2013.1.1整理出架構 2013.7.2補《反動的修辭》......
■馬路或飛機
我的朋友赫許曼（Albert Hirschman）發現還有一些其他場合，不容許錯誤也可以是美德。他是位經濟學家，大半輩子都在研究拉丁美洲社會，以及提供意見給這些政府。同時，他也提供建議給非洲新興獨立國家。這些窮國家經常問他一個問題：「我們應該把有限的資源投在馬路上，或是投到空運上？」聽到這樣的問題，經濟學家自然的反應是回答：「馬路」，因為把錢投在開馬路上，可以為當地人民造就工作機會，而且社會上所有階級都可以享受到修路的好處。相反地，成立國家航空公司，需要的是外國的技術，而且航空公司也只對少數搭得起飛機的人有好處。話雖如此，長期的非洲及拉丁美洲實務經驗卻告訴赫許曼，「馬路」通常是錯誤的答案。在現實世界裡，馬路擁有很多項缺點。首先，撥給修路的經費很容易就會落入腐敗的地方官僚口袋中。而且，築馬路也比維修馬路來得容易。因此常見的狀況是，新路在幾年後開始毀壞，但由於崩毀速度是漸進的，所以並不會造成醜聞。於是，修築馬路的最後結果是：生活又回復原來的面貌。當初回答「築路」的經濟學者並沒有為這個國家造就什麼，只除了讓地方官僚的口袋更肥厚些。
接下來，再看看建立國家航空公司在現實世界裡所產生的功效。錢投下去之後，該地便擁有了一批昂貴的飛機、昂貴的機場以及昂貴的儀器設施。當國外技師離開後，當地人勢必得接受訓練，接手操作整個系統。和馬路不同的是，飛機可不會很優雅地損毀。墜機是非常醒目的大事，同時也能令執政者聲望掃地。遇難者又多半是有錢有勢的人，他們的死訊通常不會被忽視。統治者別無選擇。他們一旦擁有一家航空公司，就不得不好好經營它。他們不得不訓練一批鬥志高昂的機械維修幹部，願意準時上工，並以自家的技術為榮。結果，航空公司為這個落後國家所帶來的間接利益，超過它的直接經濟利益。它創造出一批「熟悉嚴格工業規章，而且擁有現代工作道德觀」的國民。而這批國民遲早又會在維修飛機之外，找到其他能發揮個人技巧的工作。於是，「不容許錯誤」的航空業，便成為指導傳統國家邁向現代化的最佳學校，雖然用的是這般矛盾的方式。*****
但是，關於「不容許錯誤的科技」轉變了世界，並強迫傳統社會改變，這並不是第一回。航空在今日的角色，頗類似航海在工業化之前的角色。英王享利八世——這位史上最殘忍也最聰明的英國君王、修道院破壞者兼大學創建者、殺妻者兼情歌作者、同時也是劍橋三一學院歷代名人的恩人——就深深明白，推進英格蘭現代化最有效率的工具，莫過於成立一支皇家海軍。十八世紀的工業革命之所以會始於英格蘭，始於這個日常生活與經濟雙雙受制於航海文化達三百年的小島，可不是偶然的。當年輕的俄國君主彼得大帝（一位個性酷似享利八世的君王），決定俄國現代化的時機已經屆臨，便為自己安排了一份工作，進入造船廠當學徒。---談「優雅地損毀」戴森『想像的未來』 (IMAGINED WORLD )
1987-88 Tanner Lecture 1988.4.8The Tanner Lectures on Human Values - Page 1 - Google Books Result
Reactionary Rhetoric: The Case of the Perverse Effect
The Rhetoric of Reaction
Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy
Publication: March 1991
With engaging wit and subtle irony, Albert Hirschman
maps the diffuse and treacherous world of reactionary rhetoric in which
conservative public figures, thinkers, and polemicists have been
arguing against progressive agendas and reforms for the past two hundred
years.
Hirschman draws his examples from three successive waves of reactive thought that arose in response to the liberal ideas of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, to democratization and the drive toward universal suffrage in the nineteenth century, and to the welfare state in our own century. In each case he identifies three principal arguments invariably used: (1) the perversity thesis, whereby any action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order is alleged to result in the exact opposite of what was intended; (2) the futility thesis, which predicts that attempts at social transformation will produce no effects whatever—will simply be incapable of making a dent in the status quo; (3) the jeopardy thesis, holding that the cost of the proposed reform is unacceptable because it will endanger previous hard-won accomplishments. He illustrates these propositions by citing writers across the centuries from Alexis de Tocqueville to George Stigler, Herbert Spencer to Jay Forrester, Edmund Burke to Charles Murray. Finally, in a lightning turnabout, he shows that progressives are frequently apt to employ closely related rhetorical postures, which are as biased as their reactionary counterparts. For those who aspire to the genuine dialogue that characterizes a truly democratic society, Hirschman points out that both types of rhetoric function, in effect, as contraptions designed to make debate impossible. In the process, his book makes an original contribution to democratic thought.
