VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 40, SECTION 2
Stages Are a Queue, Elements Run at Once
In that shop last section, four rules measured at once. Yet a knot most likely stays untied. What was heard growing up did not run this way. What was heard was a queue. First a slave society, then a feudal society, then a capitalist society, and on to socialist, communist. One after another, the later taking the place of the earlier, one stretch walked before the next begins.
This section unties that knot. Three things stand to be made clear: how that queue got lined up, why it looks so much like the truth, and at which step it took one step too many. Let the word go first. The lining up is no error in itself. What is pointed to below is only the one step too many.
One, how that queue got lined up
A person looking at history always wants to find a line. Before his eyes a heap of things, crossways and tangled, front and back crossed over, no thread to be found. Yet set them along a line by their years, and at once it runs smooth. This is not a historian’s trick; it is the common way people know things. A child learning trees first sorts needle-leaf from broad-leaf, then the four seasons of green and fall, and only then remembers them. A grown man reading history must first lay out a before and after, and only then has ground under his heart.
And that line really does look much like the truth. From far off you look back. In old days there were masters and slaves, manors and tenants, a sheet of contract selling the body. Later there were workshops, shares, banks and insurance. Later still there were unions, the eight hours, health cover, birth leave, and pensions. Stretch by stretch, the further back the stranger, the further on the more like today. Likeness is where it is strongest.
So the queue got lined up. Slavery at the front, capital in the middle, labor and need at the back. Once lined, it is very handy. Where a society stands, one measure and you know. Whether a thing should be done, one compare and you have an answer. Even a quarrel saves effort. One line, that is a thing from centuries back, and the other is pressed down.
It gives one more thing that matters: a sense of direction. What a person fears is not the long road; it is not knowing where he stands. Lay out a queue, and every person is set in place, what is ahead, what is behind, plain at a glance. A thing handy and settling, people take to. Used long enough, they forget it was only a set order laid out.
Two, there is a real thing in that line, own it first
A fair word first. That line does have a real thing in it, and no light weight. History did change, and changed greatly. Slavery turned from the open face to the dark; no country in law will own it now. The share of need spread from the care within one house and clan to the health cover and the low-income line across a city, a country. Capital, from a few putting in stakes for one run of trade, grew into the chains of making that cross the ocean today, dozens of nodes. These changes are no trick of the eye; they are real. Own them.
Take a near thing. A hundred years ago a worker broke his leg on a site, how did he get through the months after? Mostly by what the family scraped together, by fellow villagers helping, by a soft-hearted master giving a few coins. Today he has work-injury cover, health cover, a sum that does not ask how much strength he put out this month. The difference between them is too big not to own.
But push the lens back a little further. In that era, what the family scraped, what the villagers gave, what the charity granary handed out, what the state granary released, was it not the same one thing? It too did not ask how much strength he put out this month; it asked only whether there was still rice in his house. The ancestors set names for this thing. The ever-normal granary, taking in when grain was cheap, releasing when grain was dear. The charity granary, storing a little in ordinary days, opening in a lean year to give relief. So what changed is the form and the thickness of this one thing, not that it came from nothing.
Sorting and ordering is honest work too. The historian, to thread so many years and so many things, must lay out an order, or no one can thread them. So this section does not rub out that line; it asks it one thing. On that line, what is it that moves? The answer is, what moves is the proportion and the form, not the being or not being. The four have always been there. This era this one is thicker, that era that one is thicker. This era it is out in the open, that era it hides in the dark. Thickness shifts, light and dark shift, and the four have never come up one short.
Three, the one step too many, reading before-and-after as taking-the-place-of
The one step too many is here: reading before-and-after as taking-the-place-of. A before and an after is an arrangement. One taking the place of another is a claim. The first speaks of order. The second speaks of being or not being. From arrangement to claim is only a step, yet cross that step and the whole picture changes its look.
Read as taking-the-place-of, and three consequences follow. The first: each one gets a time label pasted on. The one at the front is called backward, the one at the back is called advanced. This pasting is labeling from far off, and the whole second semester was spent guarding against just this hand. Capital was cursed for a hundred years, communism was laughed at for a hundred years, both were labels pasted from far off.
