《资本主义4.0：新经济的诞生》(Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy)，阿纳托莱•卡列茨基(Anatole Kaletsky)著。出版方：布鲁姆斯伯里出版社(Bloomsbury)，单价20英镑；PublicAffairs出版社，单价28.95美元。
资本主义1.0是自由放任主义的盛世。从《国富论》(The Wealth of Nations)到大萧条(Great Depression)，自由放任主义思想一直统领着经济学和经济政策。大萧条的产物——资本主义2.0认识到了政治与经济的相互依赖性，赋予了政府进行宏观经济管理和引导行业发展的职能。至上世纪70年代恶性通胀时期，资本主义2.0宣告瓦解。
罗纳德•里根(Ronald Reagan)和撒切尔夫人(Margaret Thatcher)上台，开启了资本主义3.0时代。资本主义3.0奉行市场原教旨主义。在这个时期，社会不平等加剧，金融业繁荣发展。2007-08年的信贷危机触发了又一场"大改版"。今日我们面临的前景不是资本主义的灭亡，而是一种新式资本主义的诞生——资本主义4.0。
这是阿纳托莱•卡列茨基(Anatole Kaletsky)的观点。卡列茨基是《泰晤士报》(The Times)的自由编辑(editor-at-large)，也是一位多产的评论员。他在上述书中对当前许多政治和经济争议作了发人深省的评述，并有较大篇幅论及经济理论的失效。一种普遍确定性的语调贯穿全书——有两页谈到如何改革英国国民健康服务体系(NHS)，还有两页讲如何应对全球能源问题和气候变化。
这样信心十足，说来与该书的哲学取向有些矛盾：即世界的特征之一是存在根本且不可避免的不确定性；我们无法消除不确定性，但能对之加以控制。资本主义长盛不衰，得益于它的适应性。因此我们有理由坚信，各种问题都会得到解决，即使我们不清楚具体解决机制。
这种资本主义观点截然不同于市场原教旨主义。后者认为，尽可能少地束缚人类天生的贪欲，最有利于人类进步；经济决策是基于有效市场中的理性预期做出的——在有效市场，所有可能与未来有关的信息都反映在价格中。我认为，对于资本主义的运行原理、以及市场原教旨主义为何会对政策产生危险的误导作用，卡列茨基的分析都绝对精辟。
卡列茨基笔下的资本主义4.0既摒弃自由放任主义，也否定一切源自有效市场和理性预期的经济模型。那么，资本主义4.0看起来究竟像什么？资本主义4.0限制政府开支，但它更偏好凯恩斯主义的经济刺激政策，而非力求达到预算平衡的节俭政策。它赞成自由市场，但并非不加批判。它着意减轻社会不平等现象。最重要的是，资本主义4.0是务实的。事实上，它像极了资本主义2.0。
假如能抹掉1965-85年这段时期的历史，资本主义2.0大体上运行得相当良好。为什么会出错？在卡列茨基看来，决定性事件是1971年理查德•尼克松总统(Richard Nixon)废除金本位制。此举开启了浮动汇率时代。但是，尼克松的贬值政策与其说是通胀的根源，不如说是结果：从50年代起，发达国家的物价水平就不断加速上涨。
原因在别的地方。在资本主义2.0时代，经济稳定且广泛增长，带动人们的期望不断高涨，以致到最后经济增长不能满足人们的期望。通胀是最简单的政治应对之策。此举失败后，资本主义3.0应运而生。
务实是好的，但没有任何指导原则作为基础的务实政策是缺乏连贯性的。卡列茨基所称的两大"罪魁祸首"——尼克松和美国前财长汉克•保尔森(Hank Paulson)——所采取的政策就是如此。卡列茨基认为，保尔森个人应对信贷危机负责。此番批评并未失之公平——即使是在政治家当中，尼克松的缺乏原则和保尔森的不称职也是罕见的。但卡列茨基的历史观夸大了个别人物和他们所做决策的作用。资本主义2.0瓦解并非尼克松之过；资本主义3.0也不是保尔森搞垮的。借用一句话说，这两版资本主义的瓦解是由它们各自的"内在矛盾"造成的。只有比"大社会"(Great Society)时代的政治家更有效地解决资本主义2.0的内在矛盾，并实现让"我们过上前所未有好日子"的目标，资本主义4.0才能繁荣兴盛。
现在有很多关于信贷危机的书，简直太多了。卡列茨基的出色之处在于，他以一种继往开来的视角解析这些事件，并且超越了历史流水账的框架。当市场原教旨主义的实践失败后，我们有必要就市场经济的本质展开辩论。卡列茨基这本书是对这场辩论的一大贡献。
本文作者是英国《金融时报》专栏作家
译者/杨远
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001033853
Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy By Anatole Kaletsky (Bloomsbury, £20; PublicAffairs $28.95)
Capitalism 1 was a world of laisser faire. This concept dominated economics and economic policy from The Wealth of Nations to the Great Depression. Capitalism 2, the product of that depression, recognised the interdependence of politics and economics, and gave government a role in macroeconomic management and the direction of industry. It fell apart in the inflationary malaise of the 1970s.
