【英语国际】欧洲走进历史死胡同

Nothing is inevitable. It was the first truth I was taught as a Cambridge undergraduate in the 1980s, and it has been italicised and underlined for me by everything I have learnt since. (I even use spellcheck to excise the word “inevitable” from my books, lest it’s crept in at a lazy moment.) The whole of human history is testament to the fact that vast sections of mankind can seem to be progressing towards what looks like an established goal, only to get sidetracked into cul-de-sacs, sometimes for decades, occasionally for centuries. So why do we still assume that an eventual return to any significant economic growth in the European Union is inevitable?

The news that Greece’s economy shrank by 7 per cent last quarter, and that for all his valiant efforts even George Osborne, the UK chancellor, has been slapped with a downgrading threat by Moody’s, ought to focus us upon the thoughts of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci. For it was the leading thinkers of the Whig and Marxist historical determinist school who infected mankind with the concept that we were “progressing” somewhere, moving towards a fixed, positive future point. In economics, that idea is encapsulated in the assumption of economic growth as a kind of manifest destiny, almost the birthright of the species. All too often we see growth as something to be taken for granted as a natural part of the human condition; the rule rather than the exception. If Thomas Macaulay, Friedrich Engels and the other historical determinists had been right, and mankind was on a train track towards either the inevitability of universal liberty or a workers’ paradise, would we have wound up with a 20th century as scourged as it was?

The past two-thirds of a century have been atypical for the globe, and peculiarly conducive for growth. Never before had there been so prolonged a period when no two great powers went to war, if one counts Korea as a UN operation and discounts the Indochinese border incidents of the 1960s and 1970s. America was a powerhouse of innovation and leadership, in competition with a resurgent, confident Japan. Exchange rates went largely unmassaged. China was quiescent and unable to price European economies out of raw materials. Food and energy were cheap by historical standards. Trade and markets were generally freer (in the west) than ever before. Populations were rising, but controllably so. Interest rates encouraged lending, and competition between and within European countries was producing what Adam Smith had promised it would.

Today we still have Great Power peace – the Iraq and Afghan wars were small by any historical standards, and only rate about 20th in the list of the bloodiest postwar conflicts – but none of those other prerequisites for growth still exist in the same form. So why do politicians, chief executives, editors and other decision-makers still take it for granted that the holy grail of growth is there to be grasped? Why are we still in the grip of this irrational Whiggish optimism?

Isn’t it more likely that we have simply entered one of history’s classic cul-de-sacs, like the Ottoman Empire did between 1683 and 1923 (they had a Greek problem too), or the Holy Roman Empire did in the 17th century, or the Spanish empire in the 17th and 18th centuries, or the Austro-Hungarian empire throughout its short life? They all had anaemic growth rates, often lasting decades, as did that other failed empire, the USSR, for much of its existence. Even the Roman empire – and no one equates today’s confederation based in Brussels with that – had a period of nearly 250 years in which it stopped growing both territorially and economically, but merely trod water. As the hymnal reminds us: “Earth’s proud empires pass away”, but if there is no obvious external threat, the gap between rising and falling can be a long one.

What each of those political organisms, and plenty of others, saw when living through their non-growth stages – and it’s debatable whether the Dark Ages millennium between the fall of Rome in 410AD and the 15th century Renaissance might also be added to the list – was a dearth of leadership and an evaporation of any true raison d'être beyond mere survival. None of the Ottoman sultans were up to reviving the attack on Vienna after 1683; the Holy Roman Empire lost all its zest after Charles V; Bourbon Spain was a backwater; Franz Josef’s Austria was romantic but ramshackle. Those shades hovering over Herman Van Rompuy and Manuel Barroso are the shades of history.

Yet it took Napoleon to put an end to the Holy Roman Empire and (temporarily) Bourbon Spain and the Great War to extinguish the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, and thankfully nothing so cataclysmic is on the horizon for Europe. Instead Presidents Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy are hubristically already attempting to use the present crisis to deepen and strengthen the EU’s powers over the member states. Yet what they have yet to provide is any intellectual grounding, beyond blind optimism, for the idea that future EU growth is likely, except perhaps as a piggybacking on future Chinese, American, Indian and Brazilian growth. Optimism is written into the DNA of the United States, it can be read in the second sentence of their Declaration of Independence and they are already showing signs of being impatient with this downturn. The Chinese have waited nearly seven centuries for this moment in the sun, and are not about to pass it up. Neither country’s long-term growth is inevitable, but the drive isn’t lacking.

By contrast the EU is giving off the strong historical whiff of an empire plateauing out into long years of relative stagnation, but with no external threat thanks to the west’s victory in the cold war a generation ago. Birth rates, defence expenditures, bond prices, welfare spending versus wealth creation; everything that historians look to in order to gauge the health of empires suggests that Europe’s fire has gone out.

