市场机制仍无可替代

市场机制仍无可替代
作者：英国《金融时报》专栏作家 塞缪尔?布里坦
2012年01月20日 07:48 AM
  
 
很久以前（久到我已不愿回想），我曾写过一本书，名叫《资本主义与宽容的社会》(Capitalism and the Permissive Society)。这个书名让一些人感到疑惑，因为这两样我都赞成。与大多数政治经济学书籍一样，这本书远未臻完美。但说它不完美，并不是因为存在错误，而是有疏漏之处。如今，虽然时光已过去了将近25年，回头看这本书，几乎没有任何观点是如今我想要收回的。

没必要去假装市场回报能反映个人价值。正如墨尔本子爵（Lord Melbourne，本名威廉姆?兰姆(William Lamb)，19世纪三四十年代曾两度出任英国首相——译者注）在谈到一个其他问题时所言：“这跟价值毫无关系。”实施再分配的最佳途径，是建立（最好是统一的）税收和社会保障体系，而不是去干预价格和工资。

动用货币和财政政策，来缓和经济活动中的波动、避免长期的需求不足导致不必要的失业，以及避免通胀失控，与成功的资本主义也并不冲突，在我看来这甚至是必须的。

我支持自由竞争的资本主义，关键原因在于它能够促进个人和政治自由。非金融领域的商人，可以通过为成年人提供他们想要的东西而致富——即便这些东西可能是在一些长者和道德高尚者眼中毫无益处的东西，比如流行音乐专辑、棉花糖或脱衣舞表演。最重要的是，每个人都有权自由选择在哪方面发挥自己的才干。一个人可以专心享乐、在从事社会公益事业、帮助国外的穷人，或以上活动和其他活动的任意组合。

20世纪早期，奥地利经济学家路德维希?冯?米塞斯(Ludwig von Mises)诘问社会主义者：如果没有资本主义市场，该如何决定生产什么、以及如何生产？“市场社会主义者”的回答最有意思。他们断言，国有企业能够模拟资本主义企业，利用市场价格来引导自己的行为。诚然，如果产品种类已知、技术已知、公众偏好保持不变，这是能够实现的。然而，当涉及到发明新产品或寻找降低成本的方法时，情况就完全不同。应该让哪些人来管理、哪些人被管理，可供投资的有限资金又该如何分配给怀有投资点子的所有人？首先，约翰?斯图亚特?穆勒(John Stuart Mill)阐明了一个政治上的考虑：“如果一个国家的所有公路、铁路、银行、保险公司和有限合伙企业都是政府机构的一部分……如果这些企业的雇员……人生中每一次升迁都要指望政府，那么即便媒体自由、立法机构民选，这个国家的“自由”也只可能是表面上的。”在讽刺评论期刊《侦探》(Private Eye)的创刊过程中，私人资本发挥了重要作用；而在上世纪50年代的美国，一些作家为逃避麦肯锡主义的迫害，在私人部门寻找工作。这两个例子都验证了私人资本对于言论自由的重要性。

员工所有制企业有一定吸引力（穆勒赞同这种所有制），也有一些成功的例子，比如西班牙的蒙特拉贡集团(Mondragon group)、连锁百货商店约翰?路易斯合伙公司(John Lewis Partnership)——我曾在那里购物并满意而归。不过，从政治上来说，要将所有企业转变为员工所有制，确实没有足够的证据和分析作为支持。

任人唯亲可能导致各种结果、从而腐蚀资本主义，保守党议员杰西?诺曼(Jesse Norman)列举出了其中的几种：传统的垄断资本主义，俄罗斯式、以寡头控制自然资源为标志的资本主义，军人执政式资本主义，建立在毒品交易基础上的毒贩资本主义。最后一种情况因受到西方过度干预的立法（比如美国在上世纪20年代颁布的禁令）影响而有所恶化。不过，我们不必说什么这些不是“真正的资本主义”，这些确实是资本主义的不同类别，我们也不必给它们贴上“保守主义”的标签。

