是時(shí)候?yàn)椤叭蚧闭?/h1>

所屬教程:英語(yǔ)漫讀

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2017年04月14日

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The great populist-insurgent of 100 years ago, one Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, found time while in cozy Zurich planning his Bolshevik revolution to pen an explanation for why things were “kicking off”, as we say these days: his book was entitled Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism or, in its French translation, the last stage. Were his modern successor (if political opposite) Donald Trump to follow suit in a tweet, he might substitute “globalism” for imperialism, adding “BAD, SICK! BUILD THAT WALL!” Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right presidential candidate, would surely agree.

100年前，偉大的民粹主義造反者弗拉基米爾•伊里奇•烏里揚(yáng)諾夫(Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov，即列寧)在安逸的蘇黎世策劃布爾什維克革命時(shí)，抽時(shí)間寫(xiě)了一本名為《帝國(guó)主義是資本主義的最高階段》(Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)的小冊(cè)子，解釋為什么革命已“箭在弦上”。如果列寧的現(xiàn)代繼任者(雖然政治上對(duì)立)唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)在Twitter上進(jìn)行效法的話，他或許會(huì)用“全球主義”取代帝國(guó)主義，再加上“糟糕，惡心!建起這道墻!(BAD, SICK! BUILD THAT WALL!)”法國(guó)極右翼總統(tǒng)候選人馬琳•勒龐(Marine Le Pen)一定會(huì)表示贊同。

One can imagine another author of a century ago, however, taking one glance at Trump and Le Pen and demanding that his publishers issue an updated version of his two-volume epic, The Decline of the West. Oswald Spengler saw the west less in the form of Nato, the US-Japan alliance and the European Union, which all define it for us today, and more as a European-American civilisation that was heading for history’s garbage-can — a verdict that even the coolest observation of the Trump administration’s opening weeks in office could now seem to confirm.

然而，我們可以想象一個(gè)世紀(jì)前的另一位作家，他看著特朗普和勒龐，要求出版商為自己的兩卷本史詩(shī)巨著《西方的沒(méi)落》(Decline of the West)發(fā)行一個(gè)新版本。奧斯瓦爾德•斯彭格勒(Oswald Spengler)看到的西方還沒(méi)有如今為我們界定西方的北約(Nato)、美日同盟和歐盟(EU)，他眼中的西方是一個(gè)正在走向歷史垃圾桶的歐美文明——即便以最冷靜的眼光來(lái)看，特朗普政府執(zhí)政初期的表現(xiàn)如今似乎也在證實(shí)這一判斷。

For this is the biggest issue of our times: a matter of whether, having seen so much failure in foreign affairs since 2001 and in economic affairs since 2008, the world’s richest, long most successful countries — i.e. the west — might now be slithering unstoppably down a slope, their slide likely to be accelerated by the populist-insurgents who are coming to power. Or, to put it a cheerier way, the issue is whether the Trumps and Le Pens of 2017 can be proved as wrong as were Lenin and Spengler a century ago.

因?yàn)檫@是我們時(shí)代最大的問(wèn)題：事關(guān)在2001年以來(lái)的外交事務(wù)領(lǐng)域、2008年以來(lái)的經(jīng)濟(jì)事務(wù)領(lǐng)域目睹如此多的失敗之后，全球最富裕、最成功的國(guó)家(如西方國(guó)家)如今是否已無(wú)法阻擋地開(kāi)始走下坡路，而這種衰落很可能因不斷崛起的民粹主義反叛者而加速。或者，換一種更動(dòng)聽(tīng)的方式說(shuō)，問(wèn)題在于，歷史能否證明2017年的特朗普們和勒龐們犯了與一個(gè)世紀(jì)前的列寧和斯彭格勒一樣的錯(cuò)誤。

Certainly, the word “globalisation” lies at the heart of it. It is the centrepiece of the populists’ complaints, a word that has come to signify a new bogeyman, a set of rapacious powers beyond national control, economic forces that shape circumstances according to the interests of alien others, far away. A new sort of imperialism, in other words, one that through the exploitative mechanisms of “finance capital”, as Lenin and plenty of anti-globalists have called it, produces insecurity and feelings of powerlessness.

