The method is to refuse both loud extremes at once, to see that the heaven and the nightmare are two faces of the same error, and then to peel the frightening word down to the plain operation inside it and test it against your own table. What you carry out is two things. First, a word given back its true size, communism restored from a state that would swallow everything to a rule that weighs need, a rule you already trust and use every day with the people you love, so you need neither worship it nor fear it. Second, the one order that decides everything, capacity is the cause and distribution by need is the fruit, a tree that dies the moment it is cut from its root, which is why a good thing wrongly ordered turns into the very disaster its enemies point to. The ground floor of the back half is set, and the next chapter does the honest work the front half did for the by labor, counting distribution by need out corner by corner, beginning from the nearest place of all, that bowl of rice your mother left for you.
SECTIONS
Section 1, Two flattenings, one is called heaven, one is called nightmare
Section 2, Restored to one line of plain speech, distribution by need
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 1, Two flattenings, one is called heaven, one is called nightmare