The coming of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher inaugurated Capitalism 3, a regime of market fundamentalism in which inequality widened and the financial sector flourished. The credit crunch of 2007-08 is the trigger for an equally substantial revision. Today we face the prospect, not of the demise of capitalism, but of a new form – Capitalism 4.
That is the thesis of Anatole Kaletsky, an editor-at-large for The Times and a prolific commentator. His book is a provocative review of many current political and economic controversies, and includes a substantial section on the failures of economic theory. A tone of universal certainty prevails throughout – two pages tell us what should be done about Britain's National Health Service, another two pages describe the answer to world energy problems and climate change.
Such confidence is somewhat inconsistent with the book's philosophical approach: the world is characterised by radical and inescapable uncertainty, which we cannot eliminate but can manage. The enduring strength of capitalism is adaptability, which makes it reasonable to have confidence that problems will be solved without specific knowledge of the mechanics of their solution.
This is a very different view of capitalism from market fundamentalism, which believes that human progress is best achieved by imposing as few restrictions as possible on a natural impetus towards greed, and that economic decisions are based on rational expectations in efficient markets in which prices incorporate all possible knowledge of the future. In my view Kaletsky is absolutely spot on in this analysis of why capitalism works, and in his explanation of why market fundamentalism has proved such a dangerously misleading guide to policy.
So what does Kaletsky's Capitalism 4.0, which rejects both laisser faire and any economic model derived from efficient markets or rational expectations, look like? Capitalism 4 controls government spending but prefers Keynesian stimulus to budget-balancing austerity. It favours free markets, but not uncritically, and is concerned to mitigate inequality. Capitalism 4 is, above all, pragmatic. In fact, it looks distinctly like Capitalism 2.
If we could delete the years 1965-85 from history, Capitalism 2 mostly worked pretty well. Why did it go wrong? For Kaletsky, the decisive event was President Richard Nixon's abandonment of the dollar's link to gold in 1971, which inaugurated the era of floating exchange rates. But Nixon's devaluation was less the cause of inflation than the result: price levels around the developed world had been rising at an accelerating rate since the 1950s.
The explanation lies elsewhere. The stability and widely distributed growth achieved under Capitalism 2 created rising expectations that growth was eventually insufficient to satisfy. Inflation was the easiest political response. Capitalism 3 was a reaction to that failure.
It is good to be pragmatic, but pragmatic policies that are not rooted in any guiding principles are incoherent. That was the experience of Kaletsky's two principal villains – Nixon; and the man whom Kaletsky holds personally responsible for the credit crunch, Hank Paulson, the former Treasury secretary. The criticism is not unfair – even among politicians Nixon was unusually unprincipled and Mr Paulson unusually incompetent. But Kaletsky's view of history is one that exaggerates the role of particular individuals and decisions. The collapse of Capitalism 2 was not caused by Nixon, nor the collapse of Capitalism 3 by Mr Paulson: the collapse of these modes of capitalist behaviour was the product of their own internal contradictions, to borrow a phrase, and Capitalism 4 can only thrive if it resolves the contradictions of Capitalism 2 more effectively than did the politicians of the era of the Great Society and "you've never had it so good".
There are now many – too many – books on the credit crunch. Kaletsky's considerable achievement is to put these events in a perspective that looks back to history and forward to an extended future, and to do so in a framework which goes far beyond a chronology of events. His book is a major contribution to the debate on the nature of the market economy that needs to follow the practical failures of market fundamentalism.
The writer is an FT columnist
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