當(dāng)然，“全球化”一詞處于這個(gè)問(wèn)題的核心。全球化是民粹主義者抱怨的主要對(duì)象;全球化一詞已開(kāi)始象征一個(gè)新的怪物、一套超越國(guó)家控制的貪婪的權(quán)力、將環(huán)境塑造得符合遠(yuǎn)方外國(guó)人利益的經(jīng)濟(jì)力量。換句話說(shuō)，全球化已變成一種新型帝國(guó)主義，通過(guò)(列寧及很多反全球化主義者口中的)“金融資本”剝削機(jī)制造成了不安全感和無(wú)力感。

President Trump, as a beneficiary of finance capital in his business life, would not quite put it that way. Otherwise, why would he have filled his new cabinet with billionaires? Nor could Trump be expected to agree that the world is at the last, or even highest, stage of capitalism. He probably wants to make capitalism great again. But he would agree that globalisation is his enemy, with the curious twist that he considers foreign countries to have been the imperialist scourges of America, while most non-American anti-globalists would put it the other way around. It is the ultimate irony: the west invented what we now call globalisation and it is America, epicentre of the west, that is demonising its own invention.

在自己的經(jīng)商生涯中受益于金融資本的特朗普總統(tǒng)，未必會(huì)贊同這種說(shuō)法。要不然，為什么他的新內(nèi)閣里擠滿了億萬(wàn)富翁?也不必指望特朗普會(huì)贊同世界處于資本主義的最后(或最高)階段。他八成想要讓資本主義再次變得偉大。但他會(huì)贊同，全球化是他的敵人，他還有個(gè)古怪的觀點(diǎn)，認(rèn)為外國(guó)是導(dǎo)致美國(guó)苦難的帝國(guó)主義者，而大多數(shù)非美國(guó)的反全球化主義者的看法正好相反。沒(méi)有什么比這更具諷刺意味了：西方發(fā)明了我們今天所稱的全球化，而西方的中心——美國(guó)卻在妖魔化自己的發(fā)明。

This all illustrates a great piece of writing advice from George Orwell: never use a long word when a short one will do. Whoever coined “globalisation” has a lot to answer for. If only he or she had followed Orwell and used instead the word “openness”, we might have got to the point rather more quickly.

這一切都反映了喬治•奧威爾(George Orwell)給出的一項(xiàng)偉大的寫(xiě)作建議：能用短詞的時(shí)候就別用長(zhǎng)詞。“全球化”一詞的創(chuàng)造者需要負(fù)很大的責(zé)任。如果他(或她)當(dāng)初聽(tīng)從了奧威爾的建議，用了“開(kāi)放”(openness)一詞，我們或許已經(jīng)迅速得多地搞明白了。

For there is something strange about the term the populists love to hate. It is that it implies an active effort to make everything global, a strategy to be planetary rather than national. Yet while that may be the sort of thing some companies include in their strategic plans — remember “think global, act local” — it doesn’t accurately represent any sort of public policy to “globalise” anything much at all. America, Japan, China, Britain, Germany: none of these countries has set globalisation as its active goal except, funnily enough, Britain now that it is leaving the EU.

因?yàn)槿蚧辉~存在容易招民粹主義者憎惡的怪異之處，那就是：全球化意味著努力讓一切都變成全球性的，意味著謀求一種超越國(guó)家的世界性。然而，雖然一些企業(yè)或許會(huì)將全球化納入自己的戰(zhàn)略規(guī)劃——記得“著眼全球、腳踏實(shí)地”(think global, act local)的口號(hào)吧——但準(zhǔn)確地說(shuō)，并沒(méi)有什么公共政策要將什么東西變得“全球化”。美國(guó)、日本、中國(guó)、英國(guó)、德國(guó)，這些國(guó)家沒(méi)有一個(gè)將全球化確立為行動(dòng)目標(biāo)——只除了英國(guó)，可笑的是，如今倒是英國(guó)要退出歐盟了。

Properly understood, globalisation has been an outcome, not an objective. It has been an outcome of policies that have treated openness as a virtue, including openness to trade, to ideas, to capital, to cultural interplay and, what is now for many the most sensitive issue, to migration.

