英國世紀買賣:私有化的騙局(2)

Last-minute subscribers deliver their applications for British Gas shares at one of the receiving banks, National Westminster, in the City of London. Photograph: PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images

一家受理銀行——倫敦市韋斯特敏斯特國家銀行裏最後一波申購英國石油公司股票的人。照片提供：PA/PA檔案館/聯合攝影社

In the first stages of disillusionment, it didn't seem obvious to me to make connections between the extremes of marketisation and privatisation in the former Soviet Union and the partial privatisation of a British economy that had always been mainly private anyway. After all, where Britain had a series of regulators to set rules for the privatised industries – Ofcom, Ofwat and so on – the principal regulator of privatisation in Ukraine and Russia, at least in the early days, was murder. In Russia in particular, a small number of individuals quickly became fantastically rich when they took private control of state producers of petrochemicals and metals. They were grotesquely rewarded, or grotesquely undertaxed, and money that should have gone to rebuild roads or hospitals or schools went instead towards yachts, property in London and foreign football teams. But that had nothing in common with privatisation in Britain – did it?I began to notice something odd about the British and American business people and financial advisers I met in Ukraine and Russia in the 1990s. It was no surprise, I suppose, that they cared more about businesses being overtaxed than undertaxed, more about protection of private property than about protection of pensioners; that they didn't care how weak and bullied the local trades unions were. Besides, their Russian interlocutors kept being assassinated. What was revealing was how many of these emissaries of the capitalist way seemed to believe the myth that all that was good in the British and American economies had been constructed by the free market. They seemed to believe, or talked, made speeches, wrote papers as if they believed, that the entire structure of their own wealthy modern societies – the roads, the electricity grids, the railways, the water and sewage systems, the universal postal services, the telecoms networks, housing, education and health care – had been brought into being by individual entrepreneurs driven by desire for gain, with the occasional lump of charity thrown in, and that a bloated, parasitical state had come shambling onto the scene, seizing assets and demanding free stuff for its shirker buddies. I don't want to absolve the Russians or Ukrainians of responsibility for their handling of the aftermath of communism, but the template they were handed by the fraternity of the Washington Consensus was based on fake history. If this is what the triumphalists of Wall Street and the City of London told the Russians about the way of the capitalist world, I thought when I moved back to Britain in 1999, what have they been telling us? And what came of it?

在覺醒的最初階段，我似乎並沒有明顯的將前蘇聯的極度市場化和私有化與主體一直保持私有制的英國的部分私有制經濟聯繫在一起。畢竟英國擁有一些監管者爲包括：ofcom、ofwat等在內的私有行業制定規則。而烏克蘭和俄羅斯的基本監管者們，至少在最初階段都是殺人兇手。尤其在俄羅斯，一小部分人將國有的石油和鋼鐵企業變爲己有，迅速暴富。他們荒誕地接受獎賞，荒誕的逃避稅收，並且將用來翻修道路、醫院或學校的資金變成爲自己購買遊艇、倫敦的房產以及國外的足球俱樂部。但英國的私有化與這些有本質區別，對嗎？我開始注意到90年代在烏克蘭和俄羅斯遇到的英美商人和金融顧問們的一些奇怪的地方。我猜想，他們更在意公司的賦稅過重而不是稅賦減少，更關注於保護私有資產勝過退休金，這並不令人驚訝，因爲他們並不在意地區工會有多強勢或者軟弱。除此之外，俄羅斯的內部人士總要防備暗殺。這揭示瞭如此衆多的資本主義先行者似乎都相信英美建立在自由市場基礎上的經濟神話都是有益的。他們似乎相信，或者一直在說，在演講，在撰寫論文，彷彿堅信自身現代社會的根本架構爲方方面面，包括：道路、電網、鐵路、水利灌溉、全球郵政、電信網絡、住房、教育、衛生等，帶來富足。這些都源於追求利益的私人企業，間或還會向慈善機構供給些施捨，造成了一個臃腫的寄生狀態，蹣跚上路，攫取財富並且爲自己小團體創造利益。我不想免除俄羅斯或烏克蘭人對社會主義餘波的影響處理不當的責任。但他們抄襲的樣板來自於達成華盛頓共識的各方，並基於一個虛假歷史。如果這就是華爾街或倫敦城的勝利者們告訴俄羅斯人的資本主義世界的經驗，那麼我認爲當我1999年回到英國夠，他們還有什麼要告訴我們呢？結果又會如何？