和许多同类作品一样，我那本书的真正缺点是，没有涉及金融部门，也没有讨论以下这一点：即便物价没有出现明显的通胀或通缩，金融部门行为也可能对资本主义秩序造成损害。任何一种市场秩序要想建立，都必须设法将储蓄和借贷的愿望结合到一起。把多余的钱投资于可投资的基金市场，或以各种方式对人生中的意外情况进行保障，当然比把钱藏在床垫下要强得多。但这并不意味着，我们可以容忍大量虚拟资金威胁一个又一个机构和国家。资本主义是实现自由和富足的手段，其本身并非目的。那本书在这方面加以改进之后，或许不仅可以证明国际监管的合理性，还能证明一点：银行和其他金融机构在很长一段时间里，都应继续为公众所有，政府必须救助银行。

译者/吴蔚

2012年01月20日 07:48 AM
 The market still has no real rivals
By Samuel?Brittan
 
 
Longer ago than I like to think back I wrote a book Capitalism and the Permissive Society the title of which puzzled some people as I was in favour of both. Like most books on political economy it was highly imperfect. But its faults were those of omission rather than commission; and looking back on it nearly two and a half decades later there is almost nothing I wish to withdraw.

There is no need to pretend that market rewards reflect personal merit. As Lord Melbourne said in another context: “There is no damn’d merit about it.” Redistribution is best carried out by a (preferably unified) tax and social security system and not by interfering with prices and wages.

Successful capitalism is also compatible with – and in my view requires – the use of monetary and fiscal policy to moderate fluctuations in economic activity and to prevent long periods of demand deficiency causing needless unemployment as well of course as to prevent runaway inflation.

My central case for competitive capitalism is that it promotes personal and political freedom. A businessman outside the financial sector will prosper by providing what adults wish to have – even if that is pop records candyfloss or nude shows rather than what their supposed elders and betters think is good for them. Above all the individual is free to use his abilities in line with his own choices. He or she can concentrate on personal pleasure social service at home the relief of poverty abroad or any combination of these and other activities.

Early in the 20th century Ludwig von Mises an Austrian economist challenged socialists to say how to determine what should be produced and by what methods in the absence of capitalist markets. The most interesting response came from “market socialists” who asserted that state-owned enterprises could mimic capitalist ones in using market prices to guide their activities. Indeed they could with a known set of products a known technology and known and static public tastes. The matter is wholly different when it comes to inventing new products or discovering low-cost methods. And who should be the managers and who the managed and how is a limited amount of investment funds to be allocated to everyone with a bright idea? Above all there is the political consideration enunciated by John Stuart Mill: “If the roads the railways the banks the insurance offices the great joint stock companies were all of them branches of government?.?.?.?If the employees of all these enterprises?.?.?.?looked to the government for every rise in life not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name.” The importance of private capital for freedom of expression was demonstrated by its role in the launch of the critical and satirical periodical Private Eye or by the way in which supposedly subversive US writers in the 1950s found refuge from McCarthy-inspired persecution by taking jobs in the private sector.

There are some attractions in worker-owned enterprises (to which Mill was sympathetic) and there have been some successes here – for instance the Mondragon group in Spain; and I write as a satisfied customer of the John Lewis Partnership. But there is simply not enough evidence or analysis to support a politically ordained wholesale transfer of enterprises to such entities.

Jesse Norman the Conservative MP has listed some of the numerous ways in which capitalism can be corrupted by cronyism. These include old-fashioned monopoly; Russian-type capitalism symbolised by oligarchs who have gained control over natural resources; khaki capitalism in states dominated by the military and narco-capitalism based on dealings in illicit drugs. The last is aggravated by over-intrusive western legislation akin to US prohibition in the 1920s. There is however no need to say that these are not “real capitalism” or to claim a Conservative patent on the genuine variety.

==The real shortcoming of my book was that like many others I did not discuss the financial sector and how its activities could undermine the capitalist order even if there were no overt inflation or deflation of consumer prices. Any working market order requires there to be some way of marrying savings with the desire to borrow; a market for investible funds and some way of insuring against the vicissitudes of life as well of course as a better way of keeping ready cash than storing it under the mattress. But none of this justifies the threat posed by masses of invented money to institution after institution and country after country. Capitalism is a means to freedom and prosperity not an end in itself. Improvement here may justify not merely international regulation but the retention for quite a long time in public ownership of banks and other institutions that have had to be rescued by government.