VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 38
The bound of distribution by need
Start with a kitchen knife again. The knife is a good thing, but you cannot say that from now on every matter in the house is done with the knife and the pots and pans and bowls and ladles are thrown away. A house left with only a knife must come to grief. Hold that, because this chapter is not against the by need, that good rule, which the term has spent chapters calling warm and everywhere, but against the extreme that would push the by need to being the one and only rule and throw the by labor whole away. The chapters before spoke the by need very warm, and this one must turn about to its other side, its bound, how it comes to be used badly, and what the check that bars it from going bad in the end is.
Section one takes apart a wei question, that a wholly single society with only the by need will not stand from the root, because it quietly supposes a thing that does not hold, that man has no private heart. A society that goes only by need must lean on every man of his own accord pouring out his whole force with none to press or reward, and taking only what he truly needs with not a bit over, which asks that every man be a sage. But Xunzi says the nature of man today is born with a liking for gain, not learned bad afterward but there from birth, and he is not cursing man but coldly setting out what man is. The heaven supposing swaps the living private hearted man for a crowd of sages and then admires how well the society turns, but it turns well only because it swapped the men, a machine that runs only on a fuel that does not exist. It is not that man cannot be unselfish, for in the closest relations and at the most needful turns he pours out an enormous unselfishness, but you cannot suppose all men at all times toward all strangers unselfish of themselves, which takes a peak one now and again climbs for the level ground all stand on always. So of the two rules neither can be thrown, the by labor kept to catch man’s born liking for gain and guard against sinking into idling and taking over much, the by need kept to catch the weak the by labor leaves to starve, so the long lasting society is forever the by labor the master and the by need the helper, and the wholly single by labor society is just as cold and cannot live either.
Section two lands the reasoning and looks at the four directions the by need goes bad. The big shared pot with no spur draws out the by labor so that doing much and doing little draw the same, and man being born liking gain reckons why do more, leans to doing less, and a crowd rings a pot growing ever thinner and starves together, a pot grown large as a cradle with a man who could put out force lying in it rocked and lulled asleep, looking like nourishing men and in truth wasting them. Need enlarged without bound swaps the bounded need to live, a mouthful of rice and a garment and a roof, for the bottomless want that wants a building for a room and ten cars for one, so that nothing can fill it and the rule is burst, the man saying not I am greedy but I need, need become a fig cloth over a bottomless want. Privilege turned strange wrenches the rule set up for the weak into one where whoever holds power says himself most in need and takes first and most, Laozi’s take from the not enough to serve the too much in its most glaring look, the coldest thing done under the warmest flag. And the politicized painted cake paints the fair by need society on the wall and hangs it out of reach to lull men into enduring and sacrificing now for a cake forever in the days to come, turning chapter thirty four’s order upside down and cheating a generation of its solid days. Confucius sounds the alarm, the trouble is not scarcity but uneven share, his even being each getting his divide and the beam of the scale level, and all four bad ways bend that scale from four directions and bring the unrest of the heart of man, which is more to be feared than the things being few.
Section three asks what that check is and whence it comes, a shackle added from outside or a thing the by need ought by nature to have within. Xunzi sets its root deepest in the Discourse on Rites, let the want not be exhausted by the things, let the things not be bent by the want, the two holding each other and growing, the want and the things pulling each other so neither presses the other flat. The four bad ways all go bad in one end grown big alone with no pull, need without bound the want using the things up, the big shared pot the getting without labor grown big alone, and the check is exactly that no end may grow big alone, the want pulled by the things and the by need pulled by the by labor, so the check is not someone outside managing you but an inner frame the thing by nature has, two ends that of themselves fall apart when one grows big alone. And the deepest layer, this check is a thing the by need itself must have to go on living, for a by need with no check eats down the root of capacity that holds it up like a wild vine winding dead the tree that bears it, so the by labor and the bound of true need do not work against the by need but guard its life, the deepest kind of care for it as a parent sets a loved child rules rather than spoiling him. And it guards exactly chapter thirty four’s cause, the by labor pressing man to make capacity full and the bound of true need barring man from using the things up, so the fruit of the by need can be borne crop on crop, the check and the order and the two rules being the several faces of one matter, that the warmest thing must be fitted a firm frame so it is not burst by the very men it would warm.
Here is the method, and here is what you carry out. The method is to turn a thing you have praised to its other side and push it to the extreme to find where it breaks, and then to distinguish sharply between the good rule and the extreme claim that would let that one rule stand alone. What you carry out is two things you can use the same day. First, a guard against the four specific ways any giving system rots, the pot that pays the slacker and the striver alike, the need that swells into want, the privilege that takes under the flag of need, the promise that trades a real present for a painted future, so that when you meet one you can name it. Second, a settled understanding that a check on the by need is not its enemy but its keeper, the frame that lets so warm a thing go on living long, guarding the cause of capacity so the fruit can keep being borne. The two halves of the term are now complete and the by need is bounded and checked, and the last chapter goes all the way down to the deepest root, for the term has spoken of many institutions and rules and checks, all dead things, and just as the front half closed on the truth that what makes labor come alive is the man, this last chapter asks what makes the by need itself truly come alive.
SECTIONS
Section 1, A wholly single communist society is a wei question
Section 2, The four ways of misuse
Section 3, Let the want not be exhausted by the things, the check and balance is a must
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 1, A wholly single communist society is a wei question