正確的理解是，全球化只是一種結(jié)果，而非目標(biāo)。全球化是將開(kāi)放視為優(yōu)點(diǎn)的種種政策的結(jié)果，包括對(duì)貿(mào)易、思想、資本、文化的相互影響以及移民(如今被很多人視為最敏感的問(wèn)題)的開(kāi)放。

In the early postwar decades, when trade liberalisation and foreign direct investment chiefly occurred in America and western Europe, this was basically a matter of transatlantic relations, although the French writer-turned-politician, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, sounded alarms about “Le Défi Américain”, the American challenge, as US multinationals proved nimbler at exploiting emerging pan-European markets. Then it took in Japan, the miracle economy of its time, soon to be labelled an “unfair” trader as it racked up surpluses and then, in the 1980s, “bought part of America’s soul”, as Newsweek described Sony’s acquisition of Columbia Pictures.

二戰(zhàn)后初期，當(dāng)貿(mào)易自由化和對(duì)外直接投資主要存在于美國(guó)和西歐時(shí)，這基本上只是一個(gè)跨大西洋關(guān)系的問(wèn)題，盡管作家出身的法國(guó)政治家讓-雅克•塞爾旺-施賴伯(Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber)提醒人們警惕“美國(guó)的挑戰(zhàn)”(Le Défi Américain)——當(dāng)時(shí)美國(guó)的跨國(guó)公司事實(shí)上更善于利用新興的泛歐洲市場(chǎng)。接著，這種跨大西洋關(guān)系接納了那個(gè)時(shí)代的經(jīng)濟(jì)奇跡——日本，隨著日本對(duì)外積累起越來(lái)越大的順差，隨后在上世紀(jì)80年代《新聞周刊》(Newsweek)將索尼(Sony)收購(gòu)哥倫比亞影業(yè)公司(Columbia Pictures)形容為日本“買下了美國(guó)的部分靈魂”，日本很快被貼上了“不公平”貿(mào)易國(guó)的標(biāo)簽。

It was really only once China followed Japan’s lead by opening its economy to freer trade and foreign investment that the word globalisation took hold. More and more countries, all over the world, were opening up, in a process further fuelled by the way information technology was making communication cheaper and faster. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times jumped in and claimed in his 2005 book that “The World is Flat”, which would be unusual for a globe, though most people knew what he must mean, apart from the billion or so still-impoverished Indians for whom the world felt distinctly hilly.

只是在中國(guó)以日本為榜樣向自由貿(mào)易和外國(guó)投資開(kāi)放本國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)之后，全球化一詞才大行其道。世界各地越來(lái)越多的國(guó)家開(kāi)始實(shí)行開(kāi)放，而信息技術(shù)使交流更便宜、更快捷，進(jìn)一步推動(dòng)了這一進(jìn)程?！都~約時(shí)報(bào)》(New York Times)專欄作家托馬斯•弗里德曼(Thomas Friedman)站了出來(lái)，在他2005年出版的書(shū)中宣稱“世界是平的”(The World is Flat)，對(duì)于球型的地球來(lái)說(shuō)，這樣說(shuō)是不正常的，雖然大多數(shù)人都知道他的言下之意，除了約10億仍然貧窮的印度人，對(duì)他們而言，這個(gè)世界顯然崎嶇不平。

Who could object to a borderless world, whether spherical or flat? John Lennon had sung that we should imagine it as a sort of paradise to which we should aspire. Ryanair has been bringing more parts of that world within the affordable reach of people of modest means. The internet and satellite technology have made the whole world more visible, almost touchable.

