完美超越《歷史的終結》——福山和他的新書《政治秩序的各種起源》

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原作者：

譯者elman

Well Beyond the End of History

By Evan R. Goldstein

After two decades in Washington, Francis Fukuyama joined Stanford University last year.

1989年，福山以一部《歷史的終結》，爆得大名，在世界範圍內獲得了無數的讀者和粉絲。而今，20年磨一劍，福山又一本力作，《政治秩序諸起源》出版了。無論在內容上還是深度上，這本新書都完美的超越了前者。20年之後，福山的思想發生了哪些變化，又實現了那些新的超越呢？請看Evan R. Goldstein對福山的訪談。

在華盛頓待了有20年之後，弗蘭西斯·福山於去年加入了斯坦福大學。

Francis Fukuyama has been accused of many things—triumphalism, utopianism, warmongering—but never a lack of ambition. True to form, his new book, The Origins of Political Order (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), doesn"t limit itself to the whole of human history. Rather, it begins in prehuman times and concludes on the eve of the American and French Revolutions. Along the way, Fukuyama mines the fields of anthropology, archaeology, biology, evolutionary psychology, economics, and, of course, political science and international relations to establish a framework for understanding the evolution of political institutions. And that"s just Volume One. The next installment, not due for several years, will bring the story up to the present. At the center of the project is a fundamental question: Why do some states succeed while others collapse?

必勝信念、烏托邦理想和戰爭狂熱，使得弗蘭西斯·福山在許多事情上受到指責，但他從不缺少雄心抱負。一如既往，他的新著作，《政治秩序諸起源》（法勒、施特勞斯和吉魯），也不會只限制在人類全部歷史的範圍內。更準確的說，它開始於人類出現以前的時代，結束於美國和法國革命的前夕。隨著時間的推移，福山廣泛涉獵人類學、考古學、生物學、進化心理學、經濟學，自然還有政治科學和國際關係學等領域，以建立一整套框架體系來理解政治制度的進化。這些還只是全書的第一卷，用不了幾年，等書的下一部分完成後，就會將故事展現到現在。這項課題主要集中於這樣一個基本問題：為什麼有些國家獲得了成功而另一些則失敗了？

"I proposed it as a three-volume work, but the publisher balked," the author says matter-of-factly. He"s on the phone from his office at Stanford University, where he relocated last year after two decades in Washington, most recently at the Johns Hopkins University"s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The reasons for the move were largely personal, he says. He had never intended to stay in Washington so long. His arrival, in 1989, coincided with the publication of "The End of History," an essay—later a book—that rocketed him into the orbit of intellectual celebrity. His argument—that the war of ideas is over, and Western-style liberal democracy has triumphed, "marking the end point of mankind"s ideological evolution"—neatly captured the emerging zeitgeist of the post-cold-war world. Cue the lucrative book deals, tenured positions, political appointments, and packed lecture halls—all of which conspired to keep him in Washington.

「我本打算寫成三卷本的著作，但是出版商猶豫了。」本書的作者誠懇地說，此刻他正在斯坦福大學自己的辦公室內通過電話接受採訪。在華盛頓生活了20年之後，福山選擇定居在這裡。最近他經常出現在約翰·霍普金斯大學的保羅·H·尼采高等國際研究學院。他說，這次搬家主要是個人原因，他原本沒打算在華盛頓住那麼長。1989年，他來到華盛頓時，正好《歷史的終結》也出版了。這原本是篇論文，後來變成一本書，使他躋身於知識界的名人行列。書中的觀點：意識領域的戰爭已經結束，西方形態的自由民主獲得了最終勝利，「標誌了人類意識形態進化的終點。」這一觀點極好的抓住了冷戰後世界湧現的時代精神。獲利豐厚的圖書合同、大學終身教授職位、政治上的任命、和源源不斷的講座邀請，這一切都使他留在了華盛頓。

The move to Palo Alto, however, also reflects Fukuyama"s growing interest in ancient history. "Washington has many people who will tell you what"s going on in Beijing right now, but it"s hard to find someone who can speak intelligently about the Han Dynasty," he says. Stanford seemed like fertile ground for the sort of peripatetic intellectualism on display in The Origins of Political Order.

