網際網路時代的勞資鬥爭

They are the people formerly known as employees. In a broad range of service industries, workers who once drew a steady salary are cutting out the employer and plying their services direct to people who used to pay companies, rather than people, to meet their needs.

他們以前被稱為僱員。在服務行業的各個領域，曾經賺取穩定工資的勞動者正在繞過僱主，把自己的服務直接提供給客戶。這些客戶過去一直付費給企業（而非個人）來滿足自己的需求。

This is the on-demand economy, the pattern of work exemplified by onLine systems such as Uber, a smartphone app that matches freelance taxi drivers to city dwellers who need a ride. Such services promise great efficiencies; idle resources can be harnessed more easily, whether they are empty bedrooms or the working hours of the underemployed. But there is also a transfer of risk.

這就是按需經濟(on-demand economy)，這種工作模式體現在優步(Uber)等線上系統上。優步是一款智慧手機應用，它可以把個體計程車司機和需要出行的城市居民匹配起來。這樣的服務有望帶來效率的極大提高；閒置資源可以被更容易地利用起來，無論這資源是空置的臥室還是未得到充分就業的人們的工作時間。但是，這裡也存在風險的轉移。

In the short term, at least, company men and women were insulated from the vicissitudes of economic fortune. Whether it was faulty equipment or business ups and downs, much of the risk fell on companies rather than individuals. The on-demand economy sweeps away many of these safeguards. When misfortune strikes, workers are on their own.

至少在短期內，企業員工還不會受到經濟興衰變故的影響。不論是裝置故障還是業務波動，大部分風險都由公司而非個人承擔。但按需經濟讓許多這樣的保障措施都消失了。當厄運降臨時，勞動者只能自己承擔。

Adam Smith explained that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market. If you spend all your days putting metal heads on the end of pins, you can get very good at it. But unless there is a market in which you can trade pins for money, and others in which you can trade money for food, shelter and cloth, you will not prosper by doing so. Specialisation brings gains. Its essential precondition is a system of exchange.

亞當•斯密(Adam Smith)解釋了為什麼說勞動分工受到市場範圍的限制。如果你整天都做把金屬頭鑲到大頭針尾部的工作，你會變得非常熟練。但除非有一個你能夠用大頭針換來錢的市場，以及其他你可以用錢換來吃穿住的市場，否則，你無法通過製作大頭針致富。專業化能帶來收益的基本前提，是存在一個交換體系。

This poses a difficulty, for markets are themselves limited. Transacting in them is costly, and sometimes the cost might be so high it outweighs the value to be gained. This was the insight of the Nobel prizewinning economist Ronald Coase, and he used it to explain why humanity is not the only form of intelligent life in our economic universe. If economic exchange were intermediated exclusively via markets, all transactions could take place between people; there would be no need for companies to exist at all. But corporate hierarchies are sometimes a cheaper way of co-ordinating economic exchange.

這帶來了一個難題，因為市場本身是有侷限的。在市場中進行交易需要付出高昂成本，有時交易成本可能高到超過可獲取的收益。這就是諾貝爾經濟學獎得主羅納德•科斯(Ronald Coase)的偉大發現，他用這一發現來解釋為什麼人類並非我們經濟系統裡唯一的智慧生命形式。如果經濟交換完全經由市場作為媒介進行，那所有交易都可以在人與人之間發生；而企業完全沒有存在的必要了。但企業層級結構有時能夠用更低的成本協調經濟交換。

The logic is immutable, but the circumstances have changed. Ubiquitous connectivity via the internet has reduced the cost of connecting resources to the people who need them. When market exchange is no longer so expensive, corporate enterprises begin to lose their raison d’être.

這種邏輯不會變，但環境已經發生變化。網際網路的四通八達降低了把資源和需要這些資源的人連線起來的成本。當交易成本不再如此高昂，企業也就開始失去存在的理由。

The earliest signs that communications technology could help orchestrate new forms of human collaboration were visible outside the economic sphere. In the early days of the web, most boundary-crossing work was mediated through social interaction, rather than markets. Peer production projects — such as Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute by writing pages or editing them, or Linux, an open source operating system developed by a huge community of computer programmers who give their time for free — were first to create value on an industrial scale while breaking free of the boundary of the company. The informality and social motivations that gave rise to these practices did not require the overheads of a payment system. Nor did they require managerial hierarchies. The absence of price signals muted the potential conflicts that arise regularly between people who must allocate the monetary rewards of their shared work.