誰(shuí)會(huì)反對(duì)一個(gè)無(wú)國(guó)界的世界——無(wú)論是球型的還是平的?約翰•列儂(John Lennon)曾唱到，我們應(yīng)該把它想象成一種我們應(yīng)向往的天堂。瑞安航空(Ryanair)一直在將全球更多地區(qū)納入一般收入人群可以去得起的范圍之內(nèi)?；ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)和衛(wèi)星技術(shù)使整個(gè)世界更加真實(shí)可見(jiàn)——幾乎觸手可及。

Yet here we are, with globalisation commencing some sort of a retreat and with the panoply of western institutions built during the past 70 years to keep the peace and facilitate openness — the World Trade Organisation, the EU, Nato, the UN in all its forms — under attack. When times feel hard, blaming foreigners, those rapacious powers of globalisation, is naturally tempting. Where this will lead, we cannot know. But to make it likelier to lead to better times rather than worse ones, it is as well to diagnose our ailments properly.

但現(xiàn)在我們的處境是，全球化開(kāi)始出現(xiàn)某種倒退，過(guò)去70年間為維持和平、促進(jìn)開(kāi)放而建立的大量西方機(jī)構(gòu)——世界貿(mào)易組織(WTO)、歐盟(EU)、北約(Nato)、各種聯(lián)合國(guó)(UN)機(jī)構(gòu)——正在受到攻擊。當(dāng)時(shí)局艱難時(shí)，指責(zé)外國(guó)人(全球化的貪婪力量)自然成為誘人選項(xiàng)。局勢(shì)會(huì)如何發(fā)展，我們不得而知。但如果想讓局勢(shì)可能往好的方向發(fā)展，最好對(duì)我們的問(wèn)題做出恰當(dāng)?shù)脑\斷。

That is why, in good Orwellian manner, the short word is preferable to the long one. But it mustn’t be left on its own. For although throughout the history of economic and social development openness has been a necessary virtue, it has not been a sufficient one. In practice, it has needed some contemporary interpretation of another word alongside it: equality.

這就是(按奧威爾的方式)短詞“開(kāi)放”優(yōu)于長(zhǎng)詞“全球化”的原因。但僅靠開(kāi)放肯定不行。因?yàn)?，雖然在整個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)和社會(huì)發(fā)展史上，開(kāi)放是一個(gè)必要條件，它并非充分條件。實(shí)際上，“開(kāi)放”需要當(dāng)代意義上的“平等”一詞與它并肩作戰(zhàn)。

The virtue of openness is that it brings change in the form of better ideas, better ways of doing things, better sources of this good or that service. As the science writer (and now Conservative member of the House of Lords) Matt Ridley memorably put it in his 2010 book The Rational Optimist, progress and prosperity arrive “when ideas have sex”. In an age obsessed by Uber, this is known as “disruption”, but there is nothing new about it at all.

開(kāi)放的優(yōu)點(diǎn)是，它可以帶來(lái)各種變化：更優(yōu)秀的思想、更佳的做事方式、更好的商品或服務(wù)?？破兆骷?現(xiàn)為上議院保守黨成員)馬特•里德利(Matt Ridley)在自己2010年的著作《理性樂(lè)觀派》(The Rational Optimist)中寫(xiě)道，“當(dāng)不同的思想‘交配’時(shí)”，就會(huì)出現(xiàn)進(jìn)步和繁榮。在一個(gè)被優(yōu)步(Uber)困擾的時(shí)代，這被稱為“顛覆”，但這根本不是什么新鮮事。

The trouble with change is indeed that it brings disruption, from which some people feel like winners and others feel like losers. For that reason, the societies that have absorbed and even embraced change most successfully have been those that gave a wide group of citizens some sort of a voice about what was going on, and about what collective efforts might be needed to deal with its consequences.

