是時候爲“全球化”正名了

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，抽時間寫了一本名爲《帝國主義是資本主義的最高階段》(Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)的小冊子，解釋爲什麼革命已“箭在弦上”。如果列寧的現代繼任者（雖然政治上對立）唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)在Twitter上進行效法的話，他或許會用“全球主義”取代帝國主義，再加上“糟糕，噁心！建起這道牆！(BAD, SICK! BUILD THAT WALL!)”法國極右翼總統候選人馬琳?勒龐(Marine Le Pen)一定會表示贊同。

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，我們可以想象一個世紀前的另一位作家，他看着特朗普和勒龐，要求出版商爲自己的兩卷本史詩鉅著《西方的沒落》(Decline of the West)發行一個新版本。奧斯瓦爾德?斯彭格勒(Oswald Spengler)看到的西方還沒有如今爲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正在走向歷史垃圾桶的歐美文明——即便以最冷靜的眼光來看，特朗普政府執政初期的表現如今似乎也在證實這一判斷。

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.

因爲這是我們時代最大的問題：事關在2001年以來的外交事務領域、2008年以來的經濟事務領域目睹如此多的失敗之後，全球最富裕、最成功的國家（如西方國家）如今是否已無法阻擋地開始走下坡路，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，換一種更動聽的方式說，問題在於，歷史能否證明2017年的特朗普們和勒龐們犯了與一個世紀前的列寧和斯彭格勒一樣的錯誤。

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.

當然，“全球化”一詞處於這個問題的核心。全球化是民粹主義者抱怨的主要對象；全球化一詞已開始象徵一個新的怪物、一套超越國家控制的貪婪的權力、將環境塑造得符合遠方外國人利益的經濟力量。換句話說，全球化已變成一種新型帝國主義，通過（列寧及很多反全球化主義者口中的）“金融資本”剝削機制造成了不安全感和無力感。

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.

在自己的經商生涯中受益於金融資本的特朗普總統，未必會贊同這種說法。要不然，爲什麼他的新內閣裏擠滿了億萬富翁？也不必指望特朗普會贊同世界處於資本主義的最後（或最高）階段。他八成想要讓資本主義再次變得偉大。但他會贊同，全球化是他的敵人，他還有個古怪的觀點，認爲外國是導致美國苦難的帝國主義者，而大多數非美國的反全球化主義者的看法正好相反。沒有什麼比這更具諷刺意味了：西方發明了我們今天所稱的全球化，而西方的中心——美國卻在妖魔化自己的發明。

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)給出的一項偉大的寫作建議：能用短詞的時候就別用長詞。“全球化”一詞的創造者需要負很大的責任。如果他（或她）當初聽從了奧威爾的建議，用了“開放”(openness)一詞，我們或許已經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.

因爲全球化一詞存在容易招民粹主義者憎惡的怪異之處，那就是：全球化意味着努力讓一切都變成全球性的，意味着謀求一種超越國家的世界性。然而，雖然一些企業或許會將全球化納入自己的戰略規劃——記得“着眼全球、腳踏實地”(think global, act local)的口號吧——但準確地說，並沒有什麼公共政策要將什麼東西變得“全球化”。美國、日本、中國、英國、德國，這些國家沒有一個將全球化確立爲行動目標——只除了英國，可笑的是，如今倒是英國要退出歐盟了。

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，全球化只是一種結果，而非目標。全球化是將開放視爲優點的種種政策的結果，包括對貿易、思想、資本、文化的相互影響以及移民（如今被很多人視爲最敏感的問題）的開放。

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.

二戰後初期，當貿易自由化和對外直接投資主要存在於美國和西歐時，這基本上只是一個跨大西洋關係的問題，儘管作家出身的法國政治家讓-雅克?塞爾旺-施賴伯(Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber)提醒人們警惕“美國的挑戰”(Le Défi Américain)——當時美國的跨國公司事實上更善於利用新興的泛歐洲市場。接着，這種跨大西洋關係接納了那個時代的經濟奇蹟——日本，隨着日本對外積累起越來越大的順差，隨後在上世紀80年代《新聞週刊》(Newsweek)將索尼(Sony)收購哥倫比亞影業公司(Columbia Pictures)形容爲日本“買下了美國的部分靈魂”，日本很快被貼上了“不公平”貿易國的標籤。

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.

只是在中國以日本爲榜樣向自由貿易和外國投資開放本國經濟之後，全球化一詞才大行其道。世界各地越來越多的國家開始實行開放，而信息技術使交流更便宜、更快捷，進一步推動了這一進程。《紐約時報》(New York Times)專欄作家托馬斯?弗裏德曼(Thomas Friedman)站了出來，在他2005年出版的書中宣稱“世界是平的”(The World is Flat)，對於球型的地球來說，這樣說是不正常的，雖然大多數人都知道他的言下之意，除了約10億仍然貧窮的印度人，對他們而言，這個世界顯然崎嶇不平。

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.

誰會反對一個無國界的世界——無論是球型的還是平的？約翰?列儂(John Lennon)曾唱到，我們應該把它想象成一種我們應嚮往的天堂。瑞安航空(Ryanair)一直在將全球更多地區納入一般收入人羣可以去得起的範圍之內。互聯網和衛星技術使整個世界更加真實可見——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.