The Rhetoric of Reaction is a delightful handbook for all discussions of public affairs, the welfare state, and the history of social, economic, and political thought, whether conducted by ordinary citizens or academics.
Hirschman draws his examples from three successive waves of reactive thought that arose in response to the liberal ideas of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, to democratization and the drive toward universal suffrage in the nineteenth century, and to the welfare state in our own century. In each case he identifies three principal arguments invariably used: (1) the perversity thesis, whereby any action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order is alleged to result in the exact opposite of what was intended; (2) the futility thesis, which predicts that attempts at social transformation will produce no effects whatever—will simply be incapable of making a dent in the status quo; (3) the jeopardy thesis, holding that the cost of the proposed reform is unacceptable because it will endanger previous hard-won accomplishments. He illustrates these propositions by citing writers across the centuries from Alexis de Tocqueville to George Stigler, Herbert Spencer to Jay Forrester, Edmund Burke to Charles Murray. Finally, in a lightning turnabout, he shows that progressives are frequently apt to employ closely related rhetorical postures, which are as biased as their reactionary counterparts. For those who aspire to the genuine dialogue that characterizes a truly democratic society, Hirschman points out that both types of rhetoric function, in effect, as contraptions designed to make debate impossible. In the process, his book makes an original contribution to democratic thought.
The Rhetoric of Reaction is a delightful handbook for all discussions of public affairs, the welfare state, and the history of social, economic, and political thought, whether conducted by ordinary citizens or academics.
Related Links
- At the New York Review of Books and The American Prospect, read appreciations of Albert Hirschman, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 97
- In the New Yorker, read how Albert Hirschman’s “rhetoric of intransigence” can inform the debate over the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision on the Affordable Care Act
- Preface
- 1. Two Hundred Years of Reactionary Rhetoric
- Three Reactions and Three Reactionary Theses
- A Note on the Term “Reaction”
- 2. The Perversity Thesis
- The French Revolution and Proclamation of the Perverse Effect
- Universal Suffrage and Its Alleged Perverse Effects
- The Poor Laws and the Welfare State
- Reflections on the Perversity Thesis
- 3. The Futility Thesis
- Questioning the Extent of Change Wrought by the French Revolution: Tocqueville
- Questioning the Extent of Change Likely to Follow from Universal Suffrage: Mosca and Pareto
- Questioning the Extent to Which the Welfare State Delivers the Goods to the Poor
- Reflections on the Futility Thesis
- 4. The Jeopardy Thesis
- Democracy as a Threat to Liberty
- The Welfare State as a Threat to Liberty and Democracy
- Reflections on the Jeopardy Thesis
- 5. The Three Theses Compared and Combined
- A Synoptic Table
- The Comparative Influence of the Theses
- Some Simple Interactions
- A More Complex Interaction
- 6. From Reactionary to Progressive Rhetoric
- The Synergy Illusion and the Imminent-Danger Thesis
- “Having History on One’s Side”
- Counterparts of the Perversity Thesis
- 7. Beyond Intransigence
- A Turnabout in Argument?
- How Not to Argue in a Democracy
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index
《反動的修辭》吳介明譯，台北:新新聞，2002/2012?
*****
Albert Hirschman, Optimistic Economist, Dies at 97
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: December 23, 2012
Albert O. Hirschman, who in his youth helped rescue thousands of artists
and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France and went on to become an
influential economist known for his optimism, died on Dec. 10 in Ewing
Township, N.J. He was 97.
United Press International
The economist and author Albert O. Hirschman held academic posts at Yale, Columbia and Harvard.
His death was confirmed by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where Mr. Hirschman spent the latter part of his career.
Mr. Hirschman pieced together his graduate work in economics in the
1930s while serving as a soldier and something of an insurgent. Born in
Germany, he fought on the anti-fascist side in the Spanish Civil War and
later joined the French Army in its resistance to the Nazis.
When France fell in 1940, he became an integral part of a rescue operation led by the journalist Varian Fry
that helped more than 2,000 people escape to Spain, among them the
artists Marc Chagall and Marcel Duchamp and the political theorist
Hannah Arendt.
Mr. Hirschman found routes through the Pyrenees Mountains for those who
were fleeing and smuggled messages in toothpaste tubes.
