Cheaper by the Dozen

By ARTHUR HERMAN

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F-105 Thunderchiefs refueling midair from a KC-135 Stratotanker. The Boeing-built Stratotanker debuted in 1957 and is still in service today.

The military-industrial complex. The chilling phrase conjures up rows of gleaming ICBM's and B-52 Stratofortress bombers and nuclear submarines—or the mad Gen. Jack Ripper in the movie "Doctor Strangelove." Most people know that the phrase comes from President Eisenhower's Farewell Address of Jan. 17, 1961, in which he declared: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." He warned that "only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry" could keep America's "huge industrial and military machinery of defense" from becoming a potential threat to liberty and peace.
For liberals, Eisenhower's speech, especially that encapsulating phrase, turned Ike from a figure of fun into a revered prophet. Even the radical Port Huron Statement, issued in 1962, picked the phrase up. The "military-industrial complex" became a part of the rhetoric of the student movement—and has remained a part of the thought process of America's intelligentsia ever since.
Figuring out what Eisenhower meant by the military-industrial complex—and whether he was right to see it as something to be guarded against—is one of James Ledbetter's many tasks in "Unwarranted Influence." Exactly how the MIC (as we might abbreviate it) operates is the avowed subject of William Hartung's "Prophets of War," a scathing portrait of Lockheed Martin, America's largest defense contractor.
After World War I, it became popular to assert that the world's munitions makers, "the merchants of death," promoted wars to enhance their own profits—the most glaring example of how "capitalism kills." Mr. Ledbetter recognizes that such claims were ill-founded, even absurd: after all, the country that wound up with the biggest and costliest MIC of all was the communist Soviet Union. Still, he cannot resist joining the chorus of those who see the expansion of the Pentagon's budget during the Cold War as a grotesque and menacing development, one that made the world more perilous at the time and makes the future dangerously uncertain now.
What Mr. Ledbetter cannot explain is how this military buildup managed to check Soviet and Chinese expansion around the world, allowed Western Europe to unite and live in peace, and provided a nuclear deterrence without triggering the end of civilization (as critics predicted)—or ever once interrupted the flow of butter as well as guns.
Some would say it was an amazing achievement rather than a source of shame. But not Mr. Ledbetter. Instead, he insists that the MIC has blunted our moral sense and enabled adventurism. In recent years it has led to "the controversial detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the torture revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison; the privatization of security and combat as represented by the Blackwater firm; and the overruns in cost, length of engagement, and American lives" in Iraq.
It is hard to see what this litany has to do with the MIC per se, especially when the Pentagon's weapons-spending programs have steadily shrunk as a percentage of the federal budget to less than 20%, compared with 60% in Eisenhower's day, and when the defense industry itself is far from a dominant force in the nation's economy. Today you could buy all the Big Six defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Boeing, for roughly a 10th of the value of Microsoft. In any case, it is hard to imagine Eisenhower—the man who approved the CIA's overthrow of governments in Guatemala and Iran— losing much sleep over Gitmo.

Unwarranted Influence

By James Ledbetter
Yale, 268 pages, $26

It is true, though—as Mr. Ledbetter shows—that Ike was a bundle of contradictions. He was the son of Mennonite pacifists who went to West Point and became the Army's top expert on logistics and war mobilization. As the supreme commander in Europe he achieved victory by means of planes and weapons from companies like Boeing, Lockheed, Dow and DuPont that he would excoriate as props of the military-industrial complex. The president who pumped America's defense dollars into a nuclear-armed fleet of B-52's took time in his Farewell Speech to dub nuclear disarmament the country's "continuing imperative."
In the end, Mr. Ledbetter is forced to conclude that Eisenhower's worry about the MIC was part of a larger fear—about the growth of an arrogant and expensive federal government and the growth of federal debt. Would building more and bigger weapons systems, Eisenhower wondered, bankrupt the country?
In fact, it is social programs that now have the federal budget firmly in their grip and keep our deficits soaring. One could call the Pentagon's $685 billion measly compared with the continuing costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Today the MIC barely registers at 4% of GDP; in Eisenhower's day it was nearly 10%, even after the Korean War. By Ike's own standards we should be spending at least twice what we are now spending on defense.
For Keynesians eager to push up aggregate demand with more "stimulus" money, defense spending is a win-win: Unlike high-speed rails to Las Vegas and windmill farms, the money spent on weapons and armaments goes directly into real economic goods and into the pockets of defense workers, including those at Lockheed Martin.
This public-private nexus bothers observers like Mr Hartung. Indeed, his picture of Lockheed in "Prophets of War" reads like the stuff of 19th-century muckraker journalism. Not that Lockheed has not encouraged such an approach: In 1974, a scandal broke about Lockheed executives bribing foreign officials, including Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands and a Japanese prime minister, who wound up with a stiff prison sentence. But more generally Mr. Hartung paints a portrait of a company with tentacles everywhere, from the Pentagon and Congress to agents in foreign governments, a company that feeds the forces of militarism around the world and enriches itself in the process, especially through cost overruns.

Prophets of War

By William D. Hartung
Nation Books, 296 pages, $25.95

Yet profit is of course why businesses exist, even arms businesses (just ask Bofors, peace-loving Sweden's venerable arms giant, bought in 2005 by BAE). And most cost overruns these days have less to do with corruption than with constant new "add on's" and bureaucratic fiddling, including safety-standard requirements, emanating from Washington. This is one reason why a device like the MDARS, a golf-cart-size sensory robot envisaged in 2000 as a cheap way to patrol warehouses and air bases, now costs 50 times more than planned.
Norman Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin president, is Mr. Hartung's bête noire. He portrays him as a "tough behind-the-scenes lobbyist" who has enriched himself and his company at the public trough. Yet it was Mr. Augustine, seeing the absurdity of the government's procurement process, who quipped that in the year 2054 the entire Pentagon budget will be spent to buy exactly one airplane, to be shared on alternate days by the Army, Navy and Air Force. It was not meant as a happy prediction.
As it happens, America's military- industrial complex developed in World War II as a way to save money, not squander it. Industrialists and military men learned that working together on plane and weapons designs made for better weapons at a faster pace, as battlefield experience got incorporated into existing designs. It also speeded the development of technologies that continue to spin off from the MIC, from radar and cellphones to the Internet (an outgrowth of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency). Everyone complains about a bloated defense budget, yet history shows that a continuous, functioning MIC costs far less in lives and dollars than having to ramp up our military from scratch when a crisis hits.
From 1946 to 1950 a drastic downsizing of our military almost left us helpless to halt a communist takeover of Korea. After Vietnam, we were ill-prepared to confront the Soviets' Third World adventurism and its new interest in sea power. After the fall of the Berlin Wall there was a similar attempt to claim a "peace dividend." Each time the critics of "empire" argued that, at last, we could beat our swords into ploughshares. Those who disagreed were dismissed as alarmists or, more routinely, as shills with a vested interest in the status quo.
But we all have a vested interest in the status quo—a world in which the U.S. military assumes the awesome burden of acting as the world's policeman, from fending off rogue nations and knocking off terrorists with Predator drones to defending the sea lanes and global commons from pirates and assorted bad guys. The task of rebuilding a hollowed-out military is a daunting one. If we manage to appreciate the virtues of the "military-industrial complex," we won't have to face it again.
—Mr. Herman, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is writing a book on the arsenal of democracy.

Companies to Colonies -- Privatizing the business of empire.

BOOKSHELFDECEMBER 9, 2010.

By JEFFREY COLLINS

On the morning of June 23, 1757, the armies of Bengal, in what is now eastern India, engaged English soldiers under the command of Robert Clive. The battle took place near a village north of the British imperial stronghold of Calcutta. Siraj- ud- Daula—the ruler of the entire Bengal region—had marshaled forces reportedly numbering 50,000, to Clive's mere 3,000. But Clive's tactical audacity and conspiratorial guile won the day. Having secretly sowed treason in the Bengali ranks, he seized the high ground and cannonaded his disoriented enemy. Siraj-ud-Daula was deposed, murdered and replaced by a puppet prince. Britain secured the riches of Bengal.
More than a century later, in the fall of 1893, a rout of similar dimensions unfolded in the southern African kingdom of Matabeleland. European settlers, already glutted with recently discovered diamonds and gold, invaded the primitive kingdom seeking more. The settlers marched at the bidding of Cecil Rhodes, the diamond oligarch and prime minister of Britain's Cape Colony. Outnumbered perhaps five to one, they enjoyed a complete victory. The Matabele fell by the thousands beneath a hail of machine-gun fire, and their lands were soon rechristened Rhodesia. As the English writer Hilaire Belloc mordantly versified around this time: "Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not."
Robert Clive and Cecil Rhodes are iconic figures in the annals of imperial history. Few did more to keep the sun from setting on the British Empire. It is thus remarkable to remember that neither man commanded royal troops or acted as an official of the British Government. Both, in fact, owed their power to private companies. They were ardent British patriots, but it was nonetheless the interests of the East India Co. and the British South Africa Co. respectively that they served.
History tends to portray the European empires as the creations of kings and nation-states. But as Stephen Bown's "Merchant Kings" reminds us, private economic interests did as much as statesmen to colonize the globe on behalf of Europe. Particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, when European states struggled to modernize themselves while burdened by the costs of war, monarchs regularly privatized the business of empire. They chartered national trading companies, granting them valuable monopoly rights to do business in far-flung locales—and to outfit private armies, conduct diplomacy and negotiate treaties.

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Merchant Kings

By Stephen R. Bown
Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, 314 pages, $26.99

The British and Dutch, with their advanced commercial economies, were particularly fond of the device. The original intent was to organize trade, but the temptation toward direct conquest and rule often raised the "animal spirits" of the trading companies. In an age when correspondence between Bombay and London could take six months, states could do little to tame the companies. The results could be staggering. Private trading interests founded important colonies such as Massachusetts and Virginia. For generations the Royal Africa Co. monopolized the British slave trade. The Dutch East India Co. ruthlessly dominated the Asian spice trade for decades. In Bengal, the English East India Co. governed and taxed nearly thirty million natives long before Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of India. Until 1870, England's Hudson's Bay Co. governed nearly 1.5 million square miles of Canada on behalf of a few hundred investors.
This was private colonizing on a scale to make Halliburton and Blackwater blush. Lenin once called imperialism the "last stage of capitalism," but in many respects it was the first. Of course, as Adam Smith observed, the great chartered companies were not free-marketeers but venal monopolists. And unlike trade, the companies' governing efforts rarely turned a profit. The temptation to tax and administer rather than barter usually ruined the bottom line. And the human costs of company rule could be catastrophic. The ruinous taxes collected in Bengal by the East India Co. exacerbated a famine that killed perhaps 10 million Bengalis in the early 1770s. Rhodes's South Africa Co., seeking docile black laborers, laid the legal groundwork for apartheid.
Nevertheless, for a remarkably long run, European trading cartels were major imperial players on three continents. It is fascinating and forgotten history, and we could use a good general account. Mr. Bown, unfortunately, has not provided one. A successful popular writer, he chooses to tell the history of the great trading companies by sketching six of the major personalities who dominated them. Clive and Rhodes are among his subjects, but so too are lesser known figures, such as Aleksandr Baranov, who ruled as "Lord of Alaska" for the Russian American Co., and Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the sea captain who served the Dutch East India Co. with the brutality of a warlord.
Mr. Bown writes smoothly, but he appears to have done no original research and his potted biographies are linked by the barest of thematic threads. He establishes that the grandees of the trading companies were uniformly men of ambition and rapacity, but this is hardly news. He provides no broader account of the political and commercial conditions that propelled the rise of the trading companies. How profitable were these enterprises? Who were their investors and financiers? How and when did they cooperate or clash with the sovereigns who chartered them?
The author does what he can, but the biographical vignettes allow him little space for such questions. "Merchant Kings" is not a robust popular history but a flimsy one, a collection of anecdotes strung together by generalizations. That's a shame, because the heyday of the chartered trading companies may have passed, but the unsavory alliance of bankrupt states and crony capitalists is a topic that never gets old.

Mr. Collins, a professor of history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, is currently a visiting fellow at Cambridge University.

Islamist Turkey vs. Secular Iran?

Early in the sixteenth century, as the Ottoman and Safavid empires fought for control of the Middle East, Selim the Grim ruling from Istanbul indulged his artistic side by composing distinguished poetry in Persian, then the Middle East's language of high culture. Simultaneously, Ismail I ruling from Isfahan wrote poetry in Turkish, his ancestral language.

Selim the Grim (r. 1512-20) wrote poetry under the name Mahlas Selimi; his arch-rival Ismail I (r. 1501-24) wrote poetry as Khata'i.

This juxtaposition comes to mind as the populations of Turkey and Iran now engage in another exchange. As the secular Turkey founded by Atatürk threatens to disappear under a wave of Islamism, the Islamist Iranian state founded by Khomeini apparently teeters, on the brink of secularism. Turks wish to live like Iranians, ironically, and Iranians like Turks.