然而，搬往帕羅奧圖也反映出福山對古代歷史的興趣在持續增長。他說：「華盛頓有很多人能夠告訴你北京現在發生了什麼，但是卻很難找到一個熟悉漢代歷史的人。」對於《政治秩序諸起源》一書中所展現出來的幾分飄逸的理智主義來說，斯坦福像是一塊福地。

The scope of the book makes it difficult to summarize. At the outset, Fukuyama posits a link between Darwinian natural selection and political evolution. Because human nature has universal, evolved characteristics, he writes, "human politics is subject to certain recurring patterns of behavior across time and across cultures." Biology, he continues, "frames and limits the nature of institutions that are possible."

這本書視野之開闊，使得很好的概括它變得特別困難。在一開始，福山假定在達爾文自然選擇和政治進化之間存在著某種聯繫。因為人性具有普遍的進化特性，他寫道：「遍及時間和各種文化，人類政治受制於一定的重現行為方式。」他接著寫道，生物學「構造和限制了可能的制度性質。」

He then organizes political development into a four-tier taxonomy: Kin-ship-based bands and tribes were followed by the more complex arrangements of chiefdoms and states, in which authority was exerted on the basis of territory, not ancestry. Tribes became possible after the invention of agriculture, which allowed for higher population densities than could be sustained in hunter-gatherer societies. "Human beings were now in contact with one another on a much broader scale," Fukuyama writes, "and this required a very different form of social organization."

然後，他把政治發展處理為四個層次類型：建立在親屬關係基礎之上的群體和部落，緊隨其後的是更為複雜的領主序列和國家政權，其權威的施展建立在領土的基礎之上，而非世系。農業革命之後，能夠比採獵社會維持更高的人口密度，遂使部落得以產生。「現在人類能夠在更大的規模上進行交往。」福山寫道，「並且這需要一種非常不同的社會組織形式。」

State formation is a murkier process. Did tribes voluntarily delegate authority to a powerful ruler? Or did states become necessary when rising populations made land scarce, sparking conflicts that could be resolved only by a strong, centralized authority? The second scenario, Fukuyama suggests, is very likely closer to the truth. The transition to states, he writes, constituted a "huge setback for human freedom" because states tend to be less egalitarian. Tribes were therefore most likely compelled by violence to relinquish their autonomy. One tribe conquered another one. Bureaucracies were established to rule over the vanquished tribe, and a standing army and police force were mustered—in short, the building blocks of modern states. The sociologist Charles Tilly put it best: "War made the state, and the state made war."

國家的形成是一個不光彩的過程。部落會自願將權力轉交給強大的統治者嗎？或者，當人口膨脹使得土地變得稀有，激起的衝突只能靠一個強大而中央集權的政府來解決的時候，國家政權會變得必不可少嗎？福山指出，第二種情境非常接近真相。他寫道，向國家形態的過渡導致了「對人類自由的極大侵害」，因為國家的建立意味著更少的平等主義。因此，部落極有可能在暴力的威脅下交出自治權。一個部落征服另一個部落。為了統治被征服的部落，必須建立官僚機構、常備軍和警察組織——簡而言之，現代國家的支撐物。

In conversation, as in his writings, Fukuyama is cool and understated. His sentences unspool slowly, the words carefully considered. This equanimity is shaken, albeit briefly, when I mention the idea for which he is most famous. "I"ve been trying to move beyond The End of History ever since I wrote the book," Fukuyama says with weary patience. "But no matter what I write, everyone wants to ask me about it.".

在交談中，就像在他的作品中一樣，福山是一個冷靜而言辭謹慎的人。他說地很慢，每個字都仔細斟酌。儘管言辭簡短，我仍震驚於他的鎮靜和安詳，當提到使他成名的那些思想時，他頗有些不耐煩地說：「從我寫作這部書時起，我就一直試圖超越《歷史的終結》，但是不論我寫了什麼，每個人都向我提起它。」

And no wonder—few of the myriad efforts to interpret the post-cold-war world have so endured, and none has attracted as much attention. When the essay was published, a Washington news vendor reported that the journal in which it appeared was "outselling everything, even the pornography." Frequently described as a rock star, Fukuyama continues to draw large audiences around the world. His thesis, however, has never sat well in certain quarters. Margaret Thatcher supposedly quipped: "End of history? The beginning of nonsense!" More serious was the critique of the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, who countered with his own vision of a future soaked in conflict between the world"s major cultural groups—The Clash of Civilizations.