但現在我們的處境是，全球化開始出現某種倒退，過去70年間爲維持和平、促進開放而建立的大量西方機構——世界貿易組織(WTO)、歐盟(EU)、北約(Nato)、各種聯合國(UN)機構——正在受到攻擊。當時局艱難時，指責外國人（全球化的貪婪力量）自然成爲誘人選項。局勢會如何發展，我們不得而知。但如果想讓局勢可能往好的方向發展，最好對我們的問題做出恰當的診斷。

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“開放”優於長詞“全球化”的原因。但僅靠開放肯定不行。因爲，雖然在整個經濟和社會發展史上，開放是一個必要條件，它並非充分條件。實際上，“開放”需要當代意義上的“平等”一詞與它並肩作戰。

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.

開放的優點是，它可以帶來各種變化：更優秀的思想、更佳的做事方式、更好的商品或服務。科普作家（現爲上議院保守黨成員）馬特?裏德利(Matt Ridley)在自己2010年的著作《理性樂觀派》(The Rational Optimist)中寫道，“當不同的思想‘交配’時”，就會出現進步和繁榮。在一個被優步(Uber)困擾的時代，這被稱爲“顛覆”，但這根本不是什麼新鮮事。

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.

改變的問題其實就是它帶來了顛覆，有些人在其中感覺成了贏家，其他一些人感覺成了輸家。因此，最成功地吸收甚至擁抱變革的社會，是那些讓廣大市民對如下問題擁有一定發言權的社會：正在發生什麼事情以及需要共同採取何種努力來應對其後果。

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，隨着平等的政治權利擴展到所有成年人，我們稱這爲民主，但同樣的原則早已在社會中應用。開放社會——如18世紀擁有相對自由流動的精英且思想得到廣泛交流的英國和荷蘭——從前就比封閉社會更加繁榮。從長期來看，演進式成功的祕訣在於，在開放與各種形式的平等之間實現平衡，平等有助於建立社會信任、安穩民心。

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.”

那麼，爲什麼出了問題？第一種回答是，出問題是很常見的。真正的問題是，跌倒的社會是否還能站起來；它們能否還保持着一邊重建社會信任、一邊演進的能力。1975年，致力於在美國、西歐、日本之間推動對話的民間組織——三邊委員會(Trilateral Commission)發佈了一份名爲《民主的危機》(The Crisis of Democracy)的報告。報告援引維利?勃蘭特(Willy Brandt)在1974年辭去西德總理前不久說的話：“西歐民主只剩二三十年的時間；在那之後，他將衰落，失去動力，失去方向，陷入獨裁統治汪洋大海的包圍，無論是共產黨政治局的獨裁統治、還是軍政府的獨裁統治，都不會有太大區別。”

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.

這預言不是太準確，因爲在同一時期，希臘、葡萄牙和西班牙都以民主取代了獨裁者，但多個歐洲國家出現的恐怖主義和無序、勃蘭特自己的辦公室裏發現一名東德間諜以及1973年的石油危機後所有西方國家都陷入經濟危機，無疑堅定了他的想法。

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，第二種回答是我們再次把事情搞砸了。我們以一種極爲引人注目的方式（或許是註定的）把事情搞砸了——2008年的金融危機，我們稱之爲全球金融危機，但實際上是美國和歐洲的危機。當然，此次危機反映了嚴重的政策錯誤，但也反映了金融業掌握的不平等的政治權力。那場危機距今已過去近10年，但影響依然還在，反映在家庭收入如今還沒有超過（通常低於）2007年的水平。關鍵是，這種影響還反映在人們的這種感覺中：銀行家和其他寡頭享有的不平等的支配力基本上毫髮無損。

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.

當今的很多問題都可以追溯到至2008年之前很久，比如，隨着技術顛覆勞動力市場，人口結構加重了醫療和養老金方面的公共財政負擔。但2008年金融危機動搖了人們對整個體制的信心。它削弱或（在某些情況下）摧毀了他們的信念，即最終會找到演進的解決方案。

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.

平等的感覺已遭嚴重破壞——不僅在收入方面，而且在政治發言權方面。對資本完全自由流動的開放已被證明不僅威脅經濟體，而且容易腐蝕民主國家。社會信任已被侵蝕。

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.

像一個世紀前列寧做得那樣，特朗普一直在感知政治風向，並利用其力量進入權力中樞。特朗普、勒龐這樣的民粹主義者在很多事情上是對的：他們不應被忽視。危險的是他們提出的解決方案，因爲這些方案有可能導致社會封閉，導致更少的思想“交配”，破壞民主演進的重要能力。

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，所有這些民主國家都肩負着如下責任：向世人證明，像40年前的勃蘭特那樣，衰落論者是錯誤的。要做到這一點，它們需要讓開放與平等重新和諧共處。這是可以做到的。問題在於是否有人做。

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《西方的命運》(The Fate of the West)將由Economist Books於今年4月在英國出版，5月在美國出版。