VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 7

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 7

Saving the One Who Lives on Capital: The Capitalist Is You and Me and Him, and Saving Is No Shame

The last section saved the laborer, the one who lives by his effort. This section saves the third kind. This kind takes the fiercest cursing of all, and the moment you bring it up, there rises a big-bellied man with a cigar in his mouth, sitting on a mountain of gold, sucking the blood and sweat of the workers. This kind of person is called the capitalist. This section means to swap out that frightening picture whole, to take the hat of capitalist off the head of the blood-sucking villain and set it back on you and me and him, and then to lift off you the shame in your heart that came of wanting to save money, and tell you that to want to save a little, to build a wall against the wind for your family, is no shame at all. This section is a great turn in this chapter. In the last two sections, saving the slave and the laborer, you have gone along sympathizing with the bottom and being wary of capital. But if it stopped at capital being all evil and the capitalist being the enemy, then the account would be muddled, and the real problem would hide forever behind those two words, capital, never to be caught. So this section means to take that muddled account, capitalist equals enemy, fully apart.

I. The Capitalist Is Not a Villain, but You and Me and Him

The moment you hear the three-word name, the capitalist, what kind of person rises in your mind? Is it not a big-bellied man with a cigar in his mouth, sitting on a mountain of gold, sucking the blood and sweat of the workers? This picture you have seen from childhood on, and it is carved deep in your mind. Say capitalist, and there is this vile, snarling shape. Today let me swap this picture out for you.

Let me ask you a plainest question. In your pocket, is there any bit of savings? On your bank card, are there a few dollars lying there, saved up by your scrimping and pinching, kept for an emergency, kept for old age, kept for the children? If there are, even if it is only a very little, then let me tell you, you are a capitalist.

Do not stare. Let me break this down for you. What is capital? The last section said it, capital is that money you gather up that can breed more. And that little money you keep in the bank, what is it for? It lies there, and the bank takes it to make loans, to turn over, and at the year's end it reckons you a little interest. That little savings of yours is, quietly, breeding money for you, and that is capital. That little savings of yours is your capital.

You see, this thing capital is not so mysterious, and not so frightening. It is simply that store you have saved up, gathered together, and let breed you a little and guard you against a little risk. A great rich man sitting on a mountain of gold, his capital is tens of billions. Those few thousand, few ten-thousand on your card are capital too, only different in size. In their nature, you and that great rich man are doing the same one thing, gathering money up and letting it breed money for you, guard you. The difference between you is saving much and saving little, not that one is a capitalist and one is not. Looked at this way, the standing of capitalist is not the private property of a few villains at all. It touches every ordinary person who has a bit of a store and wants to guard his own days.

You save money and want a bit of interest, you are using capital. You buy a policy of insurance and hope for some security down the road, you are using capital. You pay in your pension every month and hope for a mouthful when you are old, you are using capital. You want to save a little and leave the children something one day, you are using capital. When you do these things, you are doing the very thing a capitalist does, gathering money up and letting it breed money for you, guard you against the wind, keep you in your old age, protect your children.

So the capitalist is not that far-off big-bellied blood-sucker at all. The capitalist is you. It is you, the ordinary person, scrimping and pinching, with a few dollars saved on your card, buying insurance, paying your pension, hoping to leave the children something. And not only you. The one running the little convenience store downstairs, who takes in stock hoping to earn the margin, is using capital, and he is a small capitalist. The one in your village who contracted a few acres and hired two hands to grow a cash crop is using capital, and he is a capitalist. The owner of the little restaurant with three or five hands is a capitalist. The one who took out half a lifetime's savings and opened a small factory and settled a few dozen workers is a capitalist.

These people, are they villains? Are they blood-suckers? They are not. They are the most proper, the hardest-working, the most-wanting-a-steady-life crowd of people in this world. They save money, use money, run a bit of a small enterprise, settle themselves and their families, and along the way settle a few, a few dozen, who eat because of them.

Think of that one who opened the small factory. He took out half a lifetime's savings and opened a small factory. Day after day he is up early and to bed late, worrying over the whole factory, an order comes and he worries how to deliver on time, an order is lost and he worries where the workers' wages will come from. That bit of money he earns is earned bearing the risk of losing the whole stake, boiling his hair white for it. And yet just such a person, by that blood-sucker picture, also becomes a capitalist to be brought down. Is that not unjust? He kept alive not only his own family, but the few dozen workers in his factory, the few dozen households. If he goes under, those few dozen households who ate because of him have their living cut off along with him. Such a person, would you call him a villain, or the most-to-be-protected proper man in this world?

You see, pull the three-word name capitalist out of that blood-sucker picture and set it in the light, and the capitalist is you, is the one downstairs from you, is the one in your village, is the one who opened the small factory, is the millions upon millions of ordinary people with a bit of savings who want to live their days in peace. The capitalist is you and me and him.

Then why has the name capitalist been painted into so frightening, so vile-snarling a shape? Why does mention of the capitalist mean blood-sucking, mean bring him down? In the middle of this there is an enormous misunderstanding, and there is an account that has been miscounted. This account, below, will be counted clear for you, one figure at a time. For this kind, first swap the picture in your heart. The capitalist is not that big-bellied blood-sucker. The capitalist is you and me and him, is every ordinary person with a bit of savings, buying insurance, paying a pension, wanting to leave the children something, wanting to live his days in peace.

