從列寧到雷曼兄弟：謊言的代價

Two anniversaries we mark this year — the centenary of the Russian Revolution and the decade since the start of the global financial crisis — have more in common than is apparent at first sight.

今年我們慶祝的兩個紀念日——十月革命100周年、全球金融危機爆發(fā)10周年——比乍看上去有更多共同點。

Both events are self-evidently momentous. The October Revolution ushered in a dictatorship that would loom over the 20th century as one contestant for hegemony against fascism (in the first half) and democratic market liberalism (throughout). The global financial crisis, meanwhile, shook to its foundations the model that had emerged victorious from the cold war.

兩大事件的重要性都不言而喻。十月革命催生了一個獨裁政權，這個獨裁政權是貫穿整個20世紀的主角之一——與法西斯主義(上半葉)和民主市場自由主義(整個20世紀)爭奪霸權。而全球金融危機動搖了從冷戰(zhàn)中勝出的自由主義模式的根基。

The stultifying communism that the Soviet bloc had evolved to by the 1980s collapsed under the weight of its own economic and political contradictions. The political turmoil of the last year demonstrates that we are now watching to see whether open market economies will suffer the same fate.

到上世紀80年代，蘇聯(lián)演化出的僵化遲鈍的共產(chǎn)主義，在其自身重重經(jīng)濟、政治矛盾的重壓下崩潰。去年上演的政治亂象證明，如今我們正在見證開放市場經(jīng)濟是否將遭遇同樣的命運。

But the similarities run deeper than merely the historic scale of the two events. The content, too, of the current threat to democratic market liberalism is the same as that which felled its rival.

但兩起事件的相似性不止于同樣深遠的歷史意義。民主市場自由主義眼下面臨的威脅，也與當年擊倒其對手的威脅一樣嚴峻。

Communism failed because it committed two types of lies. The first was to betray the dream that had originally attracted so many millions to it: a society of equality, solidarity and self-realisation through collective purpose. Belief in this dream lived on longer than could be justified even in communism’s heartland — and longer still in the west. It was eventually ground down by reality.

共產(chǎn)主義之所以失敗，是因為它撒了兩個謊。第一個謊是背叛了最初吸引無數(shù)人投身共產(chǎn)主義的夢想：一個建立在共同目標基礎上，平等、團結、自我成就的社會。在共產(chǎn)主義的大本營，人們對這一夢想的信心即便在失去依據(jù)后還繼續(xù)存在了一段時間，在西方則繼續(xù)存在了更長時間。這種信心最終被現(xiàn)實碾碎。

The second lie was an economic system based on deceit and self-delusion. It is mostly forgotten, but a real debate raged for a good part of the 20th century over whether central planning or decentralised markets would secure the most efficient allocation of resources. The case for state control of the means of production was that only planning could overcome the clear waste of resources involved in capitalism’s mass unemployment and recurrent demand deficiencies causing recessions.

第二個謊是一種基于欺騙和自欺的經(jīng)濟制度。人們大多都不記得了，但20世紀很大一部分時間，圍繞到底是中央計劃還是自由市場可以實現(xiàn)最高效的資源配置，展開過一場激烈的辯論。主張國家控制生產(chǎn)資料的理由是，只有計劃才能克服資本主義大規(guī)模失業(yè)和導致經(jīng)濟衰退的周期性需求不足帶來的資源浪費。

In practice, of course, actual central planning has been awful at producing and allocating the goods its citizens wanted. But instead of correcting itself, the planned economy would turn the plan into the great lie around which everyone’s public beliefs had to align, even as they privately knew better. “You pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” was a joke from Rostock to Vladivostok, but also a statement of reality.

在實踐中，當然，實行中央計劃在生產(chǎn)和分配公民所需的商品方面表現(xiàn)非常糟糕。但計劃經(jīng)濟非但不糾正自身問題，反而將這種計劃變成了一個彌天大謊，每個人公開的看法都必須配合這個謊言——即便他們心里明白得很。“你們假裝給我們支付報酬，我們假裝工作”是一個從羅斯托克到符拉迪沃斯托克都在講的笑話，但也是現(xiàn)實的寫照。

Only late in the day did the intellectual consensus endorse Friedrich von Hayek’s insight that flexible market prices contain more information than any planning mechanism can hope to gather centrally; and that dispersed decision-making therefore acts more efficiently than state authorities can do.

知識界很晚才達成共識，同意弗雷德里希•馮•哈耶克(Friedrich von Hayek)的如下深刻見解是正確的：靈活的市場價格包含的信息比任何計劃機制有可能統(tǒng)一收集的都多;因此，分散決策可以比政府部門更高效地發(fā)揮作用。

This insight goes a long way towards explaining the growing prosperity gap between the capitalist and the communist world towards the end of the cold war. Yet it had a rude awakening in the global financial crisis, which undermined any claim of western financial capitalism to being the best way to organise an economy.

