西方国企的兴衰10: 新自由主义泛滥，私有化盛行，国企何去何从？

作者：吴刚梁

This essay deals with the decline in the role of the state as the owner of enterprises. This decline has come about through privatization policies in most industrialized countries as well as in many less advanced countries.

本文论述政府作为企业所有者角色的弱化。这种弱化是由于大多数发达国家以及很多欠发达国家的私有化政策造成的。

This essay does not intend to provide a comprehensive account of such a wide and complex phenomenon. Rather, it attempts to identify and discuss the key issues in the historical analysis of privatization.

本文不对广泛而复杂的私有化现象进行全面的描述。相反，本文试图通过历史分析的方法，找出私有化的某些关键问题并展开讨论。

The historical record of privatization is impressive by any standard. The importance of the state's retreat from ownership and management of business activities in certain fields can hardly be underestimated.

无论按何种标准来衡量，私有化历程都让人印象深刻。政府在某些业务领域放弃所有权和管理权，具有重要意义。

Undoubtedly this retreat implies an unprecedented opportunity for the private sector. It redrafts national political economics and injects profit-oriented and competition-minded entrepreneurship into the mix.

毫无疑问，政府的撤退意味着私营部门将获得前所未有的机会。它将重塑国家政治经济学，并注入以利润为导向、注重竞争的企业家精神。

The quantitative dimension of the phenomenon can be only approximately estimated. The most authoritative source, the World Bank, presented figures indicating a clear escalation in the number of transactions.

从数据上看，私有化的规模只能粗略估算。世界银行是最权威的数据来源，它的数据表明，私有化的交易笔数在明显增加。

These reached 2,655 in 1988-93, significantly (but not solely) affected by the "transition economies" of formerly Communist countries. In terms of value, divestitures in industrial countries represent the largest share (about 65 percent) of the worldwide phenomenon (Table 2.1).

由于受前共产主义国家“经济转型”的影响（但这不是唯一原因），从1988年至1993年，私有化交易笔数高达2655宗。从金额上看，发达国家的国有资产剥离在占比例最大，约占全世界的65%（见表2.1）。

More recent data confirm the growing trend. According to press sources, 240 privatization operations were accomplished worldwide in 1996 alone, with a value of almost $90 billion.

更多的最新数据证实了私有化交易仍处于增长趋势。根据媒体资料，仅在1996年，全世界就完成了240宗私有化交易，交易额近900亿美元。

Privatization has been the result of an unprecedented convergence of domestic and international causes.

私有化是国内和国际两方面原因相结合的结果。

Domestically, the need to balance the budget deficit created by overburdened systems of the welfare state has played a major role. Equally important has been the perception of the sales of government assets as a great opportunity to revitalize and develop economies.

国内方面，国家福利体系负担日益沉重，造成巨额的财政赤字，需要政府去平衡。这是导致私有化的重要原因。此外，人们将出售国有资产视为重振经济的大机遇，这也是私有化的重要原因。

Internationally, the decline of state ownership has been sustained by pressures on domestic decision makers.

在国际上，国有经济的下降，是由于各国决策者所承受的压力造成的。

These pressures have come from other privatizing governments, worried about unfair competition from foreign state-owned and government-protected companies, and from international and supranational organizations concerned with limiting the disruptive effects on the process of international integration of national aid to state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

这些压力来源于别国搞私有化。那些国家担心海外国有企业及受政府保护的企业会带来不公平竞争。此外，国际机构和跨国性组织担心政府对国有企业进行援助会破坏世界一体化进程，要求限制这种不良影响，这也是一种压力来源。

Most noticeably, the European Union has progressively worked out a set of rules. These have translated the general references of the Treaty of Rome into a strategy aimed at constraining the anti-market effects of state ownership by delegitimizing it.

特别值得一提的是，欧盟已经逐步制定出来一套规则，将《罗马条约》中的参考性原则上升为一种战略，致力于消除国有经济的反市场行为产生的不良影响，将之“非法化”。

Not only has any special treatment of SOEs been banned, but normal shareholder behavior such as increasing company capital has been investigated for the presence of concealed state subsidies (Cohen 1996, 272ff).