Turkey and Iran are large, influential, and relatively advanced Muslim-majority countries, historically central, strategically placed, and widely watched; as they cross paths, I predicted back in 1994, racing in opposite directions, their destinies will affect not just the future of the Middle East but potentially the entire Muslim world.
That is now happening. Let's review each country's evolution:
Turkey: Atatürk nearly removed Islam from public life in the period 1923-38. Over the decades, however, Islamists fought back and by the 1970s they formed part of a ruling coalition; in 1996-97, they even headed a government. Islamists took power following the strange elections of 2002, when winning a third of the vote secured them two-thirds of the parliamentary seats. Ruling with caution and competence, they got nearly half the vote in 2007, at which point their gloves came off and the bullying began, from a wildly excessive fine levied against a media critic to hare-brained conspiracy theories against the armed forces. Islamists won 58 percent of the vote in a September referendum and appear set to win the next parliamentary election, due by June 2011.

Atatürk excluded Islam from Turkey's public life and Khomeini made it central in Iran's.

Should Islamists win the next election, that will likely establish the premise for them to remain enduringly in power, during which they will bend the country to fit their will, instituting Islamic law (the Sharia), and building an Islamic order resembling Khomeini's idealized polity.

Iran: Khomeini did the opposite of Atatürk, making Islam politically dominant during his reign, 1979-89, but it soon thereafter began to falter, with discordant factions emerging, the economy failing, and the populace distancing itself from the regime's extremist rule. By the 1990s, foreign observers expected the regime soon to fail. Despite their populace's growing disillusionment, the increased sway of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and the coming to power of hardened veterans of the Iran-Iraq war, as symbolized by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, imbued it with a second wind.
This reassertion of Islamist goals also increased the people's alienation from the regime, including a turn away from Islamic practices and toward secularism. The country's growing pathologies, including rampant drug-taking, pornography, and prostitution point to the depths of its problems. Alienation sparked anti-regime demonstrations in the aftermath of fraudulent elections in June 2009. The repression that followed spurred yet more anger at the authorities.
A race is underway. Except it is not an even competition, given that Islamists currently rule in both capitals, Ankara and Tehran.

Erdoğan and Ahmadinejad, in sync at last.

Looking ahead, Iran represents the Middle East's greatest danger and its greatest hope. Its nuclear buildup, terrorism, ideological aggressiveness, and formation of a "resistance bloc" present a truly global threat, ranging from jumping the price of oil and gas to an electro-magnetic pulse attack on the United States. But if these dangers can be navigated, controlled, and subdued, Iran has a unique potential to lead Muslims out of the dark night of Islamism toward a more modern, moderate, and good neighborly form of Islam. As in 1979, that achievement will likely affect Muslims far and wide.

Contrarily, while the Turkish government presents few immediate dangers, its more subtle application of Islamism's hideous principles makes it loom large as future threat. Long after Khomeini and Osama bin Laden are forgotten, I venture, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his colleagues will be remembered as the inventors of a more lasting and insidious form of Islamism.
Thus may today's most urgent Middle Eastern problem country become tomorrow's leader of sanity and creativity while the West's most stalwart Muslim ally over five decades turn into the greatest source of hostility and reaction. Extrapolation is a mug's game, the wheel turns, and history springs surprises.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Nov. 30, 2010 updates: Two points that did not fit in the main body of my column
(1) Ankara and Tehran work together ever closely these days but I predict that they will soon be rivals for Islamist leadership. Historical pride, sectarian ambition, and geo-strategic competition all suggest that the current moment of harmony will not last long Look for the Turks to dispute Iranian leadership in such arenas as commercial prowess, military power, and religious potency.
(2) I sketched out this rivalry in a 1994 article in the National Interest, "[Turkey vs. Iran and] Islam's Intramural Struggle," in which I noted "a long, deep, and difficult fight" likely brewing "between two of the great countries of the Middle East, Turkey and Iran." Turks , I wrote, "seem not yet to realize what the mullahs know: that fundamentalist Islam will rise or fall depending on what Turks do, and that Iran and Turkey are therefore engaged in a mortal combat. Will Turks wake up in time to hold their own? Much hinges on the result."

伊斯兰主义的土耳其和世俗的伊朗

作者 Daniel Pipes
华盛顿时代
2010年11月30日

http://zh-hans.danielpipes.org/article/9158

英文原文: Islamist Turkey vs. Secular Iran?

在16世纪初，当奥斯曼帝国和萨法维王朝为中东的控制权而斗争时，统治伊斯坦布尔的Selim the Grim尽情施展他的艺术才华，用代表当时中东最高文化的波斯语，写出了非常优秀的诗歌。与此同时，统治伊斯法罕的伊斯梅尔一世用土耳其语——即他的祖先的语言，来写诗歌。

Selim the Grim (r. 1512-20) 以 Mahlas Selimi为笔名创作诗歌; 而他的夙敌伊斯梅尔一世 (r. 1501-24) 以 Khata'i为笔名创作。

现在，土耳其和伊朗的人们正在进行另一种互换，这就让我们想起了这一并列的现象。在伊斯兰主义的浪潮下，由阿塔图克建立的世俗土耳其面临消失的威胁，而由霍梅尼建立的伊斯兰主义的伊朗则摇摆在世俗主义的边缘。土耳其人希望像伊朗人一样生活，而具有反讽意义的，伊朗人希望像土耳其人一样生活。
土耳其和伊朗都是面积广阔、有影响力，而且相对先进的穆斯林占大多数的国家，都曾在历史上位居中心，有战略性的位置，受到广泛的关注。随着他们道路交错，我早在1994年就预测，他们必定朝着相反的方向前进，他们的命运不仅会影响中东的未来，也会潜在地影响整个穆斯林世界。
这就是现在正发生的。让我们回顾一下两国各自的发展：
土耳其： 在1923年到1938年期间，阿塔图克几乎将伊斯兰教从公众生活中清除。然而在过去的几十年时间，伊斯兰主义者回击，截至20世纪70年代他们已经成了统治联盟中的一部分；在1996年到1997年，他们甚至领导了一届政府。在2002年奇怪的选举之后，伊斯兰主义者当权。他们谨慎而又充满竞争力的统治，使得他们在2007年又取得了近一半的选票，当时他们撕破面纱，横行霸道就真正开始了：用征收面积广泛的过高罚款反对媒体的批评，到用疯狂的阴谋理论对付武装部队。9月伊斯兰主义者赢得了 58%的投票，似乎又打算赢得下一届的议会选举，即2011年6月的选举。

阿塔土克将伊斯兰教排除在土耳其的公众生活之外，而霍梅尼则使之成为伊朗公共生活的中心。

一旦伊斯兰主义者赢得了下届选举，这将可能成为他们持续掌握权力的前提。在这期间他们将让国家转向，以顺应他们的意愿，将伊斯兰教法律（沙里法）制度化，并且建立与霍梅尼理想化的政体类似的伊斯兰秩序。
伊朗：霍梅尼做了和阿塔土克相反的事情，在1979到1989年他统治期间使伊斯兰教占据了政治主导地位，但是自那之后他很快就开始犹豫，看到派别纷争， 经济衰败，同时百姓将自己和政权的极端主义统治拉开距离。直到20世纪90年代， 国外观察家预计这个政权会很快倒台。尽管人民的理想日渐破灭，但伊斯兰革命卫队影响加强，经历过两伊战争的强硬派退伍军人逐渐掌权，其标志就是艾哈迈德内贾德，激发了第二次风潮。
重新主张伊斯兰主义的目标也不断增加了人民和政权之间的距离，包括脱离伊斯兰教的宗教实践，转向世俗主义。这个国家一些病态现象日益泛滥，包括猖獗的 吸毒, 色情作品以及 卖淫都指出了问题的深度。2009年6月的选举弊案过后，反政权的示威游行象征着这一疏离的高峰。之后的镇压行动甚至激起了百姓对当局更多的愤怒。
一场竞赛正在激烈进行中。除了还不是一场公平竞争以外，伊斯兰主义者在两个首都——安卡拉和德黑兰都当权。

埃尔多安和内贾德最终步调一致。

向前看，伊朗代表了中东最大的危险，也是中东最大的希望。它的核建设、恐怖主义、意识形态的侵略性，以及"抵抗联盟"的形成都呈现了一个真实的全球性威胁，从石油和天然气的价格急剧飞升，到对美国的电磁波袭击。但是如果这些危险可被引导、控制和缓和，伊朗有着独特的潜力引导穆斯林走出伊斯兰主义的黑夜，进入一个更加现代、温和和更睦邻的伊斯兰教的形式。正如在1979年，这一进步将可能更远更广的影响穆斯林。
相反的，当土耳其政府少有造成直接威胁时，它更加微妙的适用伊斯兰主义那些可怕的原则，却使之明显成为未来的巨大威胁。我敢于认定，在霍梅尼和奥萨马ˑ本拉登被忘记以后，埃尔多安和他的同僚将会成为更加持久、潜在的伊斯兰主义的发明者，而被人们记住。
因此，今天最急迫的中东问题国家可能会变成明天明智、有创造力的领袖，而五十年来西方最忠实的穆斯林同盟却可能成为敌对和回击势力的最大来源。预测往往是徒劳无功的游戏，车轮转动，历史不断给我们带来惊讶。

Engines of Commerce -The unheralded machine power that moves manufactured goods and raw materials around the world.

The unheralded machine power that moves manufactured goods and raw materials around the world.

By NICK SCHULZ

It's no secret that Al Gore and other hard-line environmentalists hate the internal-combustion engine. In 1992, Mr. Gore in his book "Earth in the Balance" called for a program that would lead to the engine's elimination by 2017. He believed this was no fanciful goal; it was just a matter of practical engineering harnessed to political will.

Vaclav Smil doesn't mention Mr. Gore in "Prime Movers of Globalization," a detailed, fascinating account of, as the subtitle has it, "The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines." But somehow I suspect that the Nobel laureate and scourge of fossil-fuel consumption was not far from the author's mind. For if the story of these remarkable machines reveals anything, it is that Mr. Gore's vision is utterly untethered to reality.
The technological achievement alone is extraordinary, never mind (for the moment) the commercial effect. In the late 19th century, the German engineer Rudolf Diesel developed an engine that operated by injecting fuel into cylinders containing air compressed by pistons (fuel ignites more easily in compressed air). The pistons, in turn, were driven by the gases released in the fuel's ignition. The inventor himself imagined something on the scale of diesel-powered sewing machines. These days the engines power almost all sizable ocean-going vessels as well as major rail and truck transport. "When measured in tons per kilometer," Mr. Smil notes, "about 94 percent of global trade is now diesel-powered." The engines dominate global trade because "the cost, efficiency, reliability, and durability of diesel engines offer a combination that has not been surpassed by any other energy converter."
The gas turbine—invented by Frank Whittle, a British engineer, in the early 20th century—relies on a process of continuous combustion, with spinning fan-blades driving a compressor or turning a shaft (e.g., a ship's propeller) or producing powerful thrust through a nozzle, enough to send an airplane into the sky. Orville and Wilbur Wright are the first fathers of flight, but Frank Whittle is the mostly unheralded father of globe-spanning air travel.

"In 1930," Mr. Smil writes, "there could be no such thing as a non-stop transatlantic commercial flight." But the gas turbine dramatically changed that state of affairs. "In 1950, the crossing took twelve hours," he notes. Eight years later, it could be made in six hours, though only a small number of first-generation jetliners were in operation. By 1960, such flights "became an increasingly common event, and so, figuratively, the world shrank by half in a single decade."

Prime Movers of Globalization

By Vaclav Smil
(The MIT Press, 261 pages, $29.95)

These two internal-combustion engines—diesel and turbine—soon became "prime movers" as Mr. Smil dubs them. They are now the "indispensable driving forces of the global economy." Without them, "trade would not have achieved its truly planetwide scope or have done so at such massive scales, at such rapid speed, and at such affordable costs."

When most Americans think of the internal- combustion engine, they naturally think of the one under the hood of their car. And indeed, gasoline- powered engines are "the most common prime mover of modern civilization. . . . There are now roughly 1 billion of these engines installed in cars, trucks, motorcycles and garden machines, boats, snowmobiles" and so on.

Why did this "impressive machine" fail to become the force behind globalization, moving goods long distances? It is "not practical in very large sizes," Mr. Smil says. The global transport of large quantities of goods and people requires much more massive engines. The inventions of Messrs. Diesel and Whittle—refined, modified and extended countless times by later engineers—picked up where the conventional gasoline engine left off.

Mr. Smil's account of the engineering advances throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries— advances that brought the world large marine diesels and gas turbines—is first-rate history, both thorough and compelling. It is also fairly technical for the lay reader. But the rich detail doesn't just explain the intricacies of the engines and how they work. It also helps to show how easily we take for granted machine-power of such marvelous sophistication and, relatedly, why an environmental dreamer might mistakenly imagine its disappearance within a quarter-century.

"Who does not know (indeed, has not seen) a Boeing 747, the first wide-body jet?" Mr. Smil asks. "Who is not aware of Wal-Mart's China supply pipeline, and who has not seen the images of container ships laden with what seem to be gravity-defying layers of steel boxes? But for how many people would the JT9D or the K98MC7 (the engines that have made those remarkable airplanes and vessels possible) ring any bell, and how many educated adults could cogently and accurately describe how a turbofan works . . . or why diesels endure?"

Readers of "Prime Movers of Globalization" will know the answers to such question better than most when they are done, and they will understand why these massive machines will not disappear soon. It is true that diesels and jet turbines are not without their problems. They have added to environmental pressures by enabling the release of large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the dumping of plastic debris into the North Pacific; and, with the creative destruction caused by global trade, they have created social disruptions that their inventors could hardly have imagined. Mr. Smil acknowledges such problems; he is no Pollyanna and is even something of an environmentalist. But he has been mugged by the reality of physics and engineering.

