VOLUME V, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 1

VOLUME V, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 1

Four Institutions That Hold One Another Up. Culture, Economy, Politics, Law

The last section dug to the deepest base of the law, no one is without fault. The six sections and seven layers before this have set the outline of the law clearly. But here a person has to admit honestly, you cannot finish speaking of the law by speaking of the law alone. The law is never off by itself. It runs together with culture, economy, and politics. This section sets the law back inside its own net and sees clearly how the four institutions hold one another up.

To lift the law out and speak of it alone is like snapping a branch off a tree to study it. Study the branch as finely as you like, and you cannot see where it stood on the tree. To see the law clearly, a person first has to see the whole net. Social institutions have four parts, culture, economy, politics, and law. These four words a reader meets every day, in the news, in textbooks, in idle talk, and few ever stop to ask what relation the four things actually stand in. In the mainstream account the four are spoken of apart, culture with culture, economy with economy, politics with politics, law with law. Scholars split into four disciplines along these four directions, each with its own terms, its own classics, its own experts. But when a society actually runs, the four never come apart. Study them apart and you see each branch clearly, and cannot see that they all grow on one tree, fed water by one root.

Cut the lens to the plainest scene, a family, whether a child should go to college. On the plane of culture, in this family's tradition, is study a matter of the highest weight or a matter of no account, do the elders hold that of all pursuits study alone is high. On the plane of economy, can this family afford it, four years of tuition, of living costs, of the wages lost, can they bear it. On the plane of politics, how is this country's college entrance set up, by what standard are students admitted, how many places does this family's province or city receive. On the plane of law, what does the education law provide, does the law allow taking the exam across provincial lines, if college is out of reach is there another road under the law's protection. One matter, a child's schooling, and four planes turn at once. Culture says study, economy can afford it, politics grants the score, and yet let the plane of law jam alone, the residence rule blocking the cross-province exam, and the matter still cannot be done. Turn it around, the law wholly open, but the family cannot lay out a cent, and the culture thinks study useless, and it cannot be done either. Cut any one plane and the matter cannot go on. The four institutions are not four drawers. They are four knots on one net.

The Great Learning set the order of the four stations down in one line. Around 500 BC, the Great Learning wrote it. Things have their root and their branch, affairs have their end and their beginning, and to know what comes first and what after is to draw near the Way. Every affair has a root and a branch, a beginning and an end, and to see these relations is to draw near the true position of things. This line is plainest and most easily skipped, yet to look at any complex thing, find its root and branch, its first and after, and you will not seize the wrong end at the start. So do culture, economy, politics, and law stand in an order. This arrangement follows one axis set before, culture upstream, economy the next station, politics further down, law at the tail. Say it clearly, this is not to say the earlier station decides the later. As the sections before set again and again, a made thing is never a one-way deciding, and each station can turn back and touch the one above it. This axis speaks of the order of position among the four stations, not of a chain of cause deciding effect.

Culture is upstream, economy the next station. Why culture upstream. Because culture decides how a group sees the world, sees itself, sees others. A culture that honors diligence in getting rich tilts its economy toward diligence. A culture that honors governing by not-doing tilts its politics toward restraint. A culture that honors harmony above all tilts its law toward mediation. Culture does not directly make the economy, politics, and law, but it sets the ground color for the three stations behind it, and once the ground color is set, the three grow their shapes along it. Economy is the next station because economy is the material base, the root any politics and law must build upon. Around 700 BC, Guan Zhong said one line. In every way of governing a state, one must first make the people rich. Guan Zhong saw through it twenty-seven hundred years ago, economy before politics. Rich, and governing runs smooth. Poor, and governing is hard. When a person is driven to where he cannot live, no good decree can be pushed and no severe law can hold him down. Feed a person first, and words can then get through. This station of economy is not the product of culture either. It turns back and shapes culture, a group of tillers, of herders, or of traders slowly grows different cultural leanings. Culture and economy shape each other, only that the material base, this layer, has to steady first, and the rest can follow.

Politics is next, law is at the tail. Why politics next. Because politics is the position of coordinating the group. The economy has to be coordinated, the passing-on of culture has to be coordinated, and when an outer shock comes it has to be coordinated too, and the position of that coordinating is politics. Politics makes no resources, but coordinates resources. Makes no culture, but passes culture on. Makes no law, but sets up law. It stands above the economy and culture and yet cannot run alone apart from them, leaning on the economy for resources and on culture for common ground, and let either fall away and politics loses its footing. Why law at the tail. Because law is the tool of politics. The positions of writing, enforcing, and judging law all sit inside the political system. Law is not a thing independent of politics. It is the concrete tool politics uses to organize the group. Politics steady, and the law stands. Politics in disorder, and however complete the law, it is a sheet of empty paper. But the law is no maidservant of politics either. Once set up, it has its own logic of running, and a finished law walks on by its own logic and turns back to touch the lawmakers who come after. This is the law's reverse touch on politics. So the order of the four stations is not a one-way street. It is a road walked both ways. Upstream sets the tone for downstream, and downstream turns back and grinds upstream, only the order of position does not change.