II. Wanting to Save a Little Is No Shame, but an Instinct as It Should Be

With the hat of capitalist set back on the heads of you and me and him, let me lift off you one more thing, the shame you have hidden in your heart that came of wanting to save money.

Yes, shame. You have probably never thought it over carefully, but in your heart there is a bit of it. These years there has been a run of talk that fixes on this thing, wanting money, and slings mud at it. It says a person is greedy, that he has crawled into the eye of a coin, that talking of money is vulgar, that if a person wants too much to save money then his level is low, he is selfish, he has no higher pursuit. Hear enough of this talk, and a plain, proper person who only wants to save a couple more coins and live his days on solid ground grows, instead, a shame he cannot quite name, as if his wanting to earn a bit more, save a bit more, were a thing not fit to be seen, not fit to be brought to the table.

Today let me say it plain. To want to save a little, to want a bit of a store in hand, to want to live your days a little more steadily, to want to leave the children something, is no shame at all. It is an instinct, and as it should be.

Let me tell you through why it is as it should be. Cast your mind back to the first section of this chapter, what is the first thing about a person's being alive? It is to be settled, to live and work in peace, not to go hungry or cold, to have a steady place to be. This is a person's most basic need, and without it, everything else is empty talk. And an ordinary person, by what does he settle himself? He has no great power to summon wind and rain. What he can do is, a little at a time, save up some of the gain his effort earned. Save this little, and his heart steadies by a degree. Should he fall ill, there is money to treat it. Should he lose his job, he can hold out a while. When he is old, there is a mouthful. When the children need money, he can produce it. That little he saves is no greed. It is a wall against the wind that he builds for himself and for his family, old and young.

Tell me, for a person to want to build a wall against the wind for himself and his family, is that a shame? Is that selfish? Is that a low level? No. It is the most proper, the most responsible, the most ought-to-be-done thing a person does. A householder who never saves a bit of money to fall back on, so that one gust of wind and the whole family goes under, that is what you call irresponsible. To want to save, to want a store, to want to live your days with some backbone under you, is precisely a person cherishing himself, cherishing his family, being responsible for the whole household, old and young.

To put it larger, this is a person's instinct. Look at a squirrel, hiding nuts all over in the autumn, hoarding a winter's rations, and that is its instinct, so as to live through the winter. Look at an ant, hauling grain, storing up a nest of it, and that too is instinct. A person saving a bit of money, hoarding a bit of a store, leaving his descendants a way to fall back, is the same instinct as the squirrel hiding its nuts and the ant storing its grain. It is the instinct that life has carved into the bone, to stay alive, to live steady, to protect its offspring. This instinct is proper as can be, clean as can be, and no shame at all. Capital is an instinct, is a duty, it is not evil. For a person to want to save, to want to guard himself and his family with the money he saved, is an instinct, life's instinct to protect itself, and also a duty, a householder's duty to his home. It does not touch the word evil at all.

Think about it, if someone went and cursed that squirrel hiding its nuts, called it greedy, called its level low, said it should scatter its nuts out to all, would you not think that person had gone mad? The squirrel hiding its nuts is as it should be, it is the squirrel's life through the winter. A person saving to protect his home is just as much as it should be, it is his whole family's life when a storm comes. That little you save is not for over-eating and over-having. It is for the just-in-case, the case where you fall ill, where you lose your job, where you grow too old to move, and with that little in hand, the whole family is not driven to the wall. That little is a home's last backbone, the most solid way a householder has of cherishing his home. Whoever is ashamed of this has been spun round and muddled by that crooked run of talk.

And why does this run of talk fix on wanting-to-save and sling mud at it? Think it through and you see. Once a person is made ashamed of wanting to save, he no longer dares, with a straight back, to guard the share that is his due. When the labor income due him is wrung away, he dares not make a sound, because he is afraid that the moment he fights for it he will be called greedy. This run of talk that slings mud at wanting-to-save ends up, in the end, helping exactly those wringing hands, robbing the wrung of even the backbone to fight for the money that is theirs.

See how dark this is. Those truly wringing hands, themselves clutching heaven-vast wealth, put out a run of talk that makes ordinary people ashamed of saving a few life-saving dollars. The ordinary people, once ashamed, dare not fight, and swallow it in silence when they are wrung, for fear that one word out of them earns the name of greed. And so the wringing hands wring all the more smoothly, and the wrung dare all the less to speak. This run of talk looks like it is cursing greed, preaching a high-mindedness, and at the bone of it, it is a soft knife the wringing hands put out to gag the wrung. So on no account take this bait. Want to save, and want it with a straight back. The share that is your due, guard it with a straight back. So this section lifts this shame out of your heart. To want to save is no shame. To save so as to protect your home is an instinct, a duty, as it should be. Guard, with a straight back, what you should save and the share you should keep. This is a proper person's rightful due. The next section speaks of a more important thing. Since the capitalist is you and me and him, and since wanting to save is as it should be, then that slogan shouted for a hundred years, bring down the capitalist, whom exactly does it bring down? It is a false target.

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