Mr. Schulz is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor of American.com.

A Revolution From Below --The break-away from Britain had less to do with high ideals than with the passions of the common people.

The break-away from Britain had less to do with high ideals than with the passions of the common people.

By ALAN PELL CRAWFORD

In November 1774, almost six months before the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord, a delegation of the common people of Philadelphia called on Martha Washington. Martha was of course the wife of George Washington, the commander of the new American troops and the most distinguished gentleman in the colonies. Mrs. Washington had just been asked to attend a fancy-dress ball, and, as T.H. Breen writes in "American Insurgents, American Patriots," the ordinary people thought it was "a very bad idea."

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MPI/Getty Images

A Paul Revere rendering of the 1770 Boston Massacre.

 

Mrs. Washington's callers in effect read her the riot act, citing the Articles of Association recently adopted by the Continental Congress. The articles called for a boycott of British goods to protest the closing of Boston harbor and, among other things, discouraged "every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, and all kinds of games, cock fighting, exhibitions of shews, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments." So the delegation -- "with great regard and affection" -- asked her not to attend the ball. Sensibly, she complied.

The next day, "attended by the troop of horse, two companies of light infantry, &c.," Mrs. Washington left Philadelphia for Massachusetts to be closer to her husband, then commanding troops outside Boston, and to avoid antagonizing the commoners whose support he would need.

The committees enforcing the Articles of Association did not confine their activities to courtesy calls. They did much more. Mr. Breen argues that a proper idea of the American Revolution depends on our understanding the role of such "extralegal" bodies.

More

• Excerpt: Revolutionaries
• Excerpt: 'American Insurgents, American Patriots'

Conventional accounts of the Revolution emphasize the leadership of those we now recognize as the Founding Fathers, a phrase that did not exist until it was used by Warren Harding in 1916. Generation after generation, students are taught that the Founders inspired a hesitant, though hardy, American populace to reclaim its rights. Wise and sober men, they skillfully directed their countrymen's righteous indignation into productive channels, avoiding the excesses of other revolutions, past and present.

The truth is a good deal messier and more interesting. Historians in our own time—Mr. Breen, Gary B. Nash and Gordon S. Wood, among others—have shifted the emphasis to the common people, for whom the Founders often felt disdain. "Disdain" puts the matter rather lightly. Consider the attitude of New York's Gouverneur Morris, a delegate to the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention who, by virtue of education, wealth and social status, was characteristic of the colonial elite. To Morris the people were either "sheep, simple as they are," or "poor reptiles," who, given half a chance, "will bite."

American Insurgents, American Patriots

By T.H. Breen
Hill & Wang, 337 pages, $27

Bite they did. A full two years before the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the people of the New England countryside had declared themselves ipso facto free and independent of Britain. In one farm town after another, seeking permission from no one, they booted out their royal rulers, substituting makeshift political organizations that Edmund Burke, back in England, recognized as historically significant. In "Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America," Jack Rakove quotes Burke telling the House of Commons that, in America, "a strange new, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable."

America may have been "conceived in liberty," but the home-grown arrangements that came to represent government to the country people were not composed of civil libertarians. They did not share the Enlightenment sensibilities of, say, Thomas Jefferson. The Sons of Liberty, the Committees of Observation and other ad hoc assemblies eagerly snooped on their neighbors; forced the signing of loyalty oaths; seized property; and tarred, feathered and otherwise terrorized suspected British sympathizers.

Nor did these upstarts await the exhortations of Patrick Henry, much less the learned disquisitions of John Adams to take up arms. In early September 1774, just as the delegates to the first Continental Congress converged on Philadelphia, rumors were rife that the British had bombarded Boston, destroying America's third largest city and killing six Americans. Before the facts could be established—no bombardment, no killings—thousands of armed and leaderless volunteers were streaming toward Boston, itching for revenge.

The Redcoats weren't the only ones unnerved by their approach. The uprising also troubled America's congressional leaders, who suddenly found themselves, Mr. Breen writes, "in the extremely awkward position of becoming followers—perhaps even irrelevant spectators—while ordinary people [from country towns] assumed the lead in defining the character of resistance against Great Britain."

Revolutionaries

By Jack Rakove
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 487 pages, $30

The response of Congress, also believing Boston had been destroyed, was to endorse the so-called Suffolk Resolves, which urged the citizens of Massachusetts to withhold their taxes and otherwise defy their British masters. With the adoption of the Suffolk Resolves, a far more radical act than the delegates would otherwise have committed, there was no turning back in the drive toward independence. (Once the truth was learned—that Boston had not been leveled—the volunteers headed home; their hostility toward the British still simmered, however, awaiting further provocation.)

Mr. Rakove's thorough if somewhat unfocused "Revolutionaries" explores how and why Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison turned from "loyal subjects" into "as unlikely a group of revolutionaries as one can imagine. Indeed to call them revolutionaries at all is almost ironic. With the possible (and doubtful) exception of Samuel Adams, none of those who took leading roles in the struggle actively set out to foment rebellion or found a republic."

They became revolutionaries "because a crisis in a single colony spiraled out of control," Mr. Rakove concludes, referring to the protests and conflicts in Boston. England's overwrought response—and the colonists' overwrought response to England's—gave striving men little choice. Elites who did not find reasons to support the cause of the common people had no future in American politics—or in America, period. There are, of course, other, more high-minded ways to account for their revolutionary conversion, and Mr. Rakove gives their republican ideals, for example, a proper hearing. But knowing what we now know about the "common" revolt, a more cynical explanation cannot be discounted. Republicans ideals mattered, but so did personal ambition and possibly even survival.

 

—Mr. Crawford is the author of "Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas

Jefferson."Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W4

王令隽：人能否死而复生——兼谈热寂说

·王令隽·

人不能死而复生，这应该是常理和格言，似乎不成为问题。可是时下有种风气，好像常识常理意味着浅显鄙薄，反常背理才显得深奥前卫。人能否死而复活，似乎还是一个学术问题。

医学工作者可以举出许多神医妙手回春的例子，来说明高超的医术可以将死人救活。我小时候，邻村有一个小孩叫龙仔得病死了，全家人哭声干云，找了几块木板钉付小棺材准备下葬，正好我父亲路过。他拿了拿脉，立即开了一个药方，叫龙仔的父母别忙着钉棺材，赶紧到风门桥药店去点药。一剂药灌下去，居然把龙仔救活了。他父母千恩万谢，一定要把小女给我做童养媳，我父母居然答应了。可是拗不过我不同意，原因是同学们会说我有媳妇了——好色的证据。逼死阮玲玉的“人言可畏”，我是在上小学时就领略了。一桩本来可以成为佳话的姻缘，硬是生生地被可畏的人言拆散了。

我读初中时，大姐得了一场重病，十来天不省人事。我爸爸天天给她灌中药。大姐从小被舅舅许配给同村的一个后生做媳妇，还没过门。她婆婆于是动员我妈和我姨妈加上半打德高望重的老太婆组成一支浩浩荡荡的叫魂队伍，白天到村外几里路四面八方叫魂，晚上爬上我家房顶上叫，说是娘叫千里，爹叫八百。经过十来天的折腾，大姐终于活过来了。到底是我爸救活的，还是她婆婆与阎王老子斡旋折冲讨回了魂魄，直到现在仍然是个谜。

现代医术越来越高明，起死回生的例子不胜枚举，好像用事实证明着人死可以复生。

但是医生能够救活的人的生命应该没有完全停止，而是处于某种休克状态。借用日本话的围棋术语，叫做没有“完死”。一个人到底是不是死了，好像还有一个生物学的定义问题。

我对生物学是外行，对死亡的医学定义也没有太大兴趣。我想在此探讨的是一个自然哲学问题。为了避免跑题，我要举出一些医生们没有争议的死亡例子，比如几千年前埋在埃及金字塔里的妖后克里奥帕特拉，或者长沙马王堆一号汉墓里的贵妃妇好。她们能复活吗？大概没有一个神医会说她们能够复活。可是有物理学家说，能！

１９７９年，中国科学院聘请了一位国际知名的诺贝尔奖得主为研究生院的学生们讲授基本粒子理论和统计物理。我当时正在研究生院念书，有幸躬逢其盛。统计学开宗明义，便是由分子的运动概率推出热力系综的配分函数。统计学比较枯燥，也许为了提神，这位教授一开始便对学生们提出一个问题：两千年前埋葬在长沙马王堆的老太婆会不会死而复活？满座寂然，无人敢应。人死不能复活，是一个不可逆过程，难道这还有什么疑问吗？有！这位教授说，马王堆的死老太婆复活的可能性是存在的！我立即把儿子满月的照片塞进钱包，正襟危坐而听之。

教授的推理极为简单。设想在一个密封的真空容器中放一个气体分子，它出现在容器左右两边的几率应该是一样的，都是二分之一。如果放入两个分子，则它们同时出现在左半边的几率便是四分之一。如此类推，如果放入Ｎ个分子，则它们同时出现在左半边的几率就是二分之一的Ｎ次方。如果Ｎ是一个宏观数字，这种几率当然很小，但不为零。即是说，可能性是存在的。

如果我们把容器分成密封的两半，在左半边充满气体，将右半边抽成真空。然后将隔板打开，则一部分左半边的气体就会跑到右边，直至两边的分子数相等，达到平衡为止。这些跑到右边的分子会不会思恋故土，某一天全部重新回到亲爱的左边呢？从来没有人观察到这种事情发生，我们也不相信这种事情会发生。因为这种过程是热力学上的不可逆过程。不可逆过程是热力学第二定律的基础。可是按照这位教授上面的推理，这种不可逆过程并不是完全不可逆的，只是逆转的几率很小而已——几率等于二分之一的Ｎ次方。

于是，他将这一推理继续推将下去：生命过程也被认为是不可逆过程，但按照统计物理学的理论，这种不可逆过程逆转的可能性也不是绝对不存在的，只不过几率很小而已。所以，马王堆死老太婆复活的可能性是存在的。

我立即陷入沉思。我对人死不能复生的信念之坚定不下于对统计物理定律的信念。以统计学原理推导出人死可以复生，哪怕是二分之一的负二十四次方的小概率，对我来说也是一个不可接受的悖论。在没有解决这个理论或逻辑疙瘩之前，我没有办法集中注意力听讲。教授下面讲了什么我已经没有心思去听，也不太在乎。应该是一些数学。数学可以自己看，理论和逻辑问题却不可轻易放过。这是我念书的一个习惯。

问题到底出在哪里呢？

一．独立实验假定

第一个问题出在统计物理的独立实验假定，即是说，一个粒子在容器两边出现的几率和其它粒子的存在无关。在容器中的粒子数不多并且大致均匀分布的情况下，这一假定应该没有问题；但是如果容器中的粒子很多，并且分布很不均匀，这种假定就有问题。比如说，如果容器中的左半边已经有Ｎ个粒子而右半边一个粒子都没有，然后再放进第Ｎ＋１个粒子，它出现在左右两边的几率就没有理由相等。出现在真空的半边的几率应该大些。左边的粒子数量越大，出现在左边的几率就越小。

设想在一个密封容器中放半缸水，容器的上半部充满水蒸气。这时候如果再放入一个水分子，他在上下两个半部的几率是不是相等呢？当然不相等。如果这个新分子放在水蒸气中，它可能碰到水面而黏附在水的表面，然后通过布朗运动可以到达水中央。如果这个新分子放在水里面，它可通过布朗运动到达水面，然后被蒸发到上面的水蒸气中。这新分子在水里面和蒸汽里面出现的几率是一个取决于诸如水的粘滞系数，表面张力，温度，压力等等等等的非常复杂的函数。没有任何理由相信一个分子呆在水中和水外面的几率会相等。

如果容器的下半部放一块固体，则新分子在下半部的几率是零，在上半部的几率是一。如果放一具死尸，新分子呆在尸体内外的几率将是一个非常复杂的函数。尸体中既有液体，也有固体（骨头，牙齿，指甲），而且形状不规则，有空腔。要想用统计学中对付理想气体的手段来研究尸体甚至人体的生命过程，成功的几率大概应该和死尸复活的几率差不多。

分子不能穿过固体，所以他在密封容器里的几率等于一，这是我们经过无数次宏观实验了解到的基本事实，因此把它作为计算分子概率的强制性边界条件。为什么分子不能穿过固体呢？因为固体是由结合得很紧的分子组成的。固体分子之间有很强的势场，组成了坚固的能量壁垒阻止自由分子通过。如果分子的动能小于能量壁垒的高度，分子就无法穿越。这是经典的理论。可是在量子力学里，粒子穿越能量壁垒的几率是不等于零的。对量子力学有绝对信仰的朋友可以计算一下一个水分子穿越一厘米厚的玻璃的几率，虽然小，但不为零。金鱼是由许多个分子组成的，所以一条金鱼从玻璃鱼缸里穿出来（不是从鱼缸上面跳出来）的几率也不为零。有些宣称有特异功能的大师说他能穿墙而过，大概就是因为量子力学学透了，修炼成了正果。