The Book of Changes and Laozi set the mutual leaning of the four stations at its deepest. Around 500 BC, the Book of Changes wrote it. One yin and one yang, this is called the Way. Yin and yang are not opposed. They lean on each other. Without yin there is no yang, and only the two together are the Way. Lay this over the four institutions. Culture and economy are one yin and one yang. Economy and politics are one yin and one yang. Politics and law are one yin and one yang. The four together are the Way of social institutions. Not one of the four can do without the others, like the four legs of a table, saw any one short and the table cannot stand level. Laozi wrote another line. The Way gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, three gives birth to the ten thousand things. The Way is natural law. One is the group itself. Two is the division of labor within the group. Three is the institutions that division produces, culture, economy, politics, and law. The ten thousand things are all the concrete affairs that grow once the institutions come down to the ground. Laozi set where institutions come from twenty-five hundred years ago. Institutions are not set up out of thin air. They grow slowly out of the group's natural division of labor, and that division grows out of the Way, out of natural law.

So among the four institutions, is there a high and a low. The ancestors' answer is no. Culture is not higher than economy, economy not higher than politics, politics not higher than law. The four institutions differ only in their division of labor, with no high and low, no noble and base. In the mainstream account phrases like the economic base decides the superstructure, the supremacy of the rule of law, culture is soft power, keep appearing, and on the surface they analyze, and underneath they rank the four institutions high and low. To rank economy highest is one position, to rank law highest another, to rank culture highest another. But by the ancestors' position not one of the four is higher than another. Each is a block a society cannot run without, and pull any one out and the society caves on one side, and enthrone any one as supreme and the society tilts to one side. A society that makes the law all-powerful forgets that culture and livelihood still sit above the law's head. A society that knows only money and not culture piles up wealth while the human heart scatters. All four have to be in their places. Short one, and the society will not stand.

Turn the lens to the West and three thinkers saw the same layer. Around 1750, Montesquieu wrote his work on the spirit of the laws, tying the shape of law to culture, geography, and climate, and seeing that law is not off by itself. Around 1840, Marx set up that the economic base decides the superstructure, making the economy the deepest deciding factor, with culture, politics, and law all its products. Around 1900, Weber wrote his work on the ethic of one faith and the spirit of capitalism, and reversed it, setting culture, the ethic of that faith, as the source of the economy, of capitalism. Each of the three stands in a different position, one tying law to geography and climate, one setting economy as the root, one setting culture as the source, and yet all three saw the layer of the four stations bound together. The reader need not feel this relation is a Western new discovery. Montesquieu saw law tied to culture, geography, climate, and the Great Learning's things have their root and branch set that relation down more than two thousand years ago. Marx set economy as the root, and Guan Zhong's one must first make the people rich said long ago that economy ranks before politics. The ancestors, using the Great Learning, the Book of Changes, the Dao De Jing, the Guanzi, set this layer down more than two thousand years ago, only without the modern terms. To place these three after the ancestors rests on a difference of labor, not a difference of high and low. Put another way, it is not that the ancestors followed the West, it is that the West only reached, a few hundred years ago, the position the ancestors stood at more than two thousand years before. This is said not to argue who is first and higher, but to remind the reader that this view of the four stations was groped out by both East and West, and what it draws near is the thing itself.

So this section sets an eighth layer. The law is not off by itself. It is one of the four parts of social institutions, culture, economy, politics, and law holding one another up. Among the four stations there is both an order of position and a mutual touching. Among the four stations there is only a difference of labor, no high and low, no noble and base. The four together are the whole of social institutions, and pull any one station out and the whole caves on one side. This volume speaks of the law in particular, and yet never lifts the law out to stand alone. Every layer it sets ahead touches the three stations before it in secret. The Wei of culture, the Wei of economy, the Wei of politics, all settle in the end into the law. Around 100 BC, Sima Qian, writing of Shang Yang's reform, wrote at once the cultural air of Qin, its economic base, its political shape, its legal detail, and only with the four planes together can a reader see clearly why Shang Yang could succeed and why he ended torn apart. Sima Qian's stroke is the Chinese world's earliest practice of seeing the four stations together, and this arrangement only carries it to the analysis of society today, the posture unchanged. The next time you read a law, see for yourself, what is the cultural ground color behind it, what the economic base, what the political shape. Fix only on the law itself and you cannot see clearly. Put the four stations together and the law's true position floats up.

The next section traces back one more step, to a claim the law makes about itself every day. The law says it protects rights. But the root of a right is not in the law. It is in nature. Let the reader carry all the tools set firm in the eight layers before, into the section that follows.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.