改變的問(wèn)題其實(shí)就是它帶來(lái)了顛覆，有些人在其中感覺(jué)成了贏家，其他一些人感覺(jué)成了輸家。因此，最成功地吸收甚至擁抱變革的社會(huì)，是那些讓廣大市民對(duì)如下問(wèn)題擁有一定發(fā)言權(quán)的社會(huì)：正在發(fā)生什么事情以及需要共同采取何種努力來(lái)應(yīng)對(duì)其后果。

We now call this democracy, as the equality of political rights has been extended to entire adult populations, but the same principle applied beforehand. Open societies such as 18th-century Britain and the Netherlands, which had relatively fluid elites and which traded ideas widely, prospered more than did closed ones. The secret to evolutionary success over the longer term has been the balancing of that openness with forms of equality that help to build social trust and provide reassurance.

如今，隨著平等的政治權(quán)利擴(kuò)展到所有成年人，我們稱這為民主，但同樣的原則早已在社會(huì)中應(yīng)用。開(kāi)放社會(huì)——如18世紀(jì)擁有相對(duì)自由流動(dòng)的精英且思想得到廣泛交流的英國(guó)和荷蘭——從前就比封閉社會(huì)更加繁榮。從長(zhǎng)期來(lái)看，演進(jìn)式成功的秘訣在于，在開(kāi)放與各種形式的平等之間實(shí)現(xiàn)平衡，平等有助于建立社會(huì)信任、安穩(wěn)民心。

So why has this gone wrong? The first answer is that it frequently goes wrong. The real question is whether stumbling societies can get on their feet again; whether they retain the power to evolve while rebuilding social trust. In 1975 the Trilateral Commission, a private body dedicated to dialogue between America, western Europe and Japan, published a report entitled “The Crisis of Democracy”. That report quoted Willy Brandt as having said, just before he stepped down as West Germany’s chancellor in 1974 that: “Western Europe has only 20 or 30 more years of democracy left in it; after that it will slide, engineless and rudderless, under the surrounding sea of dictatorship, and whether the dictation comes from a politburo or junta will not make that much difference.”

那么，為什么出了問(wèn)題?第一種回答是，出問(wèn)題是很常見(jiàn)的。真正的問(wèn)題是，跌倒的社會(huì)是否還能站起來(lái);它們能否還保持著一邊重建社會(huì)信任、一邊演進(jìn)的能力。1975年，致力于在美國(guó)、西歐、日本之間推動(dòng)對(duì)話的民間組織——三邊委員會(huì)(Trilateral Commission)發(fā)布了一份名為《民主的危機(jī)》(The Crisis of Democracy)的報(bào)告。報(bào)告援引維利•勃蘭特(Willy Brandt)在1974年辭去西德總理前不久說(shuō)的話：“西歐民主只剩二三十年的時(shí)間;在那之后，他將衰落，失去動(dòng)力，失去方向，陷入獨(dú)裁統(tǒng)治汪洋大海的包圍，無(wú)論是共產(chǎn)黨政治局的獨(dú)裁統(tǒng)治、還是軍政府的獨(dú)裁統(tǒng)治，都不會(huì)有太大區(qū)別。”

Not a great prediction, given that in the same period Greece, Portugal and Spain all replaced dictators with democracies, but Brandt’s mind was no doubt swayed by the terrorism and disorder being felt in several European countries, by the discovery of an East German spy in his own office, and the economic troubles all western countries were then mired in thanks to the 1973 oil shock.

這預(yù)言不是太準(zhǔn)確，因?yàn)樵谕粫r(shí)期，希臘、葡萄牙和西班牙都以民主取代了獨(dú)裁者，但多個(gè)歐洲國(guó)家出現(xiàn)的恐怖主義和無(wú)序、勃蘭特自己的辦公室里發(fā)現(xiàn)一名東德間諜以及1973年的石油危機(jī)后所有西方國(guó)家都陷入經(jīng)濟(jì)危機(jī)，無(wú)疑堅(jiān)定了他的想法。

The second answer, however, is that we’ve messed things up, again. We did so most spectacularly, and potentially fatefully, with the 2008 financial crisis, which we call global but was really American and European. That crisis reflected serious policy errors, of course, but also the excessive, because unequal, political power wielded by the financial industry. That is almost a decade ago now, but the effects live on, in household incomes that are no higher, and often lower, than in 2007. And, crucially, it lives on in the sense that the unequal grip of bankers and other oligarchs has been left largely unchanged.