這一深刻見解很好地解釋了，為什么冷戰(zhàn)期間資本主義與共產(chǎn)主義世界之間的繁榮程度差距不斷擴大。然而，全球金融危機粗暴地向資本主義世界潑了一盆冷水，它讓如下說法變得不那么站得住腳：西方金融資本主義是組織經(jīng)濟的最佳方式。

The Hayekian epiphany about the price mechanism is not wrong, but incomplete. Market prices of goods and services are indeed a more powerful informational device than any central plan. But the crisis showed the same cannot be said for the prices of assets.

哈耶克在價格機制方面的頓悟沒有錯，但并不全面。商品和服務的市場價格的確是一種比任何中央計劃都強大的信息工具。但全球金融危機顯示出，資產(chǎn)的市場價格卻并非如此。

If the five-year plan was the Soviet bloc’s grand lie, here is that of capitalism: that the market values of financial and other assets accurately reflect the economic value they represent.

如果五年計劃曾經(jīng)是蘇聯(lián)的彌天大謊，那么資本主義的彌天大謊則是：金融及其他資產(chǎn)的市場價值準確反映它們代表的經(jīng)濟價值。

What happened 10 years ago this month was the horrifying realisation that financial claims accumulated over the previous boom years did not add up, that the future economic production which they were claims on was insufficient for them all to be honoured in full.

十年前那個8月發(fā)生的事情，讓人們驚恐地意識到，此前繁榮年代積累起來的金融所有權數(shù)目有問題，這些所有權的主張對象是未來的經(jīng)濟產(chǎn)出，而未來的經(jīng)濟產(chǎn)出不足以讓所有的所有權得到全額兌現(xiàn)。

In brief, the wealth that people thought they possessed did not in fact exist. When enough people saw that their perception of their wealth was untrue, the system unravelled. The disorientation and distrust that have followed in both markets and politics was just what one would expect when millions realise they have been living a lie.

總之，人們認為自己擁有的財富實際上并不存在。當足夠多的人看出，自己對自己擁有多少財富的看法是不符合實際的，這個系統(tǒng)就瓦解了。當數(shù)以百萬計的人們認識到自己生活在謊言之中時，市場和政治體制隨后出現(xiàn)混亂和懷疑就不足為怪了。

One lie spawned another, as market liberalism, in its turn, betrayed the dream it had promised. Western economies are today far poorer than the trend before the crash predicted. The crisis and its aftermath have left the young, in particular, with little reason to hope for the same opportunities to prosper as their parents and grandparents.

當市場自由主義也背叛了其描繪的夢想，前一個謊言就滋生出一個新的謊言。如今，西方經(jīng)濟體的表現(xiàn)比危機前的趨勢預測要糟糕得多。全球金融危機及其后果，尤其使年輕人幾乎毫無希望得到與自己的父母和祖父母當年相同的獲得成功的機會。

Those who want liberal democratic capitalism to thrive again must heed two lessons from this comparison.

那些希望自由民主資本主義再次興盛起來的人士，必須從這種對比中汲取兩個教訓。

First, a social system can survive disillusion for a long time. Communism showed this; as indeed does capitalism, whose promise was broken decades before the crisis for some groups. But when people can no longer count on their livelihoods, support snaps. Even so, the most resilient societies are those that know the truth about themselves. Deceit makes for brittleness. Market liberalism is in peril because its financial system allowed us to tell ourselves lies; and did not reckon decisively with the losses once they were undeniable.

首先，一種社會制度可以在夢想幻滅后茍延殘喘很長時間。共產(chǎn)主義證明了這一點;資本主義也是如此，因為在部分群體看來，資本主義早在危機爆發(fā)前幾十年就已經(jīng)喪失了前途。但當人們的生計不再有保障時，他們就不再支持這個社會制度了。即便如此，最具彈性的社會是那些了解自身真實情況的社會。欺騙導致脆弱。市場自由主義之所以正處于危險之中，是因為其金融體系容許我們自欺欺人，而不果斷地承認已經(jīng)無可爭辯的損失。

Left and right populists traffic in nostalgia for the heyday of the mixed economy. They are right that the contest between planning and laissez-faire must be resolved by a mix of the two. The biggest lesson from that contest is any social and economic system must be kept honest — not just fair, but truthful. And that’s a radicalism the populists are singularly unqualified to provide.

左翼和右翼民粹義者都販賣一種對混合經(jīng)濟全盛時期的懷念。他們的主張沒錯，計劃經(jīng)濟與自由放任主義之間的競爭的確必須通過混合兩者來解決。這場競爭帶來的最大教訓就是，任何社會和經(jīng)濟制度都必須保持誠實——不只是公平，而且要真實。而這正是民粹主義者唯一無法提供的一種激進主義。