The second consequence matters more, and cuts deeper. Since slavery belongs to the past, it will vanish of itself, and need not be watched. So it changes its skin, stands before your eyes, and you cannot tell what it is. The first semester set a line: this thing does not vanish, it only changes skin, and a lock that cannot be seen is the stoutest lock. That three-year contract last section, that debt that comes down the moment the foot lifts, if the heart holds it settled that slavery was cut off at the root centuries ago, you walk right past them and do not give them a look.
The third consequence is ranking seats. Line them in a queue and there is high and low. The one at the very back becomes the highest of all. Once the four have high and low, no one will bow his head to look at what lies beneath the ones at the front. And this book, start to end, does just that. It walks up close and looks, looks down into what is under it.
Four, take the queue apart, and the four are there in every era
Back to a quarrel two thousand years ago. The first semester, chapter six, told of the Salt and Iron debate, Sang Hongyang’s side and the side of the worthies and scholars, quarreling to the end with neither wholly winning. That era, by the lining of that queue, is usually set at a place near the front.
But walk up close and look at that era. In the government workshops there were people at forced service, paid no wage, coming and going not by their own will. Under the same roof there were people drawing a wage, working some months, taking some months of pay. In the market there were merchants pooling stakes for trade, one putting in money, one putting in strength, one sharing the gain, one carrying the risk, not one missing. And in a lean year the granary opened and the rice went out, asking not how much strength you put out this year, asking only whether there was still rice in your house.
Forced service, wage, stake, relief. Four things, one era, one country, under one sky. None waited on another, none stood in a queue waiting for the next era to have its turn on the stage.
Now turn and look at today. Today, by the lining of that queue, is set at a place near the back, yet today too the four are all present. That shop last section, four rules on the same account, a few pages apart, laid side by side. Two thousand years ago, four. Today, four. And the eras between, if you will only walk up close and look, four as well.
So it is no queue at all. It is four things, mixed in every era in a different proportion. The recipe shifts year by year, the stock is always those four. Hold this one line, and the thirty-seven sections that follow all walk easy.
Five, own the merit, point the edge
The one who did most to line these four into a queue was Mister Marx. His merit is owned here, owned heavy. He was the first to take that machine apart and set it on the table. Before him the machine turned on, but no one had taken its parts off one by one and laid them out for people to see. He put matter before mind, and he set this position true, the same one Guanzi set two thousand four hundred years apart. This layer, chapter forty-eight will speak of on its own.
One more thing to own. He fixed his eye on that gap, fixed it and would not let go. The whole second semester was spent taking apart that mirror, yet taken to the end that gap was not rubbed out, and that child down the shaft was not rubbed out. To see it, and still be willing to keep watching it, that is skill, and it is heart.
His edge must be pointed out too. It is the edge that is pointed, not right or wrong. He lined four elements into a line of time, lined coexistence at once into a going-forward step by step, and set to it a telling of who takes whose place. The one step too many is just this. His categories were set a little late, and a little narrow. This is no high and low; it is a different share of the work.
This book, start to end, is against no one. Good plain speech it takes in. And the finest plain speech comes from the ancestors’ old writing all the same; he only learned that one line. The six words, the merit goes to the ancestors, count here too. The share he made clear, own to him. The share whose source cannot be told, hand back to the ancestors.
Six, what this section sets
What this section sets is one line. Stages are a queue, elements run at once. A queue is an order laid out to thread things clear. It is of use, and it is laid out. The four running at once, that is what is real. An order laid out cannot rule over what is real. Turn it round and let it rule, and someone will take one era to measure another, take one line to judge which step a society should walk, which thing it should throw away. And the thing thrown, if it is really still there, will not vanish because it was judged to a should-vanish. It will only hide, and grow where the eye cannot see.
With this layer stood firm, the next section can ask a weightier line: since these four run at once, what does each of them measure? Why can no one of the four rules stand in for another?
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.