然而，第二種回答是我們?cè)俅伟咽虑楦阍伊?。我們以一種極為引人注目的方式(或許是注定的)把事情搞砸了——2008年的金融危機(jī)，我們稱之為全球金融危機(jī)，但實(shí)際上是美國(guó)和歐洲的危機(jī)。當(dāng)然，此次危機(jī)反映了嚴(yán)重的政策錯(cuò)誤，但也反映了金融業(yè)掌握的不平等的政治權(quán)力。那場(chǎng)危機(jī)距今已過(guò)去近10年，但影響依然還在，反映在家庭收入如今還沒(méi)有超過(guò)(通常低于)2007年的水平。關(guān)鍵是，這種影響還反映在人們的這種感覺(jué)中：銀行家和其他寡頭享有的不平等的支配力基本上毫發(fā)無(wú)損。

Plenty of today’s ailments can be traced back to long before 2008, as technology disrupted labour markets, say, and demography raised the burdens on public finances of healthcare and pensions. But what 2008 did was to shake people’s faith in the whole system. It weakened or in some cases destroyed their belief that evolutionary solutions would eventually be found.

當(dāng)今的很多問(wèn)題都可以追溯到至2008年之前很久，比如，隨著技術(shù)顛覆勞動(dòng)力市場(chǎng)，人口結(jié)構(gòu)加重了醫(yī)療和養(yǎng)老金方面的公共財(cái)政負(fù)擔(dān)。但2008年金融危機(jī)動(dòng)搖了人們對(duì)整個(gè)體制的信心。它削弱或(在某些情況下)摧毀了他們的信念，即最終會(huì)找到演進(jìn)的解決方案。

The sense of equality has been badly damaged, not just in terms of incomes but of political voice. Openness to fully free flows of capital has been shown to be not just dangerous to economies but also liable to corrupt democracies. Social trust has been eroded.

平等的感覺(jué)已遭嚴(yán)重破壞——不僅在收入方面，而且在政治發(fā)言權(quán)方面。對(duì)資本完全自由流動(dòng)的開(kāi)放已被證明不僅威脅經(jīng)濟(jì)體，而且容易腐蝕民主國(guó)家。社會(huì)信任已被侵蝕。

What Trump has done, as Lenin did a century ago, has been to sense the political winds and to sail into power thanks to their strength. Populists such as him and Le Pen get many things right: they should not be ignored. It is their solutions that are dangerous, because they are liable to close societies, to lead to fewer ideas having sex, and to damage the vital ability of democracies to evolve.

像一個(gè)世紀(jì)前列寧做得那樣，特朗普一直在感知政治風(fēng)向，并利用其力量進(jìn)入權(quán)力中樞。特朗普、勒龐這樣的民粹主義者在很多事情上是對(duì)的：他們不應(yīng)被忽視。危險(xiǎn)的是他們提出的解決方案，因?yàn)檫@些方案有可能導(dǎo)致社會(huì)封閉，導(dǎo)致更少的思想“交配”，破壞民主演進(jìn)的重要能力。

Now, it is up to all those democracies to show that, like Brandt 40 years ago, the declinists are wrong. To do so, they will need to restore the harmony between openness and equality. It can be done. The question is whether it will be done.

如今，所有這些民主國(guó)家都肩負(fù)著如下責(zé)任：向世人證明，像40年前的勃蘭特那樣，衰落論者是錯(cuò)誤的。要做到這一點(diǎn)，它們需要讓開(kāi)放與平等重新和諧共處。這是可以做到的。問(wèn)題在于是否有人做。

Bill Emmott will be speaking at the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival on Saturday April 1 about ‘The Fate of the West’, published by Economist Books in April (UK) and May (US)

比爾•艾默特(Bill Emmott)的新書(shū)《西方的命運(yùn)》(The Fate of the West)將由Economist Books于今年4月在英國(guó)出版，5月在美國(guó)出版。