VOLUME V, CHAPTER 5
The Lawmaker, Vested Interests, and the Roads Left to the Weak
The last chapter set out the three positions an ordinary person runs into first as law runs. Strength and weakness, public legal education, lawyers: all of these concern matters after the law already exists, and who made the law itself has not yet been asked. This chapter walks three steps into deeper and heavier ground. First it asks how the lawmaker himself comes to be, then it looks at who is truly law's largest customer, and last it lands on the heaviest sentence of all: once the weak have been stripped, what can they still do? Joined together, these three sections are the least flattering and yet the truest stretch of how law runs.
The first section is about where the lawmaker comes from: heredity, appointment, election, self-appointment. This section first admits a plain thing. A lawmaker does not fall out of the sky. He is some member of some group, who by some route has come to sit in the position of legislating. Guanzi says governance flourishes by following the people's heart, governance falls by going against the people's heart, but which part of the people's heart gets followed is itself a choice. All four routes have their flaws, yet all of them can be measured with one ruler: how much the people took part when the lawmaker rose to his seat. By this ruler, election comes closest to following the people's heart, heredity and appointment come next, and self-appointment stands furthest away. Chen Sheng says, are kings, lords, generals, and ministers born to their bloodline? and lifts the lid off the layer that power is not granted by heaven. Mencius says, I have heard of the punishing of a lone villain named Zhou, I have not heard of the murder of a ruler, and leaves the people one last card, but this card is very hard to play. Whichever road he came up by, once in the seat he faces the same question, how to answer to the people. The answer is the people's voice and the people's force, and these two are unevenly distributed from the start. This sets the fourteenth layer.
The second section is about vested interests, the law's largest customer. This section starts from a shop. A regular who comes in every day, and a passerby who walks through the door once a year: it is not hard to guess which one the shopkeeper pays more attention to. People inside the legislative and enforcement institutions, legal professionals, and the wealthy and powerful under the law's protection: these three kinds stay at the scene of legislating full time, with the loudest voice and the strongest force, and so the law tilts toward them automatically. This is no one's conspiracy. It is a structure with no mastermind. Laozi says man's way takes from what has too little to serve what has too much. Sima Qian says the whole world bustles, all of it coming for profit, the whole world hustles, all of it going for profit, and lays the motive behind this flat on the table. This motive also reinforces itself. The more complicated the law, the less an ordinary person can afford to use it, and the less he can afford it, the more he must depend on those with a vested interest, and round it goes, the structure tightening with every turn. Those with a vested interest are not necessarily bad people, but the position they stand on decides that they will automatically maintain the present arrangement. This sets the fifteenth layer.
The third section is about what the weak can do, the several ways ordinary people rescue themselves. This section does not ask which road is best. It asks only which one fits your own position and your own time. Bo Yi and Shu Qi chose retreat, and would rather starve than serve. Confucius says virtue is never alone, it always has neighbors, and that is banding together. Zhuangzi says the use of the useless is the greatest use of all, and that is giving up on law. Chen Sheng says, dying either way, why not die for the state? and that is violent resistance. Laozi says the highest good is like water, and that is self-discipline and cultivating oneself. The most chilling layer of this section comes after. What those with a vested interest hope for most is exactly that the weak retreat, or only change themselves, or rise in violent resistance outright, so they can be crushed with a perfectly justified reason. The worse the system, the more inventive the weak become, while the system itself does not move an inch. The five roads each carry their own cost, yet these acts of self-rescue sometimes, without anyone noticing, also maintain the present arrangement on the vested interests' behalf. See this layer clearly, and a person is, if anything, more clear-eyed. This sets the sixteenth layer.
These three sections build from the fourteenth layer to the sixteenth, and walk through the heaviest stretch of how law runs. What this chapter nails down is one sentence: the words are written fairly, but landing on actual people, the distribution is anything but fair, and the law's neutrality has never held itself in place automatically. This chapter may leave a reader's heart heavy, but only by seeing this structural tilt clearly can a person stop being bluffed by fairness on paper, and stop being led away by an exit already arranged. The next chapter no longer shifts around inside the system. It turns to a thing that relies on no outside system and no one else's fairness, only on one's own will: self-discipline. The stance of this chapter still has not changed: it lays out positions, draws no conclusion, and leaves the judgment to the reader.
Contents
Section One. Where the Lawmaker Comes From. Election, Appointment, Inheritance, Self-Appointment.
Section Two. Vested Interests, the Law's Largest Customer.
Section Three. What the Weak Are to Do. The Several Ways Ordinary People Rescue Themselves.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. Where the Lawmaker Comes From. Election, Appointment, Inheritance, Self-Appointment.