毫不奇怪的是，儘管有極多的人在做解釋後冷戰世界的努力，但它們極少能夠流傳下來，沒有一個能夠獲得如此多的關注。當這篇論文出版的時候，一個華盛頓的新聞販子報道說，登載它的雜誌「賣的比什麼都好，甚至超過了色情作品。」他也因此經常被形容為巨星人物，並在全世界各地不斷獲得大量讀者和聽眾。然而，在某些地方，他的觀點從未得到過認同。據說瑪格麗特·撒切爾曾開玩笑地說：「歷史的終結？廢話的開始！」更為嚴重的挑戰來自於政治科學大師塞繆爾·P·亨廷頓的批判作品——《文明的衝突》，在這部書中，亨氏構建了一幅正好相反的未來畫面：世界主要文化群落之間充滿了衝突。

In the eyes of some, September 11, 2001, vindicated Huntington and exposed Fukuyama"s declaration as, at best, premature. (In fact, Fukuyama never suggested that the "end of history" entailed the cessation of extreme violence or cataclysmic events.) Nevertheless, those familiar with Fukuyama and Huntington only as rivals might do a double take when they open The Origins of Political Order and find that it is dedicated to Huntington, who died in 2008. Turns out that the book took shape when Fukuyama, a former student of Huntington"s at Harvard, was asked to write the introduction to a reprint of Huntington"s 1968 classic, Political Order in Changing Societies, a book that Fukuyama regards as one of the most important in 20th-century international relations. But when he returned to the text, he says, it felt dated. For starters, there was hardly any mention of religion.

在有些人看來，2001年的9·11事件證實了亨廷頓的觀點，同時也暴露了福山觀點的幼稚。（事實上，福山從未指出過「歷史的終結」意味著極端暴力和災難性事件的終止。）不過，當人們打開《政治秩序的起源》並發現這本書是獻給亨廷頓（死於2008年）的時候，那些經常把他倆視為對手的人，也許會產生新的看法。作為亨廷頓以前在哈佛大學的學生，福山受邀為其老師在1968年版的經典之作《變動社會的政治秩序》的再次出版，寫了一篇序言，這樣的舉動產生了很大的效應。福山曾把這本書當做20世紀國際關係方面最為重要的著作之一，但是當他重覽書的文本之後，他說，感覺有些過時了。作為開拓性的著作，裡面幾乎沒有提到宗教。

"We"ve seen a revival of religion in the world," Fukuyama says, noting that religion has ，played a central role in the historical development of political institutions as well. Early human sociability was limited to face-to-face interactions within close-knit kin groups, and trust didn"t extend beyond a few dozen relatives. Large-scale cooperation didn"t become possible until the development of religious beliefs, which allowed trust to transcend kin. And that paved the way for the big faith communities—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism—capable of uniting tens of millions of people in collective action.

「我們已經看到了宗教在世界範圍內的復興，」福山說，並指出，宗教同樣在政治制度的歷史發展中扮演了核心角色。早期人類社會僅僅限於親緣關係群體之內在面對面情境中的互動，而且信用關係不會超出幾十個親戚的範圍。直到允許信用超出親緣關係的宗教信仰得到發展以後，人與人之間的大規模的合作才成為可能。基督教、猶太教、伊斯蘭教和印度教，這些為大的信仰社群的出現鋪了平道路的宗教組織，能夠團結數以千萬計的人民加入到集體行動之中。

Case in point: the Prophet Muhammad. At the time of his birth, around 570, the Arabian Peninsula had been inhabited by tribal peoples for centuries. Muhammad preached his vision of a single ummah—gaining adherents, conquering others, and eventually uniting central Arabia into a single polity. "There is no clearer illustration of the importance of ideas to politics than the emergence of an Arab state under the Prophet Muhammad," Fukuyama writes. "The Arab tribes played an utterly marginal role in world history until that point; it was only Muhammad"s charismatic authority that allowed them to unify and project their power throughout the Middle East and North Africa."

一個典型的例證：先知穆罕默德。約公元570年，在他出生的時候，部落族群就已經在阿拉伯半島上定居了好多個世紀。穆罕默德傳布他的世界上只存在一個烏瑪的觀點，並獲得了大量的支持者，征服了其他部落，最終把中央阿拉伯地區統一為單一的政治實體。「再也沒有比在先知穆罕默德領導下的阿拉伯政權的崛起更能清楚的展示思想對於政治的重要性了，」福山寫道，「在此之前，阿拉伯部落在世界歷史上只扮演了微不足道的角色，是穆罕默德的超凡的權威促使了他們團結起來並使他們的權力伸展到中東和北非。」

Fukuyama"s portrayal of religion as a unifying force in history will irk some atheists, for whom religion is at all times a source of intolerance, conflict, and violence. He does concede, however, that religion"s role in the contemporary world is more problematic. Pluralistic societies require religions to coexist in proximity. As a result, he says, "integration today has to be based on shared political values, not deep, religiously rooted cultural beliefs."