不仅针对国企的各种特殊优待政策被禁止，就连一些正常的股东行为都要遭受调查，比如增加公司的资本金，因为它可能存在隐性的政府补贴（Cohen 1996, 272ff）。

Finally, structural changes have taken place in several industries. These have often been related to the availability of technological innovations, and they have contributed to the trend by eliminating the standard justifications for direct state involvement (especially the "natural monopoly" and "dependency" arguments).

最后，一些行业发生了结构性的变化，这些变化往往与获得技术创新有关。消除了政府进行直接干预的各种“标准”的理由（特别是 “自然垄断”和“依赖”理论），有助于私有化趋势。

Most remarkable of all has been the radical change in the opinion of both the public and elites toward the role of the state in the economy. This change has played a fundamental role in the development of the neo-liberal consensus that has dominated economic policy since the 1980s (Muller and Wright 1994).

最引人注目的是，社会公众和精英分子对政府在经济中应扮演何种角色，意见发生了根本性的变化。这种变化促进了新自由主义思想的发展。自上世纪80年代以来，新自由主义思想一直主导着各国的经济政策（Muller and Wright 1994）。

Part of this consensus has included a belief in the structural inability of SOEs to avoid distorting political interference, and consequently in the long-term superiority of private businesses, no matter how great the efforts made to improve public-sector efficiency.

新自由主义思想的其中一个重要信条是：国有企业无法避免那些扭曲的政治干预，无论人们如何努力提高公共部门的效率，从长远看，私营企业更具优势。

The rapid spread of intellectual and popular disenchantment with the effectiveness and sustainability of the welfare state and the diffusion of the neo-liberal agenda have assumed global dimensions.

知识分子及民众对福利主义国家幻灭的蔓延，新自由主义计划的传播，都已成为全球性的问题。

The main inspiration, source, and benchmarking reference has been Margaret Thatcher's Britain, with its consistent and impressive record of divestiture.

英国的撒切尔夫人是主要的学习榜样。英国持续剥离国有资产，创造了令人印象深刻的记录。

The share of SOEs in the British economy (that is, the share of the gross domestic product) declined spectacularly: from 6.1 percent in 1978 to 1.9 percent in 1991- The share of SOE investment in gross domestic investment fell from 15 percent to 4.2 percent in the same period (World Bank 1995).

国有企业在英国经济中的份额（即GDP的份额）下降非常明显：从1978年的6.1%降到1991年的1.9%。同期国有企业投资占GDP投资的份额也从15%下降到4.2% （世界银行，1995）。

To this should be added the consequences of the end of the Communist regimes of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as liberalization trends elsewhere.

除此之外，私有化还应考虑前苏联和东欧共产主义政权垮台的因素，以及世界上其他国家的自由化趋势。

The link between privatization and successful performance in some of those economies, such as China and Poland, has provided "dramatic evidence of the benefits of shrinking the state in former centrally planned economies."

私有化还与中国、波兰等国的经济成功有关，成为“前高度集中的计划经济国家缩小政府规模带来的益处”的显著证据。

The massive privatization of the industrial holdings of the German Democratic Republic, initiated by the last Communist government and developed after unification, has been frequently cited in debates in Western countries.

在德意志民主共和国（前东德），由最后一届共产主义政府发起、在两德统一后开展起来的大规模私有化活动，在西方国家的政治辩论中经常被人们提及。

Such debates have disregarded the special circumstances of that process and the serious problems that have been transferred from the Treuhandanstalt to much less well known successor companies (Bos 1997). Yet the belief that we have been witnessing a historic turning point of huge significance cannot easily be dismissed.

这些辩论往往忽视了私有化进程的一些特殊情形以及从Treuhandanstalt转移到不太知名的承接公司的一些突出问题（Bos 1997）。然而，应该承认，我们正在见证一个具有重大意义的历史性转折。

Not surprisingly, privatization has aroused strong views. Packaged into catchwords and slogans of rare political effectiveness, privatization has appeared to many as the key policy, a political panacea for all, or most, of the fundamental problems of contemporary political economies.

不足为奇的是，私有化引起了强烈的反响。私有化被包装成口号，赋予各种罕见的政治成效。在很多人眼里，私有化是核心政策，它是解决当代政治经济中全部或大多数问题的灵丹妙药。

Some have sought evidence in the apparently inevitable sequence of events for an irreversible trend, and this has encouraged an "end-of-history" syndrome.