When Thatcher's Conservatives came to power in Britain in 1979, much of the economy, and almost all its infrastructure, was in state hands. Exactly what gloss you put on "in state hands" depends on your political point of view. For traditional socialists, it meant "the people's hands". For traditional Tories, it meant "in British hands". For Thatcher and her allies, it meant "in the hands of meddling bureaucrats and selfish, greedy trade unionists". How much of the economy? A third of all homes were rented from the state. The health service, most schools, the armed forces, prisons, roads, bridges and streets, water, sewers, the National Grid, power stations, the phone and postal system, gas supply, coal mines, the railways, refuse collection, the airports, many of the ports, local and long-distance buses, freight lorries, nuclear-fuel reprocessing, air traffic control, much of the car-, ship- and aircraft-building industries, most of the steel factories, British Airways, oil companies, Cable & Wireless, the aircraft engine makers Rolls-Royce, the arms makers Royal Ordnance, the ferry company Sealink, the Trustee Savings Bank, Girobank, technology companies Ferranti and Inmos, medical technology firm Amersham International and many others.

1979年撒切爾保守黨上臺時，英國大部分產業，幾乎所有的基礎產業都掌握在國家手中。確切的說，如何解釋“掌握在國家手中”這句話取決於你的政治觀點。對於傳統的社會主義者，這意味着“在人民手中”；對於傳統的保守派，意味着“在英國手中”；對於撒切爾及其盟友，意味着“掌握在玩弄權術的官僚和自私貪婪的行業協會手中”。到底有多少企業呢？三分之一的租賃房屋屬於國有。衛生行業、大多數的學校、軍隊、監獄、道路、橋樑和街道、水利、排污、國家電網、發電廠、郵政電信、天然氣、煤礦、鐵路、廢品回收、機場、很多港口、地方和長途客運、貨運、核能源、空中航路、很多汽車、輪船、飛機制造廠、大多數鋼鐵企業、英國航空、石油公司、英國無線集團、飛機發動機制造商勞斯萊斯公司、武器製造商皇家軍械集團、渡輪公司sealink、英國信託銀行、吉爾銀行、高科技公司、醫藥技術公司以及很多其他企業。

In the past 35 years, this commonly owned economy, this people's portion of the island, has to a greater or lesser degree become private. Millions of council houses have been sold to their owners or to housing associations. Most roads and streets are still under public control, but privatisation has reached deep into the NHS, state schools, the prison service and the military. The remainder was privatised by Thatcher and her successors. By the time she left office, she boasted, 60% of the old state industries had private owners – and that was before the railways and electricity system went under the hammer.

過去35年間，英國的這種廣泛意義上的國有經濟體，屬於人民的英倫島，或多或少變成了私有。數百萬市政廳大樓被賣給他人或房屋中介機構。主要道路和街道仍舊公有，但私有化已經深入到NHS、公立學校、監獄設施和軍隊當中。剩下的被撒切爾及其後任進一步變賣。到她離任之際，她宣稱60%的老舊國有企業已經轉到私人名下，並且在此之前鐵路和電力系統已經納入私有軌跡。

The original background to Thatcher's privatisation revolution was stagflation, a sense of national failure, and a widespread feeling, spreading even to some regular Labour voters, that the unions had become too powerful, and were holding the country back. Labour, and Thatcher's centrist predecessors among the Conservatives, had tried to control inflation administratively, through various deals with unions and employers to hold down wages and prices; Labour had, under pressure from the IMF, cut spending. But Thatcher and her inner circle planned to go further, horrifying moderates in their party with the radicalism of their intentions.