By the early 1940s, he had moved to the United States and enlisted in
the Army, which sent him to North Africa and to Italy as part of the
Office of Strategic Services. One of his duties was to translate for a
German general in an early war crimes trial. Later, he worked with the
Federal Reserve Board, focusing on European reconstruction under the
Marshall Plan.
In 1952, he moved to Colombia to be an economic adviser to that
impoverished but rapidly developing country. A few years later, he was
back in the United States, beginning a 30-year academic career in which
he blended economics, politics and culture and held posts at Yale,
Columbia and Harvard. He rarely invoked the experiences of his youth in
his academic work, but certain themes persisted in both periods of his
life.
Mr. Hirschman argued that social setbacks were essentially an ingredient
of progress, that good things eventually come from what he viewed as
constructive tensions between private interest and civicmindedness,
between quiet compliance and loud protest.
He ranged widely in his writings, which include geographically specific studies on economic development, like “Journeys Toward Progress: Studies of Economic Policy-Making in Latin America.” A broader work was “Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States,” published in 1970.此書中國有翻譯
That book outlined different ways that people deal with disagreeable
rules or situations politically, culturally and professionally. Some
might suffer silently out of loyalty, while others raise questions and
still others decide to abandon a situation. The theory has been applied
to how politically oppressed people might flee a nation as well as why
shoppers stop buying a certain product — a retail variation of what Mr.
Hirschman called the “exit option.”
In 2003, William Safire, the columnist for The New York Times who also
wrote the On Language column for The New York Times Magazine, led an
informal search for the roots of the phrase “exit strategy.” The search
led to economists, who pointed to Mr. Hirschman, who denied culpability,
sort of.
“Did he coin the phrase?” Mr. Safire wrote
after interviewing Mr. Hirschman. “No; it’s nowhere in his book. He
used exit option. ‘It was a somewhat new concept then,’ Hirschman
recalls. ‘I used exit to indicate a possibility, a strategy. When you
are dissatisfied, you can use your voice option or your exit option. It
is not so different from the political use today. Speak up or get
out.’ ”
While many economists were increasingly immersed in statistics, Mr.
Hirschman often wrote with a storyteller’s sweep about the behavior of
nations, institutions and individuals. At a time when top-down models
for stabilizing economies were popular, particularly in developing
countries, Mr. Hirschman was inclined toward a kind of chaotic
capitalism called disequilibria.
Mr. Hirschman “thought disequilibria creates problems that you have to solve — and that’s a good thing,” said Jeremy Adelman, a professor of history at Princeton and the author of a biography, “Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman,” to be published next year.
Otto Albert Hirschmann was born on April 7, 1915, in Berlin. (He later
changed the order of his given names and dropped one of the n’s from his
last name.) His father was a surgeon. His survivors include a daughter,
Katia Salomon; four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. His
wife of 70 years, the former Sarah Chapiro, died in January.
Mr. Hirschman was an ardent optimist. He believed, as Mr. Adelman put
it, “that even the most seemingly immutable, impossible situations could
be solved, that you could change things that seemed unchangeable.”
But he also said that things sometimes had to get harder before they got better.
“Somehow we always try to think in terms of having only one thing
happen; everything else will coalesce around it, and we’ll come out all
right,” Mr. Hirschman said in a transcribed conversation with an
anthropologist in 1976.
He added: “Generally we only have one lever at a time. We only have one
‘new key’ at a time. To try to counteract this sort of thinking is very
important. This kind of faddishness has marred all thinking about
economic development.”
Correction: December 28, 2012
An obituary on Monday about the economist Albert O. Hirschman referred incorrectly to the Office of Strategic Services, in which he served in the 1940s. It was a civilian agency under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; it was not a part of the United States Army.
On Language
Exit Strategy
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: December 14, 2003
he Bush administration has begun searching for an
exit strategy ,'' wrote NPR's Daniel Schorr in a recent Christian
Science Monitor column. He noted that the phrase coming from the Bush
White House went in the other direction: ''stay the course.''
Donald Rumsfeld, peppered with questions about when
the U.S. forces would leave Iraq, found a creative way to treat the
phrase that refused to focus on departure: ''Our exit strategy in Iraq
is success.
It's that simple. The objective is not to leave; the objective is to succeed in our mission.''
The penetration of a new phrase is sometimes
measured in cartoon captions, especially in The New Yorker. In 1995, a
bride-to-be was pictured in a Robert Mankoff cartoon responding to her
swain on bended knee: ''O.K., but what's our exit strategy ?'' In 1999,
James Stevenson drew a prisoner in a cell asking his cellmate, ''What's
your exit strategy ?''