通訊技術可以幫助構建新型人類合作形式的最早跡象，並非出現在經濟領域。在網際網路出現的早期，大部分跨界合作工作都是通過社互動動、而非市場完成的。對等協作生產(peer production)專案——如任何人都可以通過撰寫或編輯頁面出一份力的免費線上百科全書維基百科(Wikipedia)，或由全球大量程式設計人員無償協力開發的開源作業系統Linux——第一次以工業規模創造價值，同時又打破了企業的邊界。促使這些實踐活動興起的非正式性和社交動機，不需要維持一個支付系統所需的管理費用，也不需要層級管理結構。價格訊號的缺失，讓必須瓜分共同勞動成果帶來的金錢回報的人們之間屢見不鮮的衝突也消失了。

The companies that make up the on-demand economy are similar, but price signals have taken the place of social motivations. As Coase might have predicted, the boundary of the company has been dissolved. The likely efficiency gains are large. The economic effects of Wikipedia and Linux were felt by the publishing and software industries, whose workers are likely to be well-educated and fairly well off. But the effects of the on-demand economy will reach deep into social strata that have less education and a limited reservoir of material security to draw on.

構成按需經濟的企業是類似的，但價格訊號已經取代了社交動機。正如科斯可能會預言的那樣，企業的邊界已經被打破。可能的效率提升非常大。出版和軟體行業工作者大多受過良好教育、也相對富裕，這兩個行業已經感受到了維基百科和Linux那樣的經濟影響。但按需經濟的影響將進一步深入到受教育較少、物質保障儲備有限的社會階層。

And there is the rub. When the national labour market took shape in Victorian Britain, what followed was a century of explosive growth. But it was also a century of Dickensian depredation and dislocation. Before we celebrate the demise of the company and its replacement with a more flexible, digitally mediated market for piecework, we must remember that companies have played a critical role in absorbing risks associated with market production that had previously fallen on workers, with tragic consequences.

當然，難就難在這裡。維多利亞時代英國形成全國勞動力市場之後，帶來的是一個世紀的爆炸式增長。但那也是一個狄更斯式(Dickensian)掠奪和混亂主導的世紀。在我們慶祝企業滅亡，被一個更加靈活的、數字化的計件工作市場所取代之前，我們必須記住，公司一直扮演一個關鍵角色，那就是吸收與市場生產有關的風險，這種風險此前一度由勞動者自己承擔，造成了許多悲慘後果。

In 1914, Henry Ford doubled the daily salary of employees and ushered in a new conception of the relationship between business and workers. Following decades of conflicts between capital and labour, businesses would now absorb some of the risk of living in a market economy.

1914年，亨利•福特(Henry Ford)給員工漲了一倍日薪，開創了一種新型的企業與勞動者關係。在經歷了幾十年的勞資衝突後，現在很多企業會吸收部分在一個市場化經濟中生存所面臨的風險。

If, in the next century, electronic markets begin to supplant companies as the organising force behind economic exchange, we will confront these dilemmas anew. Some internet entrepreneurs seem to know as much. That is wise. The on-demand economy heralds a form of economic co-operation that Ford could not have imagined. But its novelty should not blind us to a social challenge he was among the first to confront.

如果在下一個世紀，電子市場開始取代企業，成為組織經濟交換的力量，那麼我們將再次面對這些難題。一些網際網路企業家對此似乎也心知肚明。這是明智的。按需經濟預示著一種福特當年無法想象得到的經濟合作形式的到來。但其新奇性不應該使我們忽視一道社會難題，而福特是直面這道難題的先驅者。

The writer is Berkman professor of entrepreneurial legal studies at Harvard Law School

本文作者是哈佛大學法學院(Harvard Law School)伯克曼(Berkman)企業法律研究教授