金鱼能够穿过玻璃，哺乳动物能够穿墙而过，不但违背基本事实，而且违背统计物理的基本边界条件：分子穿过容器壁的几率等于零。由此可见，如果不管物理事实而拘泥于某种理论的假设和结论，将其无限制地推而广之，应用到超出该理论的适用范围，会导致多么荒唐的结论。一旦将局部理论的基本假定和结论绝对化，把它置于铁的事实之上，理论也就离宗教不远了。

二．生物体不是热力学统计系综

以统计物理来证明两千年前的死老太婆可以复活，违背了或忽略了一个简单事实：人体不是一个简单的统计系综。

这点不难证明：将Ｎ个理想气体分子放入一个密封容器，这些分子立即会均匀地分布在容器的每一个犄角旮旯。但是如果把一具死尸放入棺材，她会躺在棺材底上，决不会在棺材里面飞来跑去。一个人孤孤单单地躺在棺材里两千多年而能坚持一动不动，表现了这位妇好同志高度的组织纪律性。

组织纪律性，翻译成统计物理的语言叫有序性（ｏｒｄｅｒｌｉｎｅｓｓ）。有序性的量化参数叫做熵。一个统计系综越是混乱无序，熵值越高；越是有序。熵值越低。热力学和统计物理中的一个重要定律叫做熵增长定律：热力系综的熵值只会增长，不会降低，自然过程只会从有序走向无序。从有序到无序的过程是不可逆的。熵增长定律又叫热力学第二定律。一个质子和一个电子如果是自由的，就可以各自作无序的运动，但如果结合在一起成了氢原子，就有了约束，不可以随便分开，要动也得一起动。因此原子是比自由电子和自由质子更有序的系统。同样，原子组成分子，再组成有机体，生命体，有序性就增加。相反的过程则是从有序到无序的过程。从生命到死亡，到尸体最终分解成气体分子，是一个从有序到无序的不可逆过程。以为这些分解了的分子能够通过小概率的偶然组合重新回到以前的有生命状态，就违背了这种不可逆性，违背了热力学第二定律。所以即使把一具死尸当作热力系综，热力学第二定律也不允许死尸复活。

但生命过程不是单纯的热力学过程，而涉及到其它物理，化学和生物学过程。而热力学所处理的仅仅是理想气体自由分子的动力学行为，根本不能处理更为复杂的化学和生物学过程。把用于自由分子统计系综的统计物理学方法用来分析有机体的生命过程，当然会导致荒谬的结论。

我们已知的自然力，包括万有引力，电磁力和核力（核力在量子场论中被现象逻辑性的分为强相互作用力和弱相互作用力），严格说来都不是热力学研究的对象，也不是热力学所能够处理的。在热力学中，只是当我们试图计算大气层的密度分布时，才把地球引力作为一个外部条件来处理，分子之间的万有引力则是忽略不计的。分子之间的化学键本质上是电磁相互作用。这种相互作用在热力学中也是现象逻辑性地用一个简单的化学势来代表。可是电磁作用的复杂性根本不是一个化学势所能够完全表达的，因此热力学理论仅仅在物理化学上起部分作用，不可能代替整个化学。至于核力，根本就不在热力学的讨论范围之内。用热力学和统计物理来分析生物的生老病死，更是不可能的。总而言之，生物体不是一个热力学的统计系综。

三．热寂说

作为热力学第二定律的熵增长定律最早是由鲁道夫克劳修斯于１８５０年提出来的。熵这个字是由英文Ｅｎｔｒｏｐｙ翻译过来的，其定义是内能与温度之商。中国的科学家们为了把这一热力学概念译成中文，造了一个字，在“商”字的左边加一个“火”字旁，就成了“熵”。１８７７年，玻尔兹曼试图从刚刚萌芽的原子理论推导出热力学第二定律，乃把熵定义为物质状态的几率函数—状态几率越高，熵值越大。无序状态比有序状态几率高，所以熵增长定律就意味着世界总是从有序向无序发展。

根据热力学第一和第二定律，凯尔文，赫尔姆霍兹和玻尔兹曼推论说，所有系统都会最终趋于一个热力平衡状态，如果宇宙是一个有限的封闭的热力系统，最终将趋于一个热力平衡状态，一个完全均匀的，温度完全平衡的状态。在这一状态中，所有的恒星都冷却了，用以支持生命的能量用光了，全宇宙到达了一个“热寂”的状态，走完了从有序向无序的全过程，所有的物理现象都停止了，宇宙也就完全死亡了。这就是历史上的“热寂说”。

玻尔兹曼清楚地知道，他的“热寂说”与科学界普遍承认的时空无限的宇宙论相抵触。如果世界必然从有序走向无序，那最初的“有序”从何而来呢？因此，为了“热寂说”能够应用于整个宇宙，必须假定时间有某个“原点”，在这个时间原点由某个原始推动力或造物主突然创造一个有序的世界，然后撒手不管，任凭其从有序到无序发展，最后至于完全无序的“热寂”状态，而这，也就是世界的末日，时间的终点。所以，“热寂说”是和有限宇宙论密切相关的理论。

玻尔兹曼深为这种结论而苦恼，因为他不相信迷信，不能接受一种超自然力作为宇宙的起源的学说。那能否从科学理论中找到这种“原始的有序状态”存在的根据呢？除非假定在远古的某个时刻，无序的宇宙突然偶然地形成了一个非常有序的状态，也就是说，一个无序的宇宙突然自发地变成了一个高度有序的宇宙，一如从死老太婆分解出来的分子偶尔重新组合，突然变回两千年前翩若惊鸿婉若游龙荣曜秋菊华茂春松的贵妇。这种几率小得连玻尔兹曼也知道其实是完全的不可能。

玻尔兹曼的真正错误是把一个适用于某种条件下的局部理论推广至这种条件以外而至于整个宇宙；将一个封闭系统中的理论推广至时空无限的宇宙，一个大爆炸理论学家们今天还在继续的错误。热力学第二定律中所说的从有序到无序的发展规律，只适用于热力系统。超出热力系统，我们可以举出许多现在还可以看到的从无序到有序的自然过程。比如说，一个种子可以摄取周围的养料和阳光，将他们组合在一起，变成为参天大树。一个四处流浪的落难书生的精子和一个风尘少女的卵子结合，可以逐渐摄取食物养料和知识学问而成为高度有序的动物，并可能叱咤风云纵横捭阖，建立一个大帝国，一个高度有序的社会。在宇宙间，无序的星云在万有引力的作用下，会收缩成高温高压的凝聚体而变成新星或新的银河系，完成从无序到有序的过渡。这种从无序到有序的过程无时不在发生，根本不需要什么超自然力的创造和干预。无视这些过程的存在，只看到从有序到无序的过程，就如只看到物质的分解而看不到物质的化合一样片面。把只适用于热力系统的局部理论强加于全宇宙，把不包括万有引力，电磁力和核力的理论推广到包括这些动力的物理，化学和生物过程，其荒谬是不言而喻的。

热力学第二定律是物理学上的重要定律之一。凯尔文，赫尔姆霍兹和玻尔兹曼都是对物理学做出过伟大贡献的物理学家。但是他们的热寂说在物理学史上却没有产生太大的波澜，其影响不过一代人。现代的大爆炸宇宙学在一百年后又捡起某些热寂说的错误概念，当然不可避免地会重复热寂说的命运。

Against Rebellion --Why did some colonials remain loyal to the king?.

By THOMAS FLEMING

Thomas B. Allen begins "Tories" with an anecdote that the author apparently considers a useful way of illustrating his theme. A column of American rebel soldiers was marching through a Virginia town in 1777, he tells us, when a shoemaker rushed out of his shop and shouted: "Hurrah for King George!" None of the soldiers paid attention to him. When the troops stopped to rest in a woods, the shoemaker pursued them, hurrahing for King George. Once more the men ignored him. When the loyalist shouted his defiance virtually in the ear of the commanding general, he ordered him taken to a nearby river and ducked. When that ordeal failed to silence the shoemaker, the general ordered him tarred and feathered. His weeping wife and four daughters pleaded with him to be quiet. He was then drummed out of town.
The reader may wonder: Was the shoemaker drunk? Suicidal? Insane? Mr. Allen is less curious—he sees simply "an act of casual cruelty upon a stubborn Tory," adding: "How many other Tories were taunted, tortured or lynched we will never know."
It is unfortunate that Mr. Allen frames "Tories" as the tale of early victims of American political rage, because there is something to be said for focusing on the loyalists of the Revolutionary era. It is a fascinating and relatively neglected subject, one that the author tackles with verve as he spins a narrative starting with a nascent antitax insurrection in Boston in 1768. When British soldiers arrived to clamp down on restive Bostonians, Mr. Allen says, "Loyalists welcomed the Redcoats as protectors; Patriots and their supporters in the streets saw the soldiers as an occupation force, sent by Britain to tame or even punish dissent."
By 1775, Boston was a garrisoned city where Loyalists courted trouble by fraternizing with the Redcoats. Mr. Allen relates the story of merchant Thomas Amory, who invited a few British officers to his house one night in nearby Milton, Mass. "Word reached the Patriots," and soon "a brick-throwing mob attacked the house." One of the bricks, Mr. Allen writes, "smashed a windowpane in his young daughter's room and landed on her bed."
The officers scooted out the back door while Amory tried to calm the crowd. He would later move to Watertown, about eight miles west of the city. Countless other loyalists also "fled real or imagined mobs." How many Tories resided in the colonies at the outbreak of war? Using the latest research, Mr. Allen reports that the old estimate—a third of Americans—is outdated; under scrutiny, the number has dwindled to about 20%, or roughly half a million people. But they were a combative minority: When war came, loyalists formed more than 50 military units that often fought well beside their British allies.

Tories

By Thomas B. Allen
(Harper, 468 pages, $26.99)

"Tories" ably evokes the sense of fear felt by the loyalists, but Mr. Allen neglects to look at why the rebels took an increasingly angry view of those who sided with the British. The rebels knew they were risking their lives and property to defy King George, and they were enraged by loyalists' eagerness for the sort of awful vengeance that the crown had previously unleashed on Scottish and Irish rebels. After the Continental Army narrowly averted total collapse in 1776, gloating loyalists—noting that the three sevens in 1777 looked like gibbets—began calling it "the year of the hangman." The rebels, they hoped, would soon be swinging from British rope.
Why did some colonials remain loyal to the king while most did not? Mr. Allen does not dwell on the subject—he is more interested in what happened than why. But others have considered the loyalists' motivations. Historian Leonard Labaree, in a pioneering study in 1948, found seven psychological reasons, including the belief that a resistance to the legitimate government was morally wrong and a fear of anarchy if the lower classes were encouraged to run wild. Another important factor: Unlike the rebels, who tended to come from families that had lived in America for several generations, many loyalists were born in England. These first-generation immigrants brought with them a sense of British liberty, steeped in obeisance to the king and his aristocrats, while in the colonies a longing for a "more equal liberty"—John Adams's declared goal for the rebels—had already taken hold.
One of the book's themes is that the conflict between the loyalists and rebels amounted to "America's first civil war." But not until the later pages, when the fighting with the British shifts to the South, does a semblance of civil war become evident. The Irish Presbyterians of the Southern backcountry had a history of feuding with wealthy coastal planters, who supported the insurrection. The ingrained antipathy for the planters, more than any fondness for King George, prompted the backcountry boys to ally themselves with the British—leading to vicious seesaw fighting.
A climax to this war within the larger war came in late 1780 with the battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina, a purely American versus American, loyalist versus rebel fight. The rebels won a total victory, and in the process quashed British dreams of creating a native-grown loyalist army that might provide a decisive advantage.
The best section of "Tories" deals with black loyalists, the thousands of runaway slaves who responded to a British offer of freedom in return for military service. The British used these men largely as laborers, not fighters. In making peace at war's end the politicians agreed to return the runaways. But Gen. Guy Carleton, the last British commander in America, refused to do so. About 3,000 blacks were among the 80,000 loyalists who retreated to Canada and the West Indies when hostilities ended.
A thousand-strong contingent of these former slaves in Halifax, Nova Scotia, became disenchanted with their treatment there, Mr. Allen notes. The black loyalists sailed for West Africa—present-day Sierra Leone—where in 1792 they established a settlement they called Freetown. For these Americans, the yearning for a more equal liberty did not end with the treaty of peace.

Mr. Fleming's books on the American Revolution include "Now We Are Enemies," recently republished in a 50th anniversary edition by American History Press. He is the senior scholar at the American Revolution Center in Philadelphia.