撒切爾私有化改革的最初背景是由於經濟不景氣，全國上下充滿失敗情緒，人們普遍感覺工會掌握的權利太大，並且阻礙了國家的發展，這種感覺甚至蔓延到有些普通的工黨支持者。工黨和保守黨中撒切爾的溫和派前輩力圖通過行政抑制通脹，通過與工會和僱主們達成各種交易來降低工資和物價。由於受到IMF的很大壓力，工黨削減了開支。但撒切爾和她的幕僚們計劃要走得更遠，他們雄心勃勃的激進主義思想令黨內的中間派頗感震驚。

The late Alan Walters, her chief economic adviser, believed a key source of inflation and the weak economy was the amount of taxpayers' money being poured into overmanned, old-fashioned, government-owned industry. Just as in the Soviet Union, he thought, Britain's state industries concealed their subsidy-sucking inefficiency through opaque, idiosyncratic accounting techniques that took little account of how much time and effort were required to do and make things, or what people actually wanted to buy, or how much they were prepared to pay for it. As long as the subsidies kept coming, neither managers nor workers had much incentive to come up with smarter working methods or accept new technology, because that would mean fewer jobs, which would mean less power for the bosses and a smaller union. Yes, Walters knew, his protégée would slash spending on steel and coal and power and all the rest, yes, hundreds of thousands of workers would be sacked, but that wasn't enough. As many state-owned companies as possible must be privatised – be divided up into shares and sold to the public. They'd no longer be subsidised; they'd have to borrow money like any private company, account meticulously to shareholders for every penny they spent or earned, and strive to make a profit. The bigger the profit, the more efficiently the firm would be doing its job, and the more management would be rewarded. Most importantly, they'd have to compete with other firms. If they fell behind their competitors, they'd risk bankruptcy. Managers would face incentives for success and penalties for failure. British industry would become more competitive internationally. It would serve citizens better. Government would save the taxpayer money. The sacked workers would get redundancy payments; they'd go off and start businesses, or find other, more useful jobs once the economy was working properly. Everyone would win, except the lazy, and Arthur Scargill.

撒切爾的經濟顧問，已過逝的沃特思先生相信通脹經濟疲軟的關鍵原因是納稅人的錢被用於人員臃腫、老式的國有企業。他認爲就像蘇聯一樣，英國的國有企業通過不透明、特殊的財務技巧掩蓋了他們吸收補貼卻毫無效率的行爲，很少算計用於生產投入的時間和精力，人們真正的需求以及他們爲此所付出的成本。只要補貼繼續存在，無論是經理人還是工人都沒有太多動力去研發更科學的方法或引進新技術，因爲這將意味着工作崗位的減少，減少老闆們和工會的權利。沃特思肯定清楚他的上司會向鋼鐵、煤炭、能源以及所有的其他產業揮舞大棒，減少支出，並且肯定會有成千上萬的工人被解僱，但這些還都不夠。由於必須儘可能的實現很多國有企業的私有化，將劃分他們的股權，並轉賣給公衆。因此他們不再享受補貼，他們不得不像私有企業一樣貸款，對支出斤斤計以保障股東們的投入物有所值，並且努力賺取利潤。盈利越大，這些企業的工作越高效，管理層得到的彙報越高。最爲重要的是，他們不得不與其他企業競爭。如果他們落後於對手，他們將面臨破產危機。管理者面對的是成功的刺激和失敗的懲罰。英國產業將變得更加具有國際競爭力，將更好的服務於國民。政府將節約稅收。失業的工人將會得到補償金，他們會離開並開啓新的事業，或者一旦經濟運轉正常，他們會找到其他更有用的工作。每個人都會受益，除非是懶人和亞瑟薩卡吉爾一類的人。