VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 40, SECTION 1
A Day in One Workshop: Four Running at Once
For three semesters four things were taken apart, one at a time. The oldest lock. The mirror that has thrown back the same face for a hundred years and more. The rule that measures what a person puts in. The gift that never asks what he put in. One at a time they were taken apart, one at a time each was set back in its position. Up to this day, what lies on the table is four loose parts. What this semester does is put the four back together.
Joining does not start from a definition. A definition is dry, a picture is alive. The first semester did not open from what is slavery. It opened from a master who could not cook, and the cook who held his three meals. This section does the same. It does not name the four economic institutions in abstract words. It shows one morning in one workshop. When the morning is over, the four things stand visible one by one inside it, running at once rather than lining up.
One, day breaks, and the workshop wakes
On the edge of town there is a shop that makes chairs. Half past six, first light, the cutting hand comes in, pushes the roller door up, the saw blade turns, and the smell of sawdust comes out. Seven o’clock, twenty-odd people come through the door, clock in, change into work clothes. On the assembly line a few women fit the chair legs on, one leg at a time. At the far end of the store the delivery truck has already turned around and waits. This is a morning as plain as any, and every day the world over there are tens of millions of mornings like it.
This year ten million came into this shop. Ten million is not the boss’s money stacked in a safe, it is flow. It comes in at the order end, it runs out through several mouths. The second semester ran this account. Four million is wages. The other six million runs out grid by grid. The money for timber goes upstream. The building and the machines wear down and must be kept up. Delivery takes fuel and road money. Tax must be paid. A part stays and goes back in to add a new machine. A part is interest, and it runs into the bank, and back out again into the savings and the pensions of millions upon millions of people. The last grid, what is left, that is where the boss comes in at last.
This section does not run that account again; the second semester ran it. This section shows another thing. While this ten million flows, the rule that measures it is not one. One shop, one day, one account, and four rules are measuring at once. Four rules measure four different things, and no one of them can stand in for another.
Now they are set out, one rule at a time. One thing stands plain here: this is not four eras, not four countries, not four books. This is seven o’clock this morning, and what is happening in that shop.
Two, the wage grid, the rule of more done more got
Four million in wages, how does it reach the hands of those twenty-odd people? By the first rule. How much stock the cutting hand turns out in a day, how many chairs the woman on the line fits in a day, the book keeps it clean and clear. Do more, and the number at month end is a little bigger. Do less, and it is smaller. Overtime is counted apart. A bad piece is docked. This rule measures what a person puts in. More work, more got. No work, nothing got. It does not ask whose child a person is, it does not ask how many books he has read, it does not ask what he believes. It asks only how much was done this month.
This is the rule of labor set up in the third semester. Its sense was shown then, and its edge was shown too. It is cold, and it is fair. It is not gentle, and it makes a person willing to put out his strength. Take this rule out of a shop, let more done and less done come to the same, and inside three months the stock coming off the line drops. This is not the heart gone bad; this is what human nature is.
Last month a young man came new to the shop, his hands still green, a day he could barely fit a few together, and the number at month end was the smallest in the shop. No one cried unfair for him, and he did not feel wronged himself. He went back and practiced a month, and this month that number climbed. Why did he not feel wronged? Because that rule hangs plain on the wall, everyone can see it, everyone can run the sum himself. On the matter of the lock the first semester said a line: a lock that is visible is a lock that can be bargained with. A rule is the same. A rule that is visible is a rule that can be bowed to.
Here is the thing that matters. This rule is measuring in that shop right now. It is not in some thick book, not in some distant era. It is on this month’s wage sheet, in black and white.
Three, one more grid on the account, that does not ask how much he did
But turn the book a few pages on, and there are sums the first rule cannot reach. The woman on the line will have a child next month, and rest three months, and in those three months she will not fit a single chair, and that sum is paid all the same. The old cutting hand fell last month and lay in hospital, the health cover paid most of it, and the shop put in a sum on top. And there is an old worker who did thirty years and retired last year, he has not come a single day this year, and his pension comes month by month, and not one month has broken.
By the first rule, not a cent of these sums should be paid, for what these three put in these months is zero. Yet these sums are paid, and paid with a straight back. The book-keeper does not feel it a bind, the boss does not feel it a loss, and the woman does not feel she is begging.