卡尔•波普谈共产党国家改革─戈尔巴乔夫是改革者吗？

卡尔•波普谈共产党国家改革─戈尔巴乔夫是改革者吗？
共产党极权社会有着它自己的独特文化和思想，这种和开放的社会截然不同的文化和思想特性，在它的社会生活的每一领域中都会有所表现。因此，在这个社会的每一个运动、每一种思想、甚至每一个问题中，我们都可以看到它对我们施加的禁锢、压迫和扭曲。
   卡尔•波普本世纪一位具有重要影响的大哲学家。他不仅在科学哲学上作出了非常重要的贡献，而且在政治上也有着极其深远的影响。他的《开放的社会及其敌人》（1945），《历史决定论的贫困》（1944─45），从自由主义思想传统出发，以科学理性的方法，对于乌托邦外衣下的极权主义、马克思主义作了深刻的分析。一九八七年西德《世界报》（Die Welt）曾以三整版的篇幅刊载了对他的专访。时过两年，世界局势发生了重大变化，八九年二月十九、二十一、二十三日《世界报》又以同样三整版的篇幅连载了对他新的专访。在这篇专访中，卡尔•波普对当前一些重大问题再次发表了许多极其深刻、独到的见解，其中包括：对东欧改革和戈尔巴乔夫的评价，对中国问题的看法，对当代科技高度发展和绿党的分析，对马克思主义和马克思、对德国思想的尖锐批评，以及对当代知识分子的剖析。卡尔•波普的分析和许多流俗的看法形成鲜明的对比。这三篇对卡尔•波普的专访，无论对大陆还是海外的中国学人来说都是非常值得一读的，笔者将分两部分向大家介绍波普的这次谈话（第二部分题为：德国知识分子的原罪）。

一、改革必须改变制度
       不仅在东方，甚至许多西方人都把戈尔巴乔夫看作是东欧改革的先驱者、改革的救星，类似的看法也表现在人们对邓小平和共产党的评价上。在“八九”民运之前、甚至在六月大屠杀之后，很多人仍然认为，如果学生懂得妥协，共产党制度是能够修正自己的缺点的。很多人对于共产党内的改革派充满幻想，基于此，他们提出了所谓“新权威主义”。这些看法与卡尔•波普的观点形成了鲜明的对比。
   卡尔•波普认为只有两种国家制度，一种制度能够不经流血牺牲就可以摆脱一个坏的政府，而在另一种制度中却没有这种可能性，罗马尼亚的变化证明了这一点。东欧的变化，虽然它既不是通过投票、也没有流血，卡尔•波普仍然认为它是一场革命，一场没有流血的革命，这种不流血的可能性是由东欧和苏联的形势造成的。他指出，东欧的独裁是建立在苏联的力量上的，由于对于苏联国内而言，其专制统治的意识形态基础已经动摇，人民已经不再相信马克思主义，因此，到八十年代末期，政治形势和力量对比使得苏联难以站出来和西方进行真正的对抗，使得戈尔巴乔夫对外干预成为不可能。他不能为此孤注一掷，对外干涉实际上必然要埋葬他自己的改革。
   波普认为，是匈牙利首先为东欧的变化作出突破的，那种认为是戈尔巴乔夫引起了东欧突破性变化的说法是完全错误的。人们只能说，戈尔巴乔夫化不起那么多钱去干涉，他不能不顾一切地去冒险。早在八七年的专访中波普就对戈尔巴乔夫的改革表示怀疑，今天他仍然认为，如果戈尔巴乔夫不怀疑社会主义制度本身，他就不能进行真正的改革。必须彻底改变这个制度，改良它是不可能的，而所有这一制度的受益者都必然会强烈反对这种改变。改革的意愿虽然存在，但不幸七十年来的谎言和空话已经摧毁了人们的鉴别力、对那些空洞无物的流行语言的鉴别能力，使人们分辨不出那些意见毫无内容，那些见解是有意义的。尽管如此，波普认为戈尔巴乔夫仍然有着极好的机会。
   卡尔•波普谈到的所有上述问题在最近中国大陆的改革中都是存在的。人们对赵紫阳及其幕僚饮鸩止渴的改革方案认识不清、人们对共产党制度仍然存在幻想、不少所谓开明知识分子甚至提出“新权威主义”，这些恰恰表明人们丧失鉴别力、仍然囿于旧的教条思想，这种情况甚至在共产党倒台后相当长的一段时期内仍然会有相当的影响。我们切不可低估它。卡尔•波普的谈话向我们表明，任何只想改进共产党制度而不是彻底抛弃它的企图，都必然失败。我们必须清楚地看到，在共产党国家中经济永远只是政治的手段，归根结底，最重要的是政治改革。
   谈到中国问题时，波普认为它的确严重，但并却非毫无希望。他认为对中国来说，军阀割据将是严重的危险，如果不出现这种情况，共产主义的暴政在中国也会逐渐崩溃。波普强调自由的重要作用，他指出，没有自由，没有公开的监督，就不会有公正和安全，甚至会把罪犯当成人类的救星。波普重申，未来仅仅是一种可能性，他不是预言家，不去奢谈希望；他感兴趣的是现实，只谈论现实的真相。

二、苏联必须裁减它的海军
   波普认为，在与苏联一触即发的对抗状态结束之后，我们现在必须设法帮助他们摆脱困境，但同时必须要求他们实行真正的裁军。但是对此我们却一直忽视了一点，那就是苏联的海军，和英国、法国、美国、日本以及所有别的国家的海军不同，苏联的海军是纯粹进攻的。对苏联来说不存在海上侵略的威胁，它完全可以通过陆军及其飞机保护斯卡格拉克海峡和波罗地海，在这一地区苏联根本不需要航空母舰；从北部进攻其它几乎不可能，而北部和东部也几乎没有真正的重地。但美国却需要一只海军，它有两条漫长而复杂的海岸、至关重要的巴拿马运河及对盟国的义务。这种不同是非常重要的。但苏联的海军、尤其是核潜艇纯粹是进攻性的。然而这并未引起足够的重视，而且莫斯科的海军至今还在扩充，这使得斯堪地那维亚地区的国家感到日益严重的威胁。
   在马尔他，戈尔巴乔夫向布什建议，苏联减少核武器装备而美国则裁减海军力量。波普认为这简直是荒唐以极，然而却没有一家报纸揭露这一点。布什当然不会同意这种要求，然而，对此他却没有回答说，我的海军主要是防御性的，但你的却是进攻性的。这种军事力量的不平衡总使波普怀疑戈尔巴乔夫改革的真正意图。
   虽然如此，波普仍然认为西方应该立即帮助苏联；西方应该对苏联说明，从柏林向西，向北，向南直到亚洲都实现了和平，邀请他们把和平进一步扩展到全部北半球，从而实现世界和平。一九四五年西方曾向斯大林建议，从经济上帮助他们，请他们参加马歇尔计划，但遭到斯大林拒绝。现在我们重提这个建议，因为和平是我们的纲领，而没有苏联的参与它不可能近一步开展。致力于和平工作，西方需要苏联，苏联也需要西方，如果共同协作就会得到真正的和平。作为第一步工作，我们必须绝对禁止武器出口，尤其是核武器。当然苏联必须停止扩建它的海军，西方可以以优厚的价格买下他们的军舰，使它们成为废铁。波普说他不知道戈尔巴乔夫的真正计划是什么，但是只要苏联不大大削减他们的海军，他就不能相信戈尔巴乔夫的和平愿望。苏联的海军是一种威摄，它甚至比陆地核武器还严重。

三、马克思的思想和人格
   很多人认为，马克思主义是好的，只是实行它的人不好。甚至更多的人认为马克思主义在过去是好的，只是今天需要进一步发展。这种看法不仅存在于东方，而且也存在于西方。在中国大陆最近十年以来，只有极少数知识分子对马克思主义提出批评。这种不同的态度绝不只是策略的不同，它反应的是深刻的思想基础的差异，是认识论上的差异；并且正是这种不同，造成了对许多问题的不同看法和不同作法。卡尔•波普对马克思主义思想的批评对于东西方知识分子都是值得思索的。
   卡尔•波普曾经在他的书籍和文章中对马克思主义进行过非常深刻而中肯的批评，在这篇专访中，他又谈到这一问题。他认为马克思关于人类社会必然走向社会主义的论断对于近代社会历史具有非同小可的影响，它导致这样的结论：拒绝社会主义的人是严重的罪犯，因为他们居然反对必将来到的事物，这样一种理论必然要造成大批人牺牲。波普认为这是一种导致恐怖主义的论断，是一种非常可怕的意识形态。他指出，这种论断是非常武断的，因为我们自以为知道的实际上远远超出了我们所能知道的。波普说，他不会去作类似的预言，他也不相信人们有能力作这种预言，事物总是可能向完全不同的另一方面发展的，马克思的预言在今天的下场正是如此。
   在这篇专访中波普没有作近一步分析，但是从马克思主义思想中，我们可以很容易地看到，它的社会历史理论基于他独断论的哲学基础，这种独断论是与自笛卡尔、洛克以来的近代哲学传统完全对立的。而自笛卡尔以来的这种哲学传统对于认识论问题的探讨，成为近代启蒙思想的基础，它深刻地影响了了近代人文主义思想的种种观念以及整个近代文明。在这个意义上，马克思主义事实上是对抗近代文明的。正如诺贝尔奖获得者、德国物理学家麦克思•波恩所说，“相信只有一种真理并且自己占有这个真理，是世界上一切罪恶的最深刻的根源”。近百年来马克思主义所起的作用也告诉了我们这一点。因此我们可以说，在近代社会中，马克思主义的作用完全是消极的，然而这并不是完全否定马克思主义。当我们认清这一切，马克思主义就恢复了它在学院中的地位。未来，马克思主义也只有它在学院中的地位。
   在这篇专访中波普还谈到对马克思人格的批评。波普说，他总是试图发现他所研究的人的优点，因此最初他相信马克思是为人类事业奋斗的战士，他只是反对马克思的学说，而马克思对黑格尔的批评甚至一度博得他的好感。但是后来他对此产生了怀疑，而今天他已不再相信这一点了。波普说，他相信恩格斯是一个正派的人，而马克思利用了他。他举了三个例子。其一，恩格斯写信告诉马克思他妻子病逝，马克思对此竟然毫无表示，这使得两个人的关系一度冷淡，马克思后来才看到这个错误，向恩格斯道了歉。其二，马克思和他的女佣非婚生了一个孩子，但对她个人却毫无表示。其三是关于拉萨尔的逝世。拉萨尔曾经钦佩并赞扬过马克思，可是后来马克思把拉萨尔视为竞争对手，对他的不幸逝世，马克思写信给恩格斯说，他很高兴。波普认为这些是十分严重的。

四、从来也没有过人民政权
   波普认为人们极其轻率地误解了民主制度。“民主制度”一词在德语中被译为“人民政权”是严重的错误。从来就没有过一种人民政权，即使是在法国大革命时期也是如此。法国大革命在本质上是一种恐怖统治，断头台实际上是以国家为名的恐怖主义。它的确是一种多数专政，但是是灾难性的。
   在雅典，民主制是一种阻止独裁者、暴君得到权力的尝试。它的本质是人民监督，而不是人民政权。在雅典，民主制的决定性标准是利用选举反对和剔除，而不是推举某些人。那时采用的是贝壳放逐法，这并不是一个好的方法，大约八十年后人们废除了这种方法。使用这种方法人们可以驱逐那些他们认为是危险的人，例如名望过高的人。其特点是，这种放逐不能被视为一种审判和丧失名誉，相反它仅意味着，对于我们你太能干、太危险了。波普认为，民主制问题从一开始就是寻求一种方法，不使某些人权势过大，并且这始终是民主制问题的中心所在。根据这种看法，他尖锐地批评了比例代表制和联合政府。波普认为比例代表制完全是一种坏的制度，它从一种根本不可能实现的前提出发，即议会应该是民众的一面镜子。事实是，议会行使某些权力，而民众只有选举权；或如波普所说，民众只有不选那些他们不信任的人的权力。经验表明，议会行使权力不是成比例的。例如，理论上代表某种观点的百分之二的选民也应该行使百分之二的权力，但实际上一个小党常常以离开联合政府相威胁，从而发挥很大的作用，比例代表制根本不是如人们想象得那样。关于联合政府，波普认为，在民主制度中拥有和行使权力的人的责任感是十分重要的，这种责任不是指如何领导民主，而是指对于民众批评、指责的答复。如果这种答复不足以服人，那么执政者就要退位，但联合政府直接妨碍了履行这种责任。在联合政府中人们永远不能确切知道谁在负责，在德国这种危险并不严重，但在意大利人们可以看到这种联合导向何方。当政党太多时，政府就会很不稳定。

我是怎样研究1959年“拉萨事件”的——兼谈历史学研究的基本方法

《1959 拉萨！》出版后， 我在台北接受中广“两岸风云会”记者的采访，她向我提出一个问题：关于1959年拉萨发生的事，50年来，中藏两方各说各话，读者凭什么相信你说的就是真的呢？我简单回答说，对这个事件的研究，我综合了来自中共、藏人、美国、印度等几个方面的资料，采访了主要当事人。我并不认为这本书是研究的终点，而是起点，其中还有许多细节由于缺乏资料，无法做出结论，有待更多的资料出现，填补我无法厘清的一些细节，也可订正我可能出现的错误和疏漏。

我到美国留学时，抱着对犹太文化的强烈兴趣而学犹太历史，由此进入历史学。但是对犹太史我并没有深入研究，拿了个硕士学位就毕业走人了。对我帮助极大的，是我后来学犹太神秘宗教时的导师沃弗森教授。犹太神秘宗教当时是个新领域，研究者基本上是从零开始，对一些中世纪秘密手稿进行研究，建立起犹太神秘宗教的范围、方法、目的等等。由于资料的性质，研究者使用的方法是历史学最基本的方法之一：文本研究。上沃弗森教授的课，有时候会感到相当枯燥：他就是对着几页中世纪流传下来的文本，反反复复解释其中的涵义。美国大学跟中国不同，教授是鼓励学生提问的，学生也乐于质疑教授。我们上课的时候，师生常常会发生争论，我就是在此过程中学到了他的研究方法。