Alistair Cooke, the British-born American
commentator whose weekly Letter From America has long added a touch of
class to the BBC, took note of the jailbird exit strategists of '99 and
observed, ''' Exit strategy ' is one of those simple-sounding, actually
menacing catch phrases we've started using about war when it's
uncomfortable to think a little deeper and acknowledge something
unpleasant.'' He cited others: in harm's way and putting our men at risk
.'' He guessed that exit strategy ''came in with the gulf war.''
Those of us in the phrasal etymological dodge cannot
rely on anybody's recollection; citations are the thing. My researcher,
Kathleen Miller, accepted the mission and enlisted the aid of Fred R.
Shapiro, who as editor of the Yale Dictionary of Quotations touches all
the scholarly databases. Fred came up with several uses in the late
1970's in business publications. In the Winter 1977 issue of the
California Management Review, William Matthews and Wayne Boucher wrote
critically of a company that ''continues to attempt to achieve the
established objectives -- way past the point at which, if the company
had had a 'planned exit strategy ,' it would have decided to terminate
the venture.''
At that point I would have emitted a gleeful aha!,
but Miller kept coming up with the use of the phrase by economists who
cited a seminal 1970 book by Albert O. Hirschman about three strategies:
''Exit, Voice and Loyalty.'' According to a 2001 paper presented at a
California conference by the Moscow economist Vadim Radaev, Hirschman
postulated three strategies to deal with uncertainty caused by new
formal rules: the voice strategist publicly questions the orders, the
loyalty strategist complies and the exit strategist avoids the new
rules.
At my command (''Get Hirschman, if he hasn't
exited''), she found the 88-year-old social scientist where the geniuses
hang out, at the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton, N.J.
Did he coin the phrase? No; it's nowhere in his
book. He used exit option. ''It was a somewhat new concept then,''
Hirschman recalls. ''I used exit to indicate a possibility, a strategy.
When you are dissatisfied, you can use your voice option or your exit
option . It is not so different from the political use today. Speak up
or get out.''
That original where's-my-hat sense has changed to
''a blueprint for bailout.'' In political and journalistic use, the
phrase's connotation is accusatory: today's question, ''Where is your
exit strategy ?'' connotes ''How do you plan to get us out of this mess
at a date certain?'' In his answer, Rumsfeld chose to counter that
polemical connotation by defining the mission not as exit but as
success.
I am still working on stay the course , which
appears to be rooted in a nautical metaphor. Send coinage citations to
onlanguage@nytimes.com .
TOCQUEVILLE LIVES
What is it about the aforementioned Alistair Cooke
that delights and educates the millions around the world who listen to
him?
I was reading an essay he wrote in a 1935 issue of
The Listener in which he used a letter from one of his British listeners
to explain the way it is with Americans. The letter was about a scene
in the movie of Dashiell Hammett's ''Thin Man,'' starring Myrna Loy and
William Powell. Cooke first describes the scene: ''It is the one in
which the wife (Myrna Loy) and her ex-detective husband are the hosts at
a very rowdy and casual party which includes detectives, a lawyer, a
few journalists, a young university student, a few ex-convicts, a
fashionable divorcee. There is a chorus of drunks limply conducting a
carol with almost any article of fire irons they can find. A fat man is
howling for a long-distance call. There are three or four people chasing
each other. You have to assume that at least a dozen wineglasses will
be broken, tables scratched, that cigarettes will by this time be
quietly punctuating the pattern of every strip of carpet, lace and
cushion in the room. The atmosphere is so compelling, in fact, that
Myrna Loy is moved to fling her arms around her husband's neck and
confess weakly, 'What I like about you, darling, is you have such
charming friends.' ''
Cooke then quotes from his correspondent's letter:
''However congenial or revolting the whole group seems to you
personally, there is one astounding fact about that party. It is the way
it is conducted. Can you think offhand of any English couple you know
who, faced with that motley crew, wouldn't have given in, refused to
serve people drinks, turned somebody out, felt their dignity wounded, or
had a bitter quarrel about it afterwards? On the contrary, the good
temper, the easy flippancy, the quick alert manners, the indifference to
the good looks of their household; above all, the smooth indifference
to this howling mix-up of social classes -- all this was taken so much
for granted that in the middle of laughing I nearly forgot to notice it.
But now I should call it, and I'm choosing my words carefully, a
quality of breeding that probably no other race possesses.''
''At a later time,'' Cooke wrote, ''I shall try to
suggest why it is possible in America for social classes to mingle
freely and vitally and yet without sentimentality -- the reason is in
the language.''
He has been using that language with grace, wit and
precision to skewer linguistic pomposity and to explain our common
language all during that ''later time'' -- which has taken him to his
95th birthday. He's still going strong. You can read him, even hear him,
on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/letter_from_america .
 |
Worldly Philosopher:
Cloth | April 2013 | $39.95 / £27.95 | ISBN: 9780691155678 |
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