別急著斷言歷史已經(jīng)轉(zhuǎn)折

Imagine that Britain’s Labour party had replaced Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband before they contested a general election. In all likelihood, there would have been no Tory government, and therefore no referendum on the EU and therefore no exit from it.

想象一下，假如英國工黨(Labour party)在大選之前把戈登•布朗(Gordon Brown)或埃德•米利班德(Ed Miliband)換了下來，那么很可能，現(xiàn)在的英國政府將不會是保守黨政府，退歐公投就不會舉行，英國也就不會退歐。

Imagine that Hillary Clinton had swung 100,000 votes across three US states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania — that elected and re-elected Barack Obama. The world would now be stifling a yawn at the resilience of mainstream politics against reactionary stresses.

想象一下，如果希拉里•克林頓(Hillary Clinton)在威斯康星州、密歇根州和賓夕法尼亞州這三個在上兩次大選中都投票支持巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)的州多贏得了10萬張選票，那么，世界現(xiàn)在將有些索然無味地目睹堅韌的主流政治又一次抵擋住了反動壓力。

Those of us who follow politics are suckers for the epic: when electorates do strange things, we want to believe we are living through a kink in history. When the world’s two stablest democracies vote for change, it must be the end of liberalism or the hollowing out of the middle class or something comparably grandiose at work. To blame it on particularities, such as the left’s saintly patience with mediocre leaders in recent years, is somehow unsatisfying.

我們這些追蹤政治動態(tài)的人都有史詩情結(jié)：當(dāng)選民做了奇怪的事情，我們想相信自己正在經(jīng)歷著歷史的轉(zhuǎn)折。當(dāng)世界上兩個最穩(wěn)定的民主國家投票支持改變時，這一定是自由主義的終結(jié)、中產(chǎn)階層空心化、或其他什么同樣宏大的因素在起作用。把這怪罪到一些特殊狀況(例如近年來左翼對平庸領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人表現(xiàn)出來的圣人般的耐心)的頭上，似乎不能令人滿意。

Maybe this year will turn out to be a lasting twist in the world story from liberalism to non-liberalism. But the grounds for believing so amount to one close referendum and one even closer election. The first is yet to be implemented, or even defined, and the second, whose implications are as ambiguous as the views of Donald Trump, that big-government free-marketeer, that Keynesian Reaganite, is reversible in four years' time. Americans have just elected a man who wants to cut taxes and repeal financial regulations. From this, Mr Miliband has inferred that the “old economic settlement”, by which he means liberalism, is dead.

今年或許將標(biāo)志著世界歷史從自由主義到非自由主義的一次持久轉(zhuǎn)折。但是，這一觀點所基于的理由，也只不過是一次很懸的退歐公投和一次更懸的美國大選。退歐尚未付諸實施，甚至尚未得到界定;而美國大選的影響尚不確定，唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)這位大政府和自由市場、凱恩斯-里根主義的信奉者也可能在四年時間里轉(zhuǎn)變觀點。美國人剛選出一個想減稅和廢除金融法規(guī)的總統(tǒng)，米利班德已由此推斷出，“舊的經(jīng)濟(jì)安排”——他指的是自由主義——已經(jīng)死了。

The only intelligible lesson of 2016 is that William Goldman’s verdict on Hollywood — “Nobody knows anything”, said the screenwriter — applies to matters of state. Forecasting political events is as inexact a science as picking a commercial hit out of a dozen submitted screenplays, and less fun. Having failed to predict these events, we should leave it a while before extrapolating from them the end of the postwar order of trading nations secured by American military guarantees, or even the post-1979 move to globalisation.

2016年唯一明白易懂的教訓(xùn)就是，編劇威廉•戈德曼(William Goldman)對好萊塢的評判——“沒人懂任何事情”——也適用于國家事務(wù)。預(yù)測政治事件是一項不精確的科學(xué)，就像從十幾個提交上來的劇本中挑一個能火的劇本一樣，而且更不好玩。如果沒有預(yù)測到這些事件，我們應(yīng)該暫且把它們放下，不要馬上就由這些事件推斷戰(zhàn)后相互貿(mào)易的國家由美國保障的秩序走到了盡頭、甚至1979年后開始的全球化進(jìn)程走到了盡頭。

This confident account, aired as though it had already happened in the days after Mr Trump’s election, has western nations tumbling like dominoes to autarky and a suspicion of all foreigners bar certain favoured strongmen. It holds out hope for high-minded Germany as the point of fixity in the storm, like one of its classy midfielders decorating a mindless game of football with some cultured passes.