Because the rule that measures these sums is the second rule. It does not ask how much was done, it asks how much is needed. This is the rule of need set up in the third semester. It is in that shop too, right now, on the same account, a few pages apart, laid side by side with the first rule, and neither has pushed the other out.
A pause here reveals a thing worth finding. The sense of these two rules runs opposite. One says he who does not work does not get. One says do not ask whether he worked. Yet they have lived side by side on the same account for decades and have not come to blows. Why they can live side by side is the business of chapter forty-five. This section shows first that both are really there.
Four, the man who cannot sleep at night
The third rule measures neither what was put in nor what is needed. It measures risk. Who raised this shop? The saw, the assembly line, the delivery truck, who staked his own money to buy them back? The order came this month, wages went out. And if next month the order does not come? Wages still go out, rent still gets paid, the machines standing idle wear down all the same. Twenty-odd people clock off and go home to sleep. One man lies down and is still running next month’s numbers.
This is the thing called capital. When the second semester took apart that mirror that has thrown back the same face for a hundred years and more, it said this plainly: capital has no eyes, no heart, and no mind of its own; it is a dead drive. What truly moves is the person. That grid falls to his name not because he moved his hands today, but because he carries the risk of losing the whole stake.
But this man who staked the money is not the freest man in that shop. Timber goes up and he cannot hold it back. A big client changes his mind of a sudden and he cannot stop it. The bank’s due day comes and he cannot push it off. The old hand of thirty years wants to leave and he cannot keep him. Not one person locks him, yet he is roped on all four sides. The second semester drove this layer home. Chapter forty-one walks up to it once more.
This section does not judge whether he carries it rightly, nor how big that grid should be. Whether that grid grows past all reason is a thing for later. Whether that grid pays nothing at all, so that next year no one comes to raise this shop, is also a thing for later. This section shows one thing: this rule that measures risk runs in that shop today too.
In one shop, what is put in is measured, what is needed is measured, and risk is measured too. Three rules, three things, three positions. So far, only three.
Five, if there is still a wall
The fourth is the ugliest, and it is there too. Today it is no longer the iron chain, no longer the whip, no longer the five-year-old down the shaft. It is an order, or a sheet of contract. Say a contract that reads: the workers of this shop may not go to another shop to do the same work for three years. Say a worker in debt who cannot leave, because the moment he lifts his foot the debt comes down. Say an order comes down that only a certain few houses may do this trade, and no others may.
The first semester set a line worth remembering: he who takes the constraint is the slave, he who lays the constraint is the master. Slave and master are positions, not identities. So this thing, in the shop today, often has no name, or its name is the man who cannot leave. It is not in every shop. But where it is, there is one more grid on the account, and that grid was not made; it was fenced.
How it grew and how it gets filled in belong to later pages. Chapter forty-seven will tell of the diamond that held for a hundred years and more, and the machine from a Henan countryman that saw straight through it. This section shows its shape, and shows that when it changes its skin, it is still itself.
The first semester’s finding must be touched again here: this thing does not vanish, it only changes skin. In drawing the full picture, it cannot be rubbed off because it is ugly. Rub it off, and the picture is a lie.
Six, four rules, one day, one shop
Now put this day together and look. Seven in the morning to six at night, one shop, twenty-odd people, one account. Yet the rules measuring things on that account are four. One measures what is put in, that is the wage sheet. One measures what is needed, that is the birth, the medicine, the retirement, those few sums. One measures risk, that is the man who cannot sleep at night. And one, if that wall is there, measures the man who cannot leave.
These four rules are not in four eras, not in four countries, not in four books of doctrine. They are on the same day, in the same room, on the same account, measuring at once. None has thrown out another, none has taken another’s place. Slavery did not vanish when the law forbade it; it changed skin. Capital did not swallow labor; it must lean on labor to make the thing. Labor did not crowd out need, for the child, the old, the sick cannot wait a day. And need did not do away with labor, for a thing not made cannot be shared.
This is the first thing this semester lays out, and the first stroke of this whole picture: these four are not four stages, they are four elements. They do not walk through history in a line, one after another. They are twisted together, running at once.
The thirty-eight sections that follow all start from this one morning. The next section first makes one thing clear: why these four get lined into a queue, who lined them, and at which step the line went wrong.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.