Zeús

是時候為“全球化”正名了(上)

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，抽時間寫了一本名為《帝國主義是資本主義的最高階段》(Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)的小冊子，解釋為什麼革命已“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，我們可以想像一個世紀前的另一位作家，他看著特朗普和勒龐，要求出版商為自己的兩卷本史詩巨著《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 — ie 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.

因為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”剝削機製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，為什麼他的新內閣裡擠滿了億萬富翁？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，認為外國是導緻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.

因為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：全球化意味著努力讓一切都變成全球性的，意味著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“著眼全球、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為行動目標——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。全球化是將開放視為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（如今被很多人視為最敏感的問題）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。接著，這種跨大西洋關係接納了那個時代的經濟奇蹟——日本，隨著日本對外積累起越來越大的順差，隨後在上世紀80年代《新聞周刊》(Newsweek)將索尼(Sony)收購哥倫比亞影業公司(Columbia Pictures)形容為日本“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.

只是在中國以日本為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‧弗里德曼(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，我們應該把它想像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群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。

 

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(來源：本文來自可可英語)