说起文本分析，你首先必须区分“事实”（fact）与“解读”（interpretation）。比方说：“1959年3月17日深夜，西藏叛国集团悍然将达赖喇嘛劫出拉萨。”这句话里既有“事实”也有“解读”。事实是他走了，中方对他走的解释是“被劫”。解释是主观的，事实是客观的，研究者不应该被主观的“解读”带着走，而是从这句话里提取出一个事实：1959年3月17日深夜，达赖喇嘛离开了拉萨，而且不是一个人离开的。当然，“被劫”也有可能是事实，那就必须通过其他资料，如果有可能的话，直接采访当事人，来确定这是“事实”，还是“解读”。

历史学是一门相当严谨的学科，你能发挥的空间很小。不管你做出什么样的解释，都必须以“事实”为基础。在众说纷纭的一大团乱麻中提取“事实”，就是研究者的功夫所在。弄清楚这点，你也知道了如何区别“史实”和“宣传”。

1959年3月拉萨发生的事件牵扯面很大，从北京到拉萨，参与的人数以万计，事件的整个过程看上去像一团乱麻。研究者首先要把事件的来龙去脉，即基本线索厘清。干这活儿，我用的是另一个史学基本方法：事件重建。也就是根据你所掌握的资料，把你能够找到的事实，根据它们发生的日期，一天一天地排列出来。59年3月10日这天发生的各种事情，我是从早到晚，按照时间顺序来排列的。当然，同一个时间内有很多事情发生，那就在同一个时间内把你能够找到的事情都排列出来。由于所依据的资料不一定有明确的时间，这时候就需要具备分析、推断的能力。其实这并不难，只是需要极大的耐心。

研究者重建的是干巴巴的“事实”，而不是“解读”，各方面的解读都必须完全排除。那么，你怎么知道对方说的是实话呢？文本资料，需要你去考证，如果是访谈，需要一定的技巧，你不能让对方了解你提问的意图，也不能引导对方，然后根据对方的回答来判断。 有时候需要反复询问，有点儿像“破案”。当然，还要问非常具体的细节。对于这点，研究者必须先得做大量功课。自己不甚了解，当然也问不出名堂来。我访谈时，常常是单刀直入地问：“3月10号那天你在哪里？”而不是问“3月10号那天你有没有去罗布林卡？”成功的访谈，是你提出一个问题，对方回答一大堆，然后你通过反复询问细节来确认。

当然，研究过程中会有资料缺失。比方说“第一枪”究竟是怎样打起来的，双方都没有当事人留下的第一手资料，但是，只要你建立了事件的基本架构，一些细节的缺失并不妨碍整个事件的基本面貌，就像一幅古画，虽然画面斑驳，但你依然能够看出它画的是什么。

接下来的问题是：研究者怎样确定资料的真实性？

历史研究的“原材料”有两大类，即第一手资料和第二手资料。一般说来，当事人的回忆距离事件越近越可靠，细节也越多。因此，对于达赖喇嘛这位当事人，除了采访之外，我参考的主要是他1962年出版的第一部自传《我的土地，我的人民》。

至于原始文件，根据中国国情，有公开资料和内部资料。不用说，内部资料比公开资料更可靠，特别是内参资料，因为是专门给高层看的，写的人不敢随便乱写，内参资料通常比较可靠。另外，根据我的经验（也根据中国“国情”），80年代和90年代初出版的资料比2000年之后的更可靠。当事人的回忆非常重要，但是要注意：每个当事人只知道自己所经历的那个“点”，还不能排除当事人可能会有意隐瞒对自己不利的材料。因此，研究者需要把许多的“点”拼成“面”。

如何判断资料的真实性，有一个比较简单方法：先找出一个确定无疑的事实作为“参照系”，以此来对照。很多时候，要靠细节是否真实来判断资料是否真实。我判断许加屯的回忆不真实，理由很简单：当时张国华根本不在西藏，毛泽东为什么发指示给他，还从哪里放行都标明了？ 从西藏出境有很多条路线，不熟悉那里地理的人根本弄不清，达赖喇嘛本人都没有确定要走哪条路线，毛泽东怎么可能一开始就知道？这不合常识。况且，许加屯这段回忆的动机是证明毛泽东的“过人之处”，这就很难排除他的夸张成分。我判断吉柚权引用的李觉回忆不真实，是因为李觉不是当事人，当时不在拉萨，因此无法排除他的说法是事后解释，况且吉柚权没有提供资料来源。我判断阿沛的回忆文章有问题，是因为他不可能把达赖喇嘛哥哥的名字跟达赖喇嘛当时的基巧堪布名字弄混。坦白说，我认为那篇以阿沛名义发表的文章自相矛盾之处太多，极有可能根本不是他写的。

我认为1959拉萨事件是中方早有计划，借3·10事件来实施这个计划，理由是丁盛回忆录里提供的一个日期：3月11日晚上11点，他收到中央的电报，要他组织“丁指”。这说明在3·10事件发生后不到48小时，中方就决定要打。作战计划显然不可能临时作出，而且中方知道此役他们稳操胜券，这点从3月21日，仗还没打完，总政就给西藏军区发出政治动员令就可以判断出来，当然还有很多其他资料可以证明这点。

历史研究很繁琐，资料收集很重要，但资料分析更重要。最后，还有一个问题：你打算写给谁看？如果写给“圈内人”即学术圈的人看，那叫“academic history”，那是为你挣学位或者教职的，很难为普通读者所接受。我选择的历史写作方式叫“narrative history”，用讲故事的方式来叙述历史事件，使普通读者能够读下去。由于面对的是一件相当重大的历史事件，必须十分慎重，因此对资料的处理我采取了学术方式，所以看上去有点不伦不类。 当然，如何定义并不重要，重要的是尽可能把事件讲清楚。不清楚之处，应该指出来，至少不要妄下结论。历史学家们各有各的方法，这仅仅是我使用的方法，其实也是最基本的办法，或者说最“笨”的办法。

我为什么选择1959拉萨事件这个切入点呢？因为这个事件本身的重要性。了解了这个事件的来龙去脉，很多相关的事情就有了答案。

柯翰默(Charles Krauthammer): 美期中選舉及之後局勢

歐巴馬總統在西班牙語廣播電視網Univision的訪問中，斥責西裔人士「坐視期中選舉，而未挺身說出『我們要懲罰敵人』。」歐巴馬敦促西裔人士展開政治報復的這些敵人，想必包括那些支持亞歷桑納州新移民法的近6成美國人。

說這些話的總統，甚至不願用「敵人」一詞稱呼資助武裝組織在阿富汗殺害美軍官兵的伊朗政權。說這些話的總統，在政壇崛起時曾震耳欲聾地喊：我們的國家不屬於共和黨或民主黨、不屬於黑人、白人或拉美人──而是族群融合的美利堅合眾國。

選後國會無大進展

偉大的後黨派主義時代、後種族歧視時代、總統「新政」時代就這樣結束了──毫不鏗鏘有力，全無一絲傷感，只因選情告急，就呼籲選民展開種族復仇。
選後的國會不會再通過任何重要法案。未來兩年，共和黨人將無法通過任何對他們而言重要的法案，因為總統有否決權。民主黨人則會因為政治勢力遭大幅削弱，無法讓歐巴馬廣泛的變革政綱取得任何進展，更別提達成目標。
一切都要在贏得2012年總統大選後才能開始。每位總統都享有兩次實現政綱的良機：上任之初的18個月，他享有高聲望的蜜月期，這蜜月期在連任後的前18個月會再來一次，直到跛鴨期到來。
未來兩年，真正的行動將不在國會，而在聯邦官僚體系內展開。民主黨人將得以利用行政法規遂行他們在歐巴馬健保法案、金融改革與能源等方面的政綱，例如環保署片面實施的碳排放量上限規定。
但民主黨人想在國會通過重要法案以完成歐巴馬的社會民主主義政綱？絕不可能。這個國家的未來走向，將在2012年11月決定，屆時不是歐巴馬連任，得以將他的「新基礎」打造完成，就是共和黨人選出自己的總統，廢除歐巴馬的「新基礎」。
今年的選舉，以及2012的選舉，確實有重大意義。它攸關一個極嚴肅的政治問題。

民主黨仍不被看好

歐巴馬值得稱頌的是，他當選總統後，不是只做些推行青少年半夜打籃球或建議學生應穿制服等小事。他和柯林頓不同，思考的格局很大，他想成為重要的總統，像雷根那樣。他一股腦地全面採行自由派大政府理念，是推動整個期中選舉的主軸。
為民主黨辯護的人假托其他藉口──一切都是因為經濟太差、因為選民對自己身處險境感到憤怒。但哥倫比亞廣播公司（ＣＢＳ）與《紐約時報》最新聯合民調顯示，只有1/12的美國人認為經濟情勢不佳應怪罪歐巴馬，7/10認為景氣低迷只是暫時的，可是民主黨的支持率仍土崩瓦解。在數十年來民主黨均佔優勢的女性選民中，民主黨支持率落後共和黨4％；在中間選民中，民主黨支持率的落後差距更達到驚人的20％；在大學學歷選民中，民主黨支持率也落後20％，戳穿了那些自由派高傲人士的謊言。他們宣稱，共和黨支持率劇增是那些無知愚民起而報復的結果。
11月2日那天，絕對會出現懲罰。我的預測是：民主黨會失去60個聯邦眾議院席次、8個聯邦參議院席次。

作者為美國《華盛頓郵報》專欄作家

Israel and Congressional Democrats

by Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
October 19, 2010

How should American voters concerned with Israel's welfare and security vote in the U.S. Congressional elections on Nov. 2?
This much is clear after almost two years of Democratic control over the executive and legislative branches of government: Democrats consistently support Israel and its government far less than do Republicans. Leaving Barack Obama aside for now (he's not on the ballot), let's focus on Congress and on voters.

An ad by the Republican Jewish Coalition points out weaker Democratic support for Israel.

Congress: The pattern of weak Democratic support began just a week after Inauguration Day 2009, right after the Israel-Hamas war, when 60 House Democrats (including such left-wingers as Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters) and not a single Republican wrote the secretary of state to "respectfully request that the State Department release emergency funds to [the anti-Israel organization] UNRWA for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance" in Gaza.

In the same spirit, 54 House Democrats and not a single Republican signed a letter to Barack Obama a year later, in January 2010, asking him to "advocate for immediate improvements for Gaza in the following areas" and then listed ten ways to help Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization.
In dramatic contrast, 78 House Republicans wrote a "Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu" letter a few months later to express their "steadfast support" for him and Israel. The signatories were not just Republicans but members of the House Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus.
So, count 54 Democrats for Hamas and 78 Republicans for Israel.
In the aftermath of the March 2010 crisis when Joe Biden went to Jerusalem, 333 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter to the secretary of state reaffirming the U.S.-Israel alliance. The 102 members who did not sign included 94 Democrats (including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) and 8 Republicans, a 12-to-1 ratio. Seventy-six senators signed a similar letter; the 24 who did not sign included 20 Democrats and 4 Republicans, a 5-to-1 ratio.
Voters: Public opinion explains these differences on Capitol Hill.
An April 2009 poll by Zogby International asked about U.S. policy: Ten percent of Obama voters and 60 percent of voters for Republican John McCain wanted the president to support Israel. Get tough with Israel? Eighty percent of Obama voters said yes and 73 percent of McCain voters said no. Conversely, 67 percent of Obama voters said yes and 79 percent of McCain voters said no to Washington engaging with Hamas. And 61 percent of Obama voters endorsed a Palestinian "right of return," while only 21 percent of McCain voters concurred.
Almost a year later, the same pollster asked American adults how best to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict and found "a strong divide" on this question. Seventy-three percent of Democrats wanted the president to end the historic bond with Israel but treat Arabs and Israelis alike; only 24 percent of Republicans endorsed this shift.

Gallup on "Sympathy for Israelis vs. Palestinians in Mideast Situation, by Party ID."

A survey this month asked if a likely voter is "more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate whom you perceive as pro-Israel." Thirty-nine percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans prefer the pro-Israel candidate. Turned around, 33 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Republicans would be less likely to support a candidate because he is pro-Israel. Democrats are somewhat evenly split on Israel but Republicans favor it by a 5-to-1 ratio.
A consensus exists that the two parties are growing further apart over time. Pro-Israel, conservative Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe finds that "the old political consensus that brought Republicans and Democrats together in support of the Middle East's only flourishing democracy is breaking down." Anti-Israel, left-wing James Zogby of the Arab American Institute agrees, writing that "traditional U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not have bipartisan backing." Thanks to changes in the Democratic party, Israel has become a partisan issue in American politics, an unwelcome development for it.
In late March 2010, during a nadir of U.S.-Israel relations, Janine Zacharia wrote in the Washington Post that some Israelis expect their prime minister to "search for ways to buy time until the midterm U.S. elections [of November 2010] in hopes that Obama would lose support and that more pro-Israel Republicans would be elected." That an Israeli leader is thought to stall for fewer Congressional Democrats confirms the changes outlined here. It also provides guidance for voters.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Oct. 19, 2010 update: For a more extensive compilation of figures on this topic, see my weblog entry, "Republicans and Democrats Look at the Arab-Israeli Conflict."