有些人努力在一连串的必然事件中寻找证据，以证明私有化是一种不可逆转的趋势，助长了“历史终结论”。

Some have disregarded the role of SOEs in the history of economic development, seeing it as nothing more than a disturbing and temporary deviation from a "natural" laissez-faire condition.

有些人忽视了国有企业在经济发展历程中的作用，认为国有企业的职能，其实是对“天然”自由市场的一种暂时的、令人不安的偏离。

Others, with greater wisdom but equal ideological bias, have warned against any attempt to revert or even slow down the trend, arguing that this would be an unacceptable, retrograde step against the flow of history as well as an unforgivable loss of a unique opportunity for development.

此外，一些更具智慧、但同样具有意识形态偏见的人，认为不能减缓和扭转这个趋势（即私有化）。他们辩称，这将是一种无法令人接受的、反历史潮流的倒行逆施，这也将导致错失难得的发展机遇，其损害不可原谅。

The ideological dimension has been extraordinarily successful in fostering the international spread of the privatization agenda and the new popular stereotype of the public-private relationship.

在意识形态方面，它成功地促进了私有化计划的全球传播，促进了民众对新型“公私所有制关系”观念的固化。

The history and ideology of the decline of SOE are closely related to the history and ideology of the supposed decline or retreat of the state itself. Privatization has seemed the potential final blow to a state in irreversible crisis, overloaded by ever increasing tasks and unresolved complexities (Poggi 1991).

国有企业衰落的历史过程和意识形态，与国家主义自身衰落密切相关。私有化似乎是对国家主义的最后一击。国家主义的危机源于国家的任务日益繁重，各种复杂问题未能得到解决。这种危机不可逆转（Poggi 1991）。

The state has not only survived, however, but has overrun the boundaries set by economic orthodoxy through the theory of "market failures." Neo-liberal dogma is less dominant now than in the past.

然而，国家不仅幸存下来了，而且通过“市场失灵”理论，超越了正统经济学所设定的边界。如今，新自由主义的教义不像过去那样占据主导地位。

One assessment claims that "in the West progress towards smaller government has been more apparent than real. . . . [T]he demand for collective solutions to economic and social problems seems, if anything, stronger than before" (Economist 1997, 57).

一份评估报告称，“西方国家在缩小政府规模方面进展缓慢，雷声大、雨点小……他们对经济和社会问题的整体解决方案的需求似乎比以前更加迫切（经济学家，1997，57）。

Privatization has been the most complete expression of the neo-liberal ambition to establish the "market failure" approach as the only accepted paradigm justifying the role of the state (Stiglitz 1989). With regard to privatization, this conceptual approach is extremely useful and appropriate in normative terms.

私有化是新自由主义理想为最完整的表达。他们将“市场失灵法”作为承认政府职能的唯一范式（斯蒂格利茨，1989年）。至于说私有化，这一概念方法在规范方面极为有用和恰当。

It suggests when, how, and where state ownership has a sufficient rationale and a reasonable expectation of decent performance. It is, however, unable to explain in a historically meaningful way why state ownership increases or decreases.

“市场失灵法”表明，在何时、何地、采取何种方法，国有经济才有充足的理由和预期去获得像样的业绩。然而，从历史意义的角度，它无法解释为什么国家经济有时增加，有时减少。

This is because the market failure paradigm essentially reflects an ideological attitude, evaluating policies in terms of their distance from the ideal of the free market.

这是因为市场失灵范式本质上反映了一种意识形态，即根据自由市场的理想距离来评估各种政策。

History must look at changes in state ownership as a fundamental part of the reshaping of the polity, not by reference to abstract ideology but to the perceived compatibility between the structure of the economy and the collective interests interpreted by the political system.

从历史上看，必须把国有经济的变化当作政治体制改革的一个基本组成部分，不是只考虑抽象的意识形态，而应该看到经济结构调整与政治体制的集体利益诉求是可以兼容的。

The mercantilist seeds of economic policy (the equation between wealth and power that has always provided, and still provides, more than enough justification for state involvement in the economy) are doubtless still present.

毫无疑问，重商主义经济政策的种子仍然存在，即财富与权力之间的恒等式关系，至今一直为国家干预经济提供了充足的理由。

In mercantilist terms, privatization is part of the never-ending play of power and plenty. Privatization is simply one more step in the search for better ways to build the wealth of the nation as a function of political ambition.

