VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 46, SECTION 1
Turn the Account to the Last, and the Share No One Claims
The four commons, told to here, have walked through three. Coexistence, that the four are all there. Common life, that they feed one another. Common dwelling, that they each keep their bound. Three set firm, and one last remains, and the one most easily missed. Missed, because the three before all spoke of the tie between the four rules, and this last speaks of another matter: turn an account to the last, spread every share out, and there is one share left with no owner to be found. This share is not small, and no odd remainder; it hides so deep that nearly every generation takes it for its own by right. This section first finds it out.
One, first mark off the shares that can be known
Back to that chair shop, back to that ten million. The second semester reckoned this account grid by grid, here spread it once more, and ask of each grid: whose is this? Four million in wages, to those twenty-odd pairs of hands, one man one number, known clean. The timber sum, to the strength of the men upstream who saw and dry and haul the stock, known too. The building and machine wearing down, to those who made the machine and raised the building, and to the one who staked the money. The delivery’s fuel and road money, to the driver, and to those who built the truck, refined the oil, laid and kept the road.
The interest sum, turning a few hands, flows back into the savings and pensions of millions upon millions, owned too, only the owners past counting. The last grid, to that man who cannot sleep at night, carrying the share that may be wholly lost, chapter forty-four just spoke of it, owned as well. Counted down grid by grid, every share points to an owner: the strength, the risk, the upstream, the downstream. To here the account looks spread flat, not a cent over, no remainder. Yet the matter is not so simple.
Two, yet there is one share whose owner cannot be pointed to
Truly no remainder? Lift the eye from the account and look out the window, at what this shop leans on to open its door at all. The road at the gate, he did not build. The power on the pole in the yard, he did not generate. The bridge twenty years ago that lets the truck cross the river, he did not raise. The goods heaped in the store at night still there in the morning, that share of peace he did not earn.
Look further in. Those twenty-odd men can read, can reckon, can make out a drawing, and this a dozen years of schoolroom taught, and the fee was not paid by this shop. They speak one same tongue, use one same set of measures and weights, write one same script, so a word said across reaches the other and is understood. This set of things no one year, no one man set; it was gathered a bit at a time across thousands of years, and most who gathered it left not even a name.
The deepest layer is lower still. That chair’s mortise and tenon, who first thought it out? Two pieces of wood biting so, no nail and they will not come apart. That thought is still on every chair in his shop today, used hundreds of times a day. Yet the one who first thought it, his surname, his year, under which hill he whittled those two pieces, no one knows, and no one has asked. And one layer deeper than road and power: this shop opens its door also because there are men who will keep a bargain. An order placed, the other will pay by it. Stock brought in, the seller will not blend in the false. A worker comes to work, knowing the wage comes at month end. This share of hearts still willing to trust one another, this shop did not make either; it was kept, once at a time, by generation after generation.
Three, walk up close and see how thick this share is
These things are commonly reckoned by no one, for they are like the ground underfoot, trodden daily, never bought with money. But make one supposing and its thickness shows at once. Take these same twenty-odd men, this same saw, this same stake, and move the whole to another place: there no road, and the goods cannot be hauled out. No power, and the machine does not turn. No schoolroom, and of the twenty-odd only two or three can read. At night the thing heaped outside is gone.
The same men, the same machine, the same strength, the same rising early and toiling late, how much in a year? Not even a tenth. The nine parts short are not that they grew stupid of a sudden, nor that the boss forgot of a sudden how to run a shop. What is short is those things not written on the account, that no one comes to charge for.
So this share is no odd remainder, it is the big share. Of what a shop, a person, a generation earns, the share truly turned out by their own lifetime’s strength and carrying is, spread out, often far smaller than one would think, and the rest is come by treading on a ground laid layer over layer by others across thousands of years.
Four, what cannot be traced to a source, a person gives a source
This layer the first semester set once, in chapter seven, and there it spoke of another matter, yet spoke of the same one position. There it asked: why did Great Yu think to open a channel, and not to dam as everyone else would? Why did Li Bing set the Fish Mouth at just that one place in the river’s heart, a hair early or late and it would not do? Where did these two thoughts come from? Cannot be traced, not one bit. Not only can the later not trace it, the man himself could not say how that one thought rose in him.
What cannot be traced to a source, a person gives a source. So there came heaven’s gift, an immortal come down, a line got in a dream. The first semester set a line: this source itself is wei, humanly made.A person sets this source mostly not to cheat anyone, but because that empty patch in the heart is hard to bear, and must be given a place to be laid.
Yet laid in heaven or laid with a god, one thing is clear: the fruit that thought bore belongs not to the one man who thought it. The mortise and tenon is so, the channel-not-dam is so, the script, the numbers, the measures, the reckonings, the boat and the cart, every one is so. Not one of these can be set on some one man’s tally of merit, nor gathered into some one man’s pocket.
Five, that account of Dujiangyan
Land this layer on one place that can be seen, and it is Dujiangyan. Two thousand three hundred years, and that channel still lets the water through, watering year by year that great spread of field below. In two thousand three hundred years, the grain grown on that great spread of field, added up, is how much? No one can reckon it clear, and no one has truly reckoned it once.
Now ask the weightiest line: those harvests, whose gain of labor are they? The one who tills the field surely has his share, earned furrow by furrow, and none can take it. But the extra grain that channel let one same mu of land yield, whose is that? Li Bing tilled not one mu; two thousand three hundred years ago he was already gone. The laborers who then hauled earth and carried stone are long gone too, and few even left a name. This share of harvest finds no one who can stand out and claim it.
It belongs to no one man’s labor. This is the share this section set out to find, and it has a name: the gain not of labor. Here first hold off a mistake, lest the next section be read crooked: to say this share finds no owner is not to say that boss should not get his grid, nor that the ones who put out strength took too much. The shares that have owners, not a cent to be moved: the strength’s to the strength, the risk’s to the risk, the upstream’s to the upstream. This section only turns the account to the bottom, and points out that one grid never claimed by anyone, a grid all along taken for granted and slipped by hand into one’s own name. To point it out is so the next section can ask: to whom should this grid belong.
Six, what this section sets
What this section sets is a line: turn an account to the last, and there is always a share of harvest whose owner cannot be found, and that share is no odd remainder, it is the big share. It is made of several things: the script and numbers and measures and craft gathered across thousands of years, the roads and bridges and channels and power the generations before built, the peace kept once at a time by generation after generation, and a room of men who can read and reckon clean. These things are not written on the account, not bought with money, yet pull them out and the same men and the same machine cannot make a tenth of the year’s yield.
It is called the gain not of labor, not because it was come by wrongly, but because it truly finds no laborer who can claim it. Finding no owner, it must have a place to go. What that place is, the next section answers.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.