以色列和美国国会中的民主党人

作者 Daniel Pipes
国家评论在线
2010年10月19日

美国选民在11月2日的美国国会选举中当如何关心以色列的战事和安全问题呢？
在民主党控制政府的行政和立法机构接近两年之后，一切更加明了：民主党人一贯比共和党更少支持以色列及其政府。现在先不说巴拉克ˑ奥巴马，（他不在投票事项中），让我们集中看看国会及选民。（先对冗繁的数字表示道歉。）

共和党犹太联会的一则广告中指出共和党对以色列的支持变弱。

国会：民主党人对以色列微弱的支持模式在2009年总统就职日之后的一个星期之后开始了——紧接着以色列和哈马斯之间的战争，当时60 名众议院的民主党人（包括左翼人士包括Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee以及Maxine Waters) ——其中没有一个共和党人，写信给国务卿来"敬重地要求国务院将紧急资金发放给[反以色列的组织]UNRWA在加沙进行重建和人道主义援助"。

本着同样的精神，在一年后，即2010年1月，54名众议院民主党人在给巴拉克ˑ奥巴马的签名信中要求他"在以下领域支持理解改进加沙"，然后列举了十个方式帮助哈马斯，即巴勒斯坦恐怖主义组织。没有一个共和党人在此信上签名。
对比非常强烈的是， 78 名众议院共和党人在几个月后写给"亲爱的内塔尼亚胡总理"的信中表达了他们对他以及以色列"坚定的支持"。签字的人中不仅仅有共和党还包括众议院共和党研究委员会的成员，这是一个保守派的核心成员会议。
所以数算一下的话，54名民主党人支持哈马斯，78名共和党人支持以色列。
在2010年3月的危机之后，副总统拜登去了耶路撒冷，众议院的333名 成员签署了写给国务卿的一封信重新确认美国和以色列之间的联盟关系。没有签名的102名成员包括94名民主党人（包括众议院发言人 佩洛西）以及8名共和党人，12比1的比例。76名 议员签署了一封类似的信，24名没有签字的人包括20名民主党人和4名共和党人，比例为5比1。
选民：公众的观点正解释了国会大厦中的区别。
佐格比国际在2009年4月做的一份民意测验中问及美国政策：投票给奥巴马和支持共和党约翰ˑ麦凯恩的选民中，分别有10%和60%希望总统支持以色列。 要对以色列采取强硬的措施吗？奥巴马80%的支持者回答是肯定的，麦凯恩73%的支持者回答是否定的。相反，对美国政府是否要和哈马斯打交道，奥巴马67%的支持者回答是肯定的，73%麦凯恩的支持者说不。奥巴马61%的支持者支持巴勒斯坦有"回归权"，而麦凯恩的选民中只有21%赞同这一观点。
大约在一年以后，同样的民意调查机构问美国的成年人如何对阿以冲突进行最好的处理，发现在这个问题上有"一个巨大的差异"。73%的民主党人希望总统结束和以色列的历史联系，但是同样对待阿拉伯人和以色列人；只有24%的共和党人支持这一转变。

盖洛普关于《中东局势中同情以色列人，还是同情巴勒斯坦人》的民意调查。

这个月的一次调查中问到选民是"更可能或者更不可能为你认为是支持以色列的候选人投票。" 39%的民主党人和69%的共和党人更喜欢支持以色列的候选人。反过来，33%的民主党人和14%的共和党人更不太可能支持倾向于以色列的候选人。民主党人对以色列的态度半对半，而共和党支持以色列的比例则是5比1。

当前存在着这样一种共识，即两党随着时间推移渐行渐远。支持以色列的保守派，即《波士顿环球杂志》的Jeff Jacoby发现 "对中东唯一繁荣的民主体制的共同支持曾将共和、民主两党拉到一起，而如今这一共识正在衰退。"阿拉伯美国人研究所的反以色列左翼人士James Zogby也同意，他写到"美国对巴以冲突的传统政策现在没有两党的共同支持。"由于民主党的变动，以色列已经成为美国政治中的党派性问题，这是一个不利的发展。"

2010年3月末是美国和以色列关系的最低点，Janine Zacharia 在《华盛顿邮报》写到，一些以色列人期望他们的总理来"寻找方法来拖延时间，直到美国中期选举（2010年11月），希望奥巴马会失去民众支持，更多支持以色列的共和党人会当选。"大家认为以色列的领导人可以拖延，等着国会的民主党人变少， 这也正证实了本文所列举的改变。它也为选民指引了方向。

http://zh-hans.danielpipes.org/article/9015

秦晖：中国历史的延续与断裂

In China, Even the Premier Is Censored

By L. GORDON CROVITZ


From the outside, China can seem monolithic, run by Communist Party officials united by the prime directive of maintaining power. But every once in a while splits become visible and remind us that while China may now be the world's second-largest economy, there's a steep price for being a laggard when it comes to the free flow of information.

Associated Press： Wen Jiabao

Consider Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. He has called for political reform several times in recent months, but censors have blocked domestic reporting of his comments. This led to an open letter from 23 well-known Communist Party elders calling for free speech. The letter was posted last week in a blog area of sina.com, one of the country's largest websites, and widely shared before being removed.

This letter is worth attention, both for its authors and its substance. The signatories include a who's who of former Communist Party propagandists, including Li Rui, the former private secretary to Mao Zedong, and retired top editors of the People's Daily (the party's mouthpiece), Xinhua (the official news agency) and the China Daily (the state-run English-language newspaper).
"Retired older officials can speak more loudly," says Xiao Qiang, editor of China Digital Times, a news site based at the University of California, Berkeley. "They can protect the middle-aged people who currently hold the same roles as editors and party propagandists by speaking for them." Mr. Xiao points out that the letter's "rhetoric on political reform is not very different from the language of the Charter 08 document," the freedom manifesto that sent Liu Xiaobo to jail and helped him win this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
The letter notes that the Chinese Constitution claims freedom of speech and the press, but this "formal avowal and concrete denial has become a scandalous mark." It cites a CNN interview earlier this month in which Premier Wen said, "Freedom of speech is indispensable for any nation," and points out the irony that these comments were blocked by domestic media.

"Even the premier of our country does not have freedom of speech or of the press," the party elders write. "If we endeavor to find those responsible, we are utterly incapable of putting our finger on a specific person. This is the work of invisible hands. For their own reasons, they violate our constitution, often ordering by telephone that the works of such and such a person cannot be published, or that such and such an event cannot be reported in the media.
"These invisible hands are our Central Propaganda Department. Right now the department is placed above the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and above the State Council. We would ask, what right does the Central Propaganda Department have to muzzle the speech of the premier? What right does it have to rob the people of our nation of their right to know what the premier has said?"

The party elders note that Britain gave its colony of Hong Kong more freedom than the Communist Party gives China: "The freedom of speech and freedom of the press given to residents of Hong Kong by the British authorities there was not empty, appearing only on paper. It was enacted and realized."
The letter writers appeal to Chinese nationalism: "In countries around the world, the development of the rule of law in news and publishing" long ago replaced censorship, and "this is greatly in the favor of the development of the humanities and natural sciences, and in promoting social harmony and historical progress." They note that "England did away with censorship in 1695. France abolished its censorship system in 1881." This means "our present system of censorship leaves news and book publishing in our country 315 years behind England and 129 years behind France."

By censoring news in recent years about toxic baby formula, the SARS virus and blood centers infected with AIDS, Beijing has encouraged cynicism by its citizens about its own government. Even the elite—even the premier—wonder about their own liberties.

The letter from the party elders reminds us that it's not just dissidents who dissent. "Although most of this letter's signers carried out the party's will during their careers," longtime China watcher and legal scholar Jerome Cohen says, "the letter provides immediate tangible evidence that at least a minority within the elite is bitter and disillusioned." Bao Pu, a Hong Kong-based book publisher whose father was an economic reform leader in Beijing, reports that more than 1,000 people so far have added their names to the letter.

The Communist Party will reform itself when its splits become too wide to cover over. For the outside world, the opportunity is to encourage the growing number of disillusioned cadres who understand that modern countries rely on a free flow of information, for ordinary citizens and their leaders alike.

程晓农: 苏联官僚们观察风向、做出“换船”决定

      　一九九一年，苏共内的保守派发动了反改革的政变，因回应者寥寥无几、又不敌叶利钦的挑战而告失败。这场政变充分暴露了苏共保守派领导人的愚昧、无能和孤立，最终结束了苏共的政治生命，继而导致了苏联的解体和原苏联各共和国的独立。作为共产主义阵营的发源地和中坚的苏联，顷刻之间突然分崩离析，号称强大无比、党员达人口十分之一的苏共，竟然找不到多少支持者而迅速土崩瓦解，对全世界来说，这确实是一场完全出乎意料的世纪性变化。
   
     (博讯 boxun.com)
    　　“冰冻三尺，非一日之寒”，苏联的解体和苏共的崩溃自然有其深刻的原因，用“历史唯物主义”的话语来说，就是有着“历史必然性”。如果没有一系列长期以来不断积累的导致苏联解体的条件，叶利钦和苏联的民主派是不可能“四两拨千斤”，轻而易举地战胜苏联总统戈尔巴乔夫以及庞大的苏联党政军特系统，并建立起一个民主制度的。值得深思的是，这种结局为什么是历史之必然，在苏联解体这一历史过程中应当获得什么启示？
   
   
    　　谁是罪魁祸首?
   
   
    　　苏联正式的政治演变起自戈尔巴乔夫推行的“开放”和“改革”政策，前者指的不是经济上的对外开放，而是国内政治上的“开放”，“改革”则是指经济改革。
   
   
    　　一种很典型的说法指戈尔巴乔夫是苏联解体、苏共崩溃的罪魁祸首，认为是他有意要葬送苏联和苏共。其中客气一些的说法，是批评他在政治改革问题上作了错误决策，不应当实行政治“开放”。还有一种说法则认为，苏联只搞政治改革、不搞经济改革，所以必然失败。言外之意是，如果只搞经济改革，不搞政治改革，就不会发生那样的结局。这两种说法显然都过于简单化，忽略了导致苏联政治演变的诸多国内、国际因素，而且，也带有很明显的从各自立场出发的政治意涵。
   
   
    　　苏联解体、苏共垮台后，许多西方著名的苏联问题专家多次反思，坦率地承认，虽然他们十分了解苏联体制的根本弱点，但他们当中几乎没有人曾料到，一个昔日集权、强大的超级大国苏联，会在短短的几年内就彻底垮掉，而且事先似乎没有要垮台的任何征兆。
   
   
    　　只有一个人，即卡特任总统时的国务卿布热津斯基，二十年前曾经预言，苏联的制度可能拖不过二十世纪，但是他也无法解释，为什么这会发生在九十年代，而不是更早或下一世纪。令许多苏联问题专家感到惭愧的是，他们过去几十年悉心研究苏联所建立起来的种种理论，都只能说明为什么苏联会保持稳定，却无法解释为什么苏联维持不下去了。
   
   
    　　确实，戈尔巴乔夫是苏联“开放”和“改革”的主导者。那么，又是什么因素迫使戈尔巴乔夫推动“开放”和“改革”的呢?十年过去了，现在西方关于当年苏联解体原因的说法仍然莫衷一是。政治、历史、经济学、社会各个领域的学者，各有各的观察角度，其解释也各有千秋。
   
   
    　　结束冷战却导致苏联东欧阵营的瓦解
   
   
    　　有的西方专家认为，在冷战中与西方抗衡的失败，是苏联转而推动国内改革并默许东欧变革的重要因素。早在八十年代中期，苏联军方就很清楚地意识到，苏联的经济已经无法支撑新一代武器的研制和生产，因此军方不可能在冷战中保持与西方的均势，更不可能在冷战中取胜。所以，军方放弃了坚持冷战这一目标，谋求与西方的缓和。
   
   
    　　苏联东欧阵营在冷战中的失败是两种制度较量的结果，实行计划经济体制的苏联在抗衡中渐渐露出败像的情况下，为了自救而放弃冷战。失去了冷战这个战略目标，苏联东欧阵营的向心力就大大削弱。对苏联来说，原来在冷战时期具有战略价值的东欧国家失去了其重要性，而这些国家日益落后的社会主义经济和它们对苏联的依赖，也变成了苏联沉重的经济包袱。结果，苏联改变了对东欧国家的一贯政策，开始鼓励东欧国家的变革，而对东欧各国反对变革、依赖苏联支持保护的保守派则越来越冷淡。面对东欧国家一九八九年的变革浪潮，苏联采取了一种不干预的默许态度，于是东欧各国的共产党政权就撑不下去了，最后被迫相继下台。
   
   
    　　东欧国家的共产党政权本来就是苏联处心积虑地扶植起来的。“二战”期间，苏联通过共产国际，在莫斯科颇有战略眼光地培养了一批东欧各国的干部，制定了一整套夺取政权的方案，准备战后建立听命于苏联的政权。二战后期，东欧各国相继被苏联红军占领。苏联利用占领军的地位和权势，把以前培养的东欧各国的共产党人送回本国，或者是让他们加入当地的自由派政权，进而取得控制权，或者是资助、支持东欧共产党人建立亲苏的政治团体和政党，打击并逐渐取代本国的自由派势力，最后在东欧各国如愿以偿地先后建立了亲苏政权。
   