在重商主义者看来，私有化是权力和财富不断博弈的一部分。私有化只不过是寻求更好的手段来创造国家财富。它也是一项政治抱负。

Leaving aside the neoliberal question of how much state and how much market - which implies that there is too much state and not enough market - we must move to a consideration of the quality of the state's role.

新自由主义总是纠结“计划多一点还是市场多一点”的问题，他们一般认为政府干预太多，市场化太少。我们暂且撇开他们的问题，转向考察政府干预经济的质量和效果。

From this perspective, privatization is not so much a trend to reduce state involvement as an essential element in reshaping the state into possibly more effective (even if modest, lighter) structures and policy styles (Crozier 1987).

从这个角度看，与其说私有化是为减少国家干预的一种趋势，不如说它是将政府变更高效结构和提高执政风格的一种手段，即结构上更加精简和轻便（Crozier ，1987）。

In this view, the privatization process appears to be (and actually has been) a great opportunity not for the absolute retreat of the state, but for a substantial increase in its effectiveness, the result of policy refocusing and modernization, which have substituted new forms of control and guidance for the direct management of economic activities.

根据这种观点，私有化似乎并不是政府全身而退的好机会，而是让政府大力提高绩效的好机会，是让政府进行政策调整和加快现代化的好机会，这个过程中，是以新型的控制和指引手段来替代直接经济管理。

The decline of SOE is analyzed in the next two sections. It is analyzed first in terms of negative change, that is, decreasing state ownership. It is argued that significant parallels and analogies exist with the opposite process of positively changing the weight of the state in the economy.

文章接下来的两部分将研究国企的衰落。首先从“负面变化”的角度进行分析，即分析国有经济的衰减。有人认为，国有经济比重的“正面变化”与“负面变化”之间有着重要的类似与对比。

Second, the new shape of state policies in a privatized economy is described. The concluding section outlines possible evolutionary paths for state ownership.

第二，本文描述了私有化国家在政策方面的新形态。结论部分，本文简述了国有经济可能面临的发展路径。

老吴点评：

本文译自学术著作《西方国企的兴衰》的第二篇论文（全书共十篇）。作者为NICOLA BELLINI，标题为《国企的衰落及政府与经济关系的新基础》，主要探讨在私有化背景下，政府如何实现职能转变。

本节内容主要研究了西方国家私有化浪潮背后的政治背景，指出上世纪80年代以来的新自由主义思想盛行是导致国企衰落的根本原因。这个时期，苏联与东欧逐步解体，西方福利主义国家运转不下去，发展中国家也开始进行市场化改革。从世界范围看，各国都在追求“小政府、大社会”，摒弃国家主义，其中重要的一项举措就是减少国有经济的比重。

文中还提到了日裔美国人福山抛出所谓的“历史终结论”。上世纪80年代末，随着苏联解体与东欧剧变，福山认为共产主义政权已经终结。他相信，世界历史发展只有一条道路，就是市场经济和民主政治。换句话说，自由民主制度是“人类意识形态发展的终点”，是“人类最后一种统治形式”。这也是当时私有化的一个重要背景。

显然，本文作者虽然也承认西方国家的私有化和国企的衰落是大势所趋，但他并不认为新自由主义能解决一切问题，更不信奉所谓的“历史终结论”。他力图在政府干预和市场化之间寻找到一个最佳的结合点，即国企改革的目标不是为了削弱国有经济，而只是提高政府治理能力的一种手段。这点与我国当前国企改革的思路有相通之处，值得我们深入研究。

当然，西方国企私有化的历史条件与我国当前国企业改革背景大相径庭，但仍有一些共同之处。例如，当时西方各国私有化都面临着一种国际上的压力，因为市场化改革是当时通行的原则。如果某个国家的国企比重较大，国际社会便会担心该国政府会优待国企，对别国企业造成不正公平竞争。毫无疑问，我国当前也面临着这个问题，中美贸易谈判就涉及很多关于竞争中性、国企是否享有政府隐性补贴的问题。

此外，对于国企改革的方向与目标，我国存在两种截然不同的观点：一是强调国有经济的重要性，反对以国企改革之名削弱国有经济；二是认为国企效率低，改不好，要求国有企业完全退出竞争性商业领域，同时增加重要行业和关键领域中民营经济的比重。

总之，老吴认为，当前我国国企改革仍不妨以史为鉴，以洋为鉴。读者有何感想，欢迎在评论中与大家一起分享。

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