VOLUME V, CHAPTER 10
Scarcity in the Abstract, the Roads of the Weak, the Limit of Reform
The previous chapter dug into land, the most concrete line of all, and this chapter moves on toward the intangible. Land has one advantage, output can grow, and once output rises its scarcity can ease. Position cannot, by its own nature, be duplicated, relations by their own nature exclude, and culture can be held by one group for hundreds of years, so the law built for these three kinds is finer, more hidden, and more stubborn. The chapter first digs into position, relations, and culture, the three more hidden kinds of scarcity, then turns to stand on the side of the weak and looks at which roads lie before him, and finally looks at a group standing inside the frame who want to change the law, the reformers, and why, time after time, they never manage to reform it through.
The first section is the three kinds of scarcity in the examinations, marriage, and learning. Before Qin and Han, office ran on bloodline, hereditary rank and hereditary stipend, and most of those the Han recommendation system pushed upward were from the local great clans. The nine-rank rectifier system left the line, the highest rank has no man of humble family, the lowest rank has no man of the great clans. The imperial examination, running thirteen hundred years, loosened that gate, and Fan Zhongyan chopping his porridge into pieces was real hope, yet a strong family's child still had the edge, and these are its two faces. The examination's true cleverness is that it never had to be truly fair, it only had to look like a road existed, and that alone was enough to settle people's hearts. The Rites of Zhou forbidding marriage within the same surname, the Great Qing Code writing the legitimate and the secondary into law, and Concubine Zhao and Jia Huan in Dream of the Red Chamber, are relations. In the West, the Habsburgs, the Bourbons, and other royal houses intermarried generation after generation, and behind it too sat a calculation of territory, throne, and alliance. Confucius teaching without regard to class yet requiring tuition, the single prefecture of Suzhou producing more metropolitan graduates than the whole north, and Martin Luther translating the Bible into German and striking at the church's own root, are culture. The more intangible the kind, the harder it is to see through. This section sets the twenty-ninth layer.
The second section stands on the side of the weak and lays out three roads. Confucius says when the state has the Way, to be poor and lowly is a disgrace, when the state lacks the Way, to be rich and honored is a disgrace. Mencius says achieving one's ambitions, benefit the whole realm together, failing to achieve them, cultivate oneself alone. This is acceptance. Tao Yuanming would not bow for five bushels of rice, Su Dongpo in Huangzhou became the Recluse of the Eastern Slope, and both needed some foundation to walk that road at all. Tao Yuanming had ancestral land, Su Dongpo had a stipend, and a truly destitute farmer did not even have the capital to cultivate himself alone, his acceptance was forced on him, not chosen. Chen Sheng's uprising, Li Zicheng's cry of welcome the roaming king, pay no grain tax, and Hong Xiuquan calling for equal land while building his own Heavenly King's palace, are resistance, and most ended in failure. Not because the peasants lacked strength, but because whatever rose up still legislated the very same way. If no grain tax was collected, there was nothing to feed an army, and in the end they had to return to the old road of taxing, legislating, and dividing. Xu You washing his ears, Zhuangzi's the utmost person has no self, Ji Kang's Guangling San, and the exchange between Hanshan and Shide, are stepping outside. But stepping outside is often pulled back in by the system just the same, and Ji Kang was in the end put to death on a charge of unfiliality. The three roads carry no rank, yet not one of them can move the frame of output. This section sets the thirtieth layer. And the three roads can shift. They are not three fixed identities, they are three positions.
The third section looks at three reformers, Shang Yang, Wang Anshi, and Zhang Juzheng. They are not the weak, they are a minority standing inside the frame, inside the ranks of the strong, wanting to make the law a little fairer. Shang Yang moved a pole to build trust, abolished the well-fields, and established ranks of merit through military service, and the man died while the law survived, because a new nobility filled the vacancy. Wang Anshi spoke of the three no-fears, and his green sprouts loan and market exchange law meant well and ended in disorder, and the man lived while the law was abolished, because no one filled the vacancy. Zhang Juzheng's performance accountability system and single-whip law brought the Wanli Restoration, and after his death his family's property was confiscated, his posthumous honors were stripped, and his descendants were barred from holding office, the man died and the law died with him. Shang Yang fled toward the border and tried to take a room at an inn, and the innkeeper, following the very law Shang Yang himself had written, refused to house a guest without papers, and he sighed a line, "Alas, that the flaw in making law should come to this." The green sprouts loan, in the hands of local officials, was pressed on people to meet lending quotas, and turned into oppression instead. Goodwill has no strength before position. Laozi says when cleverness comes forth, great deception follows, Han Fei says policy always follows resources, and Huang Zongxi says this is the law of a single family, not the law of all under heaven, and together the three lines say reform can only exchange the strong. This section sets the thirty-first layer. No one truly shakes the ground he himself stands on, because to truly shake it would be to remove himself along with it.
Across these three sections, building from the twenty-ninth layer to the thirty-first, the strong holding scarcity alone, the weak's response, and the limit of reform all now stand clear. By the end of this chapter, a dead knot has surfaced in plain view. While output does not move, scarcity remains, and however the weak walk and however the reformer reforms, there is no way out. How this knot is untied, this volume only lays out and does not untie, leaving it for the volume on saving people later in this work. The stance of this chapter has not changed. It only lays out positions and leaves the judgment to the reader. The next chapter carries this line into the present, looking first at America's patents, credentials, real estate, and political contributions, then at China's household registration, school districts, establishment posts, and the inside of the system, and at the end of the chapter, the lens pulls back from inside a nation to the space between nations.
Contents
Section One. The Strong Write Law to Hold It Alone, the Examinations, Marriage, Learning.
Section Two. The Three Roads Before the Weak, Accept, Resist, Step Outside.
Section Three. Why Reform of the Law Is Never Complete.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. The Strong Write Law to Hold It Alone, the Examinations, Marriage, Learning.