這種自信的描述——似乎它描述的事情在特朗普當(dāng)選之后的這些天里真發(fā)生了一樣——導(dǎo)致西方國家像多米諾骨牌一樣一個接一個倒向了自給自足、倒向了對所有外國人的懷疑——只除了某些受青睞的強(qiáng)人。這種描述寄希望于高尚的德國能在風(fēng)暴中保持巋然不動，就像優(yōu)秀的德國中場球員用優(yōu)雅的傳球裝點一場心不在焉的足球賽那樣。

This assumes rather a lot: that Mr Trump, who has already softened his line on various subjects, meant what he said over the past 18 months; that what he said had a consistent anti-liberal theme; that EU exit will leave Britain less not more open as an economy; that European populism, from France to Italy, will break through over the coming year; that statist change in the west will not be offset by market reforms elsewhere. It is even presumptuous on the upside. It counts on Germany, which was upset by revelations of American espionage two years ago, volunteering for the ugly burdens that are the lot of a hegemon.

這里包含了太大的假設(shè)成分：要假設(shè)已在各個不同問題上軟化了自己立場的特朗普，會對自己在過去18個月里說過的話說到做到，并且他說過的話包含一以貫之的反自由主義主題;要假設(shè)退歐會讓英國成為一個更封閉、而非更開放的經(jīng)濟(jì)體;要假設(shè)從法國到意大利的歐洲民粹主義，將在未來一年取得突破;要假設(shè)西方的國家主義變化不會被其他地方的市場改革所抵消。它寄以希望的地方看起來甚至是冒昧的——它指望對兩年前披露出的美國間諜活動感到心煩的德國，主動承擔(dān)起一個霸主必然免不了的討厭負(fù)擔(dān)。

These hunches might be vindicated by events but what justifies the certainty in which they are couched? Who in 2008, as banks fell and governments acted, knew that right-of-centre parties would dominate the rich world eight years later? Why be sure of the shape of the rich world eight years from now?

這些預(yù)感可能會被后面發(fā)生的事件證實，但現(xiàn)在有什么理由把話說得如此確定呢?2008年，當(dāng)銀行紛紛倒下、政府采取行動時，誰知道中右翼政黨將在八年后主宰富裕世界?現(xiàn)在憑什么能肯定八年后富裕世界會是怎樣的狀況呢?

Perhaps the worst will happen. Or perhaps mainstream politicians will crib enough from the populists to neuter their electoral appeal without changing the fundamentals of our societies. This implies less low-skilled migration and a further gumming-up of the already glacial work of agreeing trade deals. Or maybe America, which gave Mrs Clinton more votes than her opponent and gives Mr Obama lavish approval ratings, will revert to the mean in 2020 even without these accommodations.

或許最壞的情況確實會發(fā)生。抑或主流政治人士會從民粹主義者那里借鑒足夠多的東西，在不改變我們社會基本面的情況下，平息選民的吁求。這暗示著低技能移民變少，原本緩慢的達(dá)成貿(mào)易協(xié)議的進(jìn)程進(jìn)一步陷入膠著。又或者，到2020年，即便沒有這些調(diào)整，給了希拉里多于對手的普選票數(shù)、也給了奧巴馬很高支持率的美國，將回歸中庸。

There are many plausible futures and liberals seem to reach for the bleakest one as self-punishment for their hubris after the cold war, when Francis Fukuyama sensed the “endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution”. In jeering his account of history as something that stopped in 1989, we have exchanged one teleology for another: the triumph of liberalism for its impending extinction.

關(guān)于未來會怎樣，目前存在許多種有道理的可能性，而自由主義者們似乎觸及的是其中最暗淡的一種，作為對冷戰(zhàn)后驕傲自大的自我懲罰。冷戰(zhàn)之后，弗朗西斯•福山(Francis Fukuyama)感覺到了“人類意識形態(tài)發(fā)展的終點”。在嘲諷他的歷史在1989年終結(jié)的說法時，我們把一種目的論換成了另一種目的論：把自由主義取得勝利換成了它即將消亡。

Yes, he erred. But the lesson was the importance of predictive humility. It was the cue to accept human affairs as more of a dog’s breakfast than a knowable epic, not to sell our shares in the distressed asset called market democracy. There is no end of history and there is no end to our hysteria.

是的，福山錯了。但是，這個錯誤帶給我們的教訓(xùn)是，在預(yù)測未來時保持謙卑非常重要。它提示我們要接受現(xiàn)實，即人類的事情就是亂糟糟的一團(tuán)、而不是一部可知的史詩，不要急著拋售我們在一份名為“市場民主”的不良資產(chǎn)中持有的股份。歷史沒有終點，人類的歇斯底里也沒有終點。