The writer’s books include ‘The Storm of War’ and ‘A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900’

没有什么是不可避免的。这是我20世纪80年代在剑桥大学(Cambridge University)读本科时学到的第一条真理，从那时起我学到的所有知识都在反复强调这一点。（我甚至使用拼写检查从我的书中剔除“不可避免”这个词，唯恐它在我疏忽时溜出来。）整部人类历史都证明了一点：许多人类社会好像正朝着一个看似确定的目标前进，结果却偏离正轨走进了死胡同，有时几十年，有时甚至长达几个世纪。既然如此，我们为何还是认定欧盟(EU)经济最终恢复显著增长是不可避免的呢？

希腊经济上季度萎缩7%，而尽管英国财政大臣乔治?奥斯本(George Osborne)付出了勇敢的努力，穆迪(Moody's)还是威胁要降低英国的信用评级。这些消息应该让我们重点关注一下杰里米?边沁(Jeremy Bentham)、约翰?斯图尔特?密尔(John Stuart Mill)、卡尔?马克思(Karl Marx)和安东尼奥?葛兰西(Antonio Gramsci)的思想。因为正是这些辉格党的主要思想家和马克思主义历史决定论学派向人类灌输了以下观念：人类正在朝某个方向“进步”，向未来某个积极的既定目标前进。在经济学中，这种观念就体现在这样一种假定上：经济增长是一种定数，几乎可以说是天赋人权。我们经常理所当然地将经济增长视为人类处境中的一部分，认为它是常规，而非例外。如果托马斯?麦考利(Thomas Macaulay)、弗里德里希?恩格斯(Friedrich Engels)及其他历史决定论者是正确的，人类的确走在一条通往某个目标的轨道上，目的地要么是不可避免的普世自由，要么是工人阶级的天堂，那么我们还会遭遇一个如此痛苦的20世纪吗？

过去的三分之二个世纪在这个世界上并不具代表性，大环境罕见地有利于增长。如果我们把朝鲜战争视为一次联合国(UN)行动，并暂且先不考虑六七十年代印度支那半岛的边界冲突的话，历史上还从未有过在如此之长的时间里，没有两个强国交战的时期。美国是创新和领导力的发动机，与之相竞争的是东山再起、充满自信的日本。汇率基本上没有受到干预。中国还在韬光养晦，还没有能力通过抬高价格，将欧洲经济体挤出原材料市场。以历史标准衡量，粮食和能源价格都很廉价。总体来说，贸易和市场（在西方）比以往任何时候都更加自由。人口总量增长，但处在可控的范围内。利率助长了放贷，欧洲各国之间和各国内部的竞争，也创造出了亚当?斯密(Adam Smith)曾经预言的财富。

今天，强国间仍维持着和平——伊拉克和阿富汗战争按照任何历史标准衡量规模都算小的，而按照伤亡人数，在战后发生的冲突中也只能排第20位左右——可是经济增长的其它前提，都已经不再以同样的形式存在了。那么为何政客、商业领袖、媒体编辑和其他决策者仍然想当然地认为，我们仍然能够抓住增长的“圣杯”？我们为什么仍然被不理性的辉格党主义乐观情绪所控制？

更有可能的情况难道不应该是，我们其实已经进入了一个典型的历史死胡同？就像1683年至1923年的奥斯曼帝国（奥斯曼帝国也曾遇到过希腊目前的问题）、17世纪的神圣罗马帝国、17世纪至18世纪的西班牙帝国，或者短暂的奥匈帝国那样。这些帝国都曾经历过常常持续几十年的迟缓增长，就像另一个失败的帝国——前苏联——在有生之年的大多数时候所经历的那样。即使是罗马帝国，也曾经有250年的时间停止了领土扩张和经济增长，只是原地踏步，而谁都不能把今天的欧盟与罗马帝国相提并论。就像赞美诗里告诉我们的，“地球上最荣光的帝国都必将消亡”。但如果没有明显的外部威胁，从兴起到衰亡可能会有很长的间隔。

上述政治机体（以及其他许多国家），在增长停滞阶段都出现了领导力的缺乏，除了生存本身之外，任何真正的存在意义也都烟消云散了。从公元410年罗马帝国灭亡到15世纪文艺复兴之间长达一千年的黑暗时代(Dark Ages)是否属于这种阶段仍有待商榷。在1683年围攻维也纳失利后，没有一位奥斯曼苏丹再发起攻击；神圣罗马帝国在查理五世(Charles V)之后就失去了往日的雄风；波旁王朝统治的西班牙只是一汪死水；弗朗茨?约瑟夫(Franz Josef)治下的奥地利尽管浪漫，但已千疮百孔。笼罩在赫尔曼?范龙佩(Herman Van Rompuy)和曼努埃尔?巴罗佐(Manuel Barroso)头顶的，是历史的阴影。

但直到拿破仑(Napoleon)崛起，神圣罗马帝国才彻底瓦解，也正是拿破仑（短暂地）终结了西班牙波旁王朝。直到在第一次世界大战中失利，奥斯曼帝国和奥匈帝国才最终覆灭。好在现在的欧洲还看不到如此灾难性的威胁。恰恰相反，德国总理安格拉?默克尔(Angela Merkel)和法国总统尼古拉?萨科齐(Nicholas Sarkozy)已经开始自负地试图利用当前的危机，加深和增强欧盟对成员国的控制。但除了盲目的乐观，他们尚未拿出任何理论基础，证明欧盟未来有望恢复增长，唯一拿得出的理由也许就是借助未来中国、美国、印度和巴西的增长。乐观已经写在了美国的基因里，从《独立宣言》的第二句话就可以读得出来，而美国人已经显示出了对本轮经济低迷很不耐烦的迹象。中国等待这个阳光灿烂的时刻已经有将近七个世纪，才不会那么轻易地放弃。这两个国家长期增长的前景都并非必然，但至少他们并不缺乏动力。

相比之下，欧盟现在散发出的历史气息，正如一个已过正午、即将进入漫长的相对停滞的帝国。好在欧洲并没有外部威胁，这要归功于西方上一代人在冷战中取得的胜利。出生率、国防开支、债券价格、福利开支对比财富创造，所有这些历史学家用以衡量帝国运数的数据都显示：欧洲气数已尽。

作者著作包括《战争风暴》(The Storm of War)和《1900年以来的英语民族史》(A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900)

译者/王柯伦