福山有關宗教作為歷史上的一種統一力量的描繪將觸怒一些無神論者，因為對於他們來說，宗教一直都是不寬容、衝突和暴力的來源。然而，福山也的確承認，宗教在當今世界所扮演的角色存在更多的問題。多元化的社會要求諸種宗教的共同存在。因此，他說：「今天的全球一體化，必須以共享的政治價值為基礎，而不是深奧的根源於宗教的文化信仰。」

The core of The Origins of Political Order consists of detailed studies of how China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe made the transition from kinship networks and tribes to states. Periodically, however, Fukuyama turns his attention to contemporary America, and the picture he paints isn"t pretty. Noting historical instances of societal collapse—the Mameluke Sultanate in Egypt, the Ming Dynasty in China—he cautions that America might face a similar fate. "Political decay occurs when political systems fail to adjust to changing circumstances," he writes, adding that American institutions "may well be headed for a major test of their adaptability."

《政治秩序的起源》的核心部分對中國、印度、伊斯蘭世界和歐洲如何從親緣網路和部落轉換到國家政權的問題進行了精細研究。然而，有時候，福山也會把注意力轉移到當下的美國，不過在這方面，他所描繪的前景並不讓人喜歡。在提到歷史上一些社會崩潰的例子，如馬穆魯克階層統治下的埃及和中國的明朝，他擔心美國也許會面臨同樣的命運。「當政治體制不能很好的適應改變了環境之後，政治窳敗就會出現。」他寫道，進而指出美國的政治制度「也許會恰好遇到一場對其適應性的重大檢測。」

The problem is gridlock. Extreme polarization between conservatives and liberals, the growth of entrenched interest groups, and rising inequality all threaten to undermine the effectiveness and legitimacy of the American political system, which has been slow to adjust to changing circumstances. "We Americans pride ourselves on our pragmatism, but right now we"re more ideological than the Chinese, who are willing to try all sorts of public policies," Fukuyama tells me. Most significantly, he says, the Chinese experiment with a market economy. "It worked, so they stuck with it."

堵塞是一個問題。保守派和自由派之間的極端對立、繼續增加的牢不可動的既得利益群體和不斷增長的不平等，所有這一切都威脅到早已不能快速適應變化了的環境的美國政治體制的有效性和合法性。福山告訴我：「我們美國人對我們自己的實用主義感到驕傲，但是現在我們要比中國人更加意識形態化，而他們則非常樂意嘗試各種公共政策。」他指出，更為重要的是，中國人正在嘗試市場經濟。「它確實管用，因此他們就堅持了下來。」

In a way, Fukuyama remarks, we"ve become victims of our own success: "Successful institutions are most vulnerable to rigidity because their earlier success makes people complacent." This tendency had the evolutionary value of stabilizing societies. "We"re programmed to believe that tradition is good," but that also means we"re vulnerable to the sort of institutional inertia that undid great societies in the past.

福山指出，在某種程度上，我們已經成為自身成功的受害者，「成功的制度更容易僵化，因為人們會滿足於它早期的成功，而不想改變。」這種趨勢具有穩定社會的進化價值。「我們習慣的認為傳統是好的，」但是這同樣也意味著我們更容易受到那種在歷史上曾經毀壞掉許多偉大社會的制度惰性的侵害。

"The danger," Fukuyama warns, is that America"s "situation will continue to worsen over time in the absence of some powerful force that will knock the system off its dysfunctional institutional equilibrium." The assessment is grim, but the famously optimistic Fukuyama is careful to end on an upbeat note: "As the situation gets worse, people will face up to it, and the system will correct itself."

福山警告道，「危險」的是美國的處境「在缺乏強力介入剔除功能失靈的制度平衡之前，將繼續惡化一段時間。」這個評價是非常殘酷的，但是作為著名的樂觀主義者，福山也謹慎地以一條積極向上的暗示結束本次採訪，「隨著情況變得越來越糟，人們會勇敢地正視它，體制也會進行自我糾錯。」