   
    　　东欧各国战前实行的是市场经济制度，也有市民社会的传统，老百姓对社会主义制度并不怎么支持，二战结束时也从未发生过拥护共产党人的革命。这些国家的共产党政权和社会主义制度，是苏联强加给东欧各国老百姓的，在东欧各国缺乏足够的社会基础。因此，在东欧各国曾屡屡发生民众对共产党政权的大规模反抗：一九五三年在东德，一九五六年在匈牙利，一九六八年在捷克，一九五六年和一九七○年在波兰，都发生过民众的起义。当地的共产党政权每次都是在苏联的干预和援助下，把这些反抗残酷镇压下去的。
   
   
    　　到了八十年代后期，苏联这座惟一的靠山悄悄往后撤了，东欧国家的共产党政权就无法独自抗拒国内长期被压制的自由民主要求，也不敢再残酷镇压民主运动。没有了苏联军事、政治、经济上的强力支持，哪个东欧共产党政权也承担不起对抗国际社会的后果。这样，东欧各国在国内普遍要求政治经济变革的压力下，就自然走上了政治民主化、经济市场化的道路。而东欧各国的政权相继“易帜”，又反过来形成了对苏联政治改革的巨大促进和压力，使苏联只能沿着民主化的方向不断向前移动，苏联的解体和苏共的崩溃实际上是这一过程不可避免的结果。
   
   
    　　高福利拖垮了社会主义
   
   
    　　八十年代苏联的经济状况不佳是人所共知的，不少学者往往只强调苏联计划经济体系的僵化、过度发展国防工业、民用工业技术水平落后等等，但很少有人注意到，苏联的全面福利制度和高福利、高消费水平也是苏联经济日益衰败的重要原因。
   
   
    　　从赫鲁晓夫时代开始，苏联就不断提高社会主义福利的水平；到了勃列日涅夫时代，由于政府无法再乞灵于广泛的恐怖统治，在共产主义意识形态逐渐失去号召力、社会不满日益增加的情况下，只有“花钱买稳定”，用高福利来邀买人心，换取老百姓的政治服从。因此，到了七十年代末期，苏联民众的生活水平就达到了相当高的水平，商品供应充足，物价低廉，大量分配新建住宅，电视机、冰箱、洗衣机等耐用消费品迅速普及，老百姓的储蓄也不断增加，那时苏联人的购买力就几乎相当于今天中国人的购买力。
   
   
    　　但是，这种高福利虽然是老百姓的福音，却是苏联经济的噩耗。因为，苏联低效率的经济基础实际上只能应付低收入、低消费，无力长期支撑这种高福利。在社会主义制度下，由于没有竞争压力，虽然提高了福利和教育水平，却并不会相应提高整个经济的劳动生产率，只不过促使更多的人转移到轻松干净的工作岗位上，造成白领岗位上大量冗员、工作纪律松懈，而蓝领岗位却严重缺员。所以，高福利时代越长，对苏联经济实力的消耗也越厉害。因此，到了八十年代后期，苏联已经债台高筑，再也供不起这样的高福利了。于是，商品短缺越来越严重，通货膨胀不断上升，经济增长停滞，经济情况明显恶化。
   
   
    　　其实，在苏联实行重工业优先、低收入低消费政策的年代，经济并没有垮掉。只是因为从勃列日涅夫时代开始，连续实行了二十年的高福利，才使经济陷入绝境的。在社会主义制度下，想要既维持一个重工业、军事工业为重心的经济结构，又维持高福利，是力不能及的。然而，一旦为了国内政治的需要，不得不走上高福利的不归路，那么，或早或晚，国力“透支”就必然导致经济危机。
   
   
    　　在勃列日涅夫统治的年代，“花钱买稳定”确实让党和老百姓“皆大欢喜、各得其所”，党不用担心社会不稳定，老百姓有轻松舒适的物质生活。可是，一个隐藏在背后的结果是，这一时期的高福利政策不光“吃”掉了斯大林、赫鲁晓夫时代留下的“老本”，还把戈尔巴乔夫时代的资源也提前“吃”掉了，是一种既“吃” 祖宗饭、又“吃”子孙饭的政策。
   
   
    　　其后患究竟如何，到戈尔巴乔夫时代才真正显现出来。戈尔巴乔夫实际上吃了勃列日涅夫的“哑巴亏”，“命”里注定是个悲剧式的人物。勃列日涅夫虽然是个昏庸无能之辈，到了任期的后半段，连在苏共代表大会上照着讲稿念，都念得错字连篇，可是他这个“媳妇”手中有“米”，轻轻松松地就把“家” 维持下来了。戈尔巴乔夫这个“媳妇”倒是比前任们“巧”得多，可他的前任把“撒银子”、做“好人”的机会全用光了，留给他的只是堆积如山的债和得罪人的 “差事”，新“媳妇”再“巧”，没有“米”也维持不住这个“家”。
   
   
    　　在“苦头”和“甜头”之间的两难选择
   
   
    　　八十年代，经济危机隐然露头之后，苏联社会中出现了一种对经济改革的幻觉，认为只要推行市场化改革，就可以很快过上发达社会的富裕生活。从这种幻觉的背后，可以看到一种对经济改革的实用主义和机会主义态度。然而，当时在苏联却很少有人提到，在苏联这种长期维持高福利、资源耗尽的背景下，推行经济改革其实是一种自救行动，其根本目的是提高效率、减少资源消耗、防止经济系统的进一步瓦解。这样的经济改革不会立竿见影地带来“甜头”，当然也很难让已经相当高的社会主义福利再上一层楼；相反，经济改革却可能在相当长的时期内给苏联民众带来“苦头”。
   
   
    　　社会主义国家或迟或早都得搞经济改革，并不是因为市场经济比社会主义经济更有魅力，人们可以在两个制度里任意挑一个更喜欢的，或者可以像点菜那样，从两种经济制度里选一些合乎自己胃口的东西。其实，社会主义国家搞经济改革是迫不得已的，不改革就可能垮台。在这种情况下，只剩下一个市场经济可以选择，不管人们喜欢还是不喜欢，能够代替社会主义经济制度的只有市场经济，走市场经济的路实际上是没有选择的选择。
   
   
    　　而要建立一个真正的有效的市场经济制度，就不能再充分照顾人们在社会主义体制中得到的既得利益。所以，对社会主义国家的大部分老百姓来说，改造计划经济、走上市场经济的过程，并不是甜蜜的，而是痛苦的，会被迫放弃很多在社会主义制度里得到保护的既得利益，会面临激烈的竞争，很多人原来的社会经济地位可能保不住了，在相当一段时期里，生活水平不会上升反而可能下降。后来苏联东欧各国的经济转型过程都证明了这一点。
   
   
    　　这种一代人为了经济改革而付出沉重代价的过程，可以说是“父债子还”。换言之，第一代人选择了社会主义道路，但并没有尝到社会主义高福利的“甜头”；第二或第三代人虽然没有政治自由，但是却享受了社会主义高福利，无论比上一代还是下一代都过得轻松舒适，但把子孙们赖以生存发展的资源 “吃”光“用”尽了；第三或第四代人就不可能像他们的父辈那样幸运了，他们面临着不得不摆脱社会主义的艰巨使命，不但再尝不到多少高福利的“甜头”，相反，还不得不为此付出巨大的代价，在转型中得到的多半是“苦头”，自然，付出代价的这代人总是心有不甘的。
   
   
    　　一般来说，苏联东欧国家的老百姓对改革社会主义经济制度，推行市场经济，往往有两种态度。一种是把社会主义制度当做“破衣烂履”，坦然弃之而后快；另一种是对市场化改革半心半意，对旧制度恋恋不舍，欲拒还迎。在东欧国家，由于社会主义制度是苏联用刺刀输入的，所以持前一种态度的人比较多。在苏联，则多数人持后一种态度，因为，亲身经历经济转型时代的人，多半属于第二到第四代，他们一方面对社会主义的高福利有深刻的记忆和相当程度的怀念，另一方面在情感上也不愿为了经济改革的成功而指责父辈，这就决定了他们那种对市场化的实用主义和机会主义态度。
   
   
    　　许多俄国和西方的专家们认为，戈尔巴乔夫对经济改革半心半意，因此苏联的经济始终不见起色。其实，就算他对经济改革是全心全意的，苏联多年的高福利已经耗尽了资源，没有条件实行给“甜头”、没“苦头”的经济改革，只能进行有“苦头”、没“甜头”的改革。这样的“苦”政策只有斯大林、毛泽东才办得到，他们既拥有老百姓的崇拜，又挥动着专政的铁拳，提出什么政策，老百姓都只能认了。戈尔巴乔夫不过是个第四、第五代领导人，他的好几任前领导人早就已经没法用共产主义理想号召老百姓，而改用“花钱买稳定”的政策了，这是苏联东欧国家领导人维持统治的最后一招，只要用上一个时期，就休想再号召老百姓为了党和国家 “吃糠咽菜、受苦受累”了。不管戈尔巴乔夫对经济改革是半心半意、还是全心全意，他面对经济困境，都只能“拧紧螺丝”，即强化劳动纪律、提高工作定额、开源节流。换句话讲，就是推行一种给“苦头”、没“甜头”的改革。谁来支持这样的经济改革呢?其实，戈尔巴乔夫的前任安德罗波夫就试图“拧紧螺丝”，各单位的负责人管不住自己的职工，政府就派克格勃在大街上拦截行人、检查身份，看是谁在工作时间跑去逛商店、买东西了，然后通知单位把人领回去，加强教育，其效果自然不佳。戈尔巴乔夫也试过“拧紧螺丝”，发动“禁酒运动”，想减少酗酒现象，提高劳动效率，同样也失败了。
   
   
    　　由此可见，就算戈尔巴乔夫再坚决一些，“拧紧螺丝”式的经济改革也还是“曲高和寡”，不可能像有“甜头”、没“苦头”的经济改革那样受欢迎。这样就比较容易理解，为什么一九八八年戈尔巴乔夫决定推迟价格改革，改而加快政治改革。在社会主义国家，价格改革意味着消费品价格会大幅度上涨，戈尔巴乔夫手中没有资源，无法在价格改革时给老百姓大量涨工资，也无法给企业大量财政补贴以平抑物价，因此，这样的价格改革就只能是让老百姓“受苦”，必然会引起强烈的社会反弹。
   
   
    　　政治“开放”政策的党内“同路人”
   
   
    　　戈尔巴乔夫在经济改革方面虽不成功，但是他却成功地推动了政治“开放”，促进了新闻自由，基本上结束了政府对持不同政见者的压迫，允许组织各种政治团体，实行了一定程度上的民主选举。
   
   
    　　戈尔巴乔夫的政治改革深受知识分子的欢迎，但也可以想象得到，这场改革一定会遭到党内官僚体系的反对。戈尔巴乔夫自己就讲过，“中央委员会百分之七十的人都反对我而且恨我”。他以苏共总书记的身份发动政治改革，似乎是“搬起石头砸自己脚”的举动，如果没有各方面的支持声援，是不可能成功的。可是，究竟是什么样的政治势力在支持戈尔巴乔夫呢?西方学者最近几年的研究发现，戈尔巴乔夫推动政治改革时，并没有与任何有组织的社会团体或政治势力建立同盟关系，换句话讲，看上去，戈尔巴乔夫似乎是个勇往直前的“孤家寡人”，没有什么强大而有组织的团体当他的后盾。
   
   
    　　面对这样一个“孤家寡人”，为什么组织完善、运转良好、掌控一切的苏联党政官僚机器，未能成功地阻止戈尔巴乔夫的政治改革呢?苏联的各级官员在戈尔巴乔夫发动政治改革的时候，是什么态度呢?一些俄国和西方学者认为，在戈尔巴乔夫时代，苏联的政治演变并不完全是一场以戈尔巴乔夫为一方、以反改革的庞大官僚队伍为另一方的漫长的“拔河”，虽然在官僚机器内并没有多少戈尔巴乔夫的坚定支持者，但却有不少暗中准备拥抱市场民主制度的党内“叛逆者”。
   
   
    　　通过研究大量的戈尔巴乔夫时代的文献，学者们发现，在苏联出现政治经济演变的时候，许多苏联的党政精英意识到，既然改革的大势已成，恐怕就到了放弃 “沉船”、坐上“救生艇”、及时转移到市场民主制度这条“船”上去的时候了，这样，他们可能不仅保得住地位，甚至可能过得更好。所以，他们中的多数人不仅不愿意站出来顽强地捍卫苏联的集权专制制度直到最后一刻，相反，有些人却摇身一变直接成了民主派的成员，有些人则与民主派暗通款曲，更多的人则是明哲保身、静观待变。
   
   
    　　这些苏联官僚们观察风向、做出“换船”决定的时间，大约是在一九八五至一九八八年之间。这一时期正是苏联民主派日趋活跃的阶段，官僚们的“骑墙”心态显然是有利于民主派的发展的。到了一九九○至一九九一年，俄罗斯各地的党政精英就进一步纷纷背离戈尔巴乔夫，而向叶利钦投诚，同时，大型国营企业的经理们也拒绝向苏联的中央政府纳税，而主动将税收缴给俄罗斯共和国政府。苏联官僚们叛离苏联、倒向俄罗斯共和国的举动，也是苏联瓦解的一个重要原因。这些官僚们的做法并不是一个有组织的行动，而是他们各人自发的选择。笔者将这种现象称之为“弃船现象”。

(博讯北京时间2010年9月13日 转载)