The term “capitalism” used to mean an economic system in which capital was privately owned and traded; owners of capital got to judge how best to use it, and could draw on the foresight and creative ideas of entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers. This system of individual freedom and individual responsibility gave little scope for government to influence economic decision-making: success meant profits; failure meant losses. Corporations could exist only as long as free individuals willingly purchased their goods – and would go out of business quickly otherwise.
Capitalism became a world-beater in the 1800’s, when it developed capabilities for endemic innovation. Societies that adopted the capitalist system gained unrivaled prosperity, enjoyed widespread job satisfaction, obtained productivity growth that was the marvel of the world and ended mass privation.
Now the capitalist system has been corrupted. The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system, however, is not capitalism, but rather an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.
In various ways, corporatism chokes off the dynamism that makes for engaging work, faster economic growth, and greater opportunity and inclusiveness. It maintains lethargic, wasteful, unproductive, and well-connected firms at the expense of dynamic newcomers and outsiders, and favors declared goals such as industrialization, economic development, and national greatness over individuals’ economic freedom and responsibility. Today, airlines, auto manufacturers, agricultural companies, media, investment banks, hedge funds, and much more has at some point been deemed too important to weather the free market on its own, receiving a helping hand from government in the name of the “public good.”
The costs of corporatism are visible all around us: dysfunctional corporations that survive despite their gross inability to serve their customers; sclerotic economies with slow output growth, a dearth of engaging work, scant opportunities for young people; governments bankrupted by their efforts to palliate these problems; and increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of those connected enough to be on the right side of the corporatist deal.
This shift of power from owners and innovators to state officials is the antithesis of capitalism. Yet this system’s apologists and beneficiaries have the temerity to blame all these failures on “reckless capitalism” and “lack of regulation,” which they argue necessitates more oversight and regulation, which in reality means more corporatism and state favoritism.
It seems unlikely that so disastrous a system is sustainable. The corporatist model makes no sense to younger generations who grew up using the Internet, the world’s freest market for goods and ideas. The success and failure of firms on the Internet is the best advertisement for the free market: social networking Web sites, for example, rise and fall almost instantaneously, depending on how well they serve their customers.
Sites such as Friendster and MySpace sought extra profit by compromising the privacy of their users, and were instantly punished as users deserted them to relatively safer competitors like Facebook and Twitter. There was no need for government regulation to bring about this transition; in fact, had modern corporatist states attempted to do so, today they would be propping up MySpace with taxpayer dollars and campaigning on a promise to “reform” its privacy features.
The Internet, as a largely free marketplace for ideas, has not been kind to corporatism. People who grew up with its decentralization and free competition of ideas must find alien the idea of state support for large firms and industries. Many in the traditional media repeat the old line “What's good for Firm X is good for America,” but it is not likely to be seen trending on Twitter.
The legitimacy of corporatism is eroding along with the fiscal health of governments that have relied on it. If politicians cannot repeal corporatism, it will bury itself in debt and default, and a capitalist system could re-emerge from the discredited corporatist rubble. Then “capitalism” would again carry its true meaning, rather than the one attributed to it by corporatists seeking to hide behind it and socialists wanting to vilify it.
Saifedean Ammous is a professor of economics at the Lebanese
American University
and Foreign Member of Columbia
University’s
Center for Capitalism and Society. Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel laureate in
economics, is Director of the Center.
Edmund S. Phelps
& Saifedean Ammous: 企業主義 - 資本主義的毒瘤
紐約——資本主義的未來再一次成為了疑問。資本主義可以從現階段危機中存活嗎？如果不能，資本主義會發生演變嗎？政府會在其中起到領導作用嗎？
“資本主義”一詞意指一種經濟制度，在這種制度中，資本為私人擁有和交易﹔資本的所有者判斷資本的最佳用途，在做出判斷時，他們可以參考企業家和創新思想家的眼光和創新思維。這個別自由和責任的制度基本沒有政府對經濟決策施加影響的空間：成功必獲利，失敗必損失。公司只有在自由的個人願意購買其產品的情況下才能存活，否則的話，就會很快倒閉。
19世紀，資本主義由於發掘了獨特的創新能力而馳騁全世界。採用資本主義制度的社會獲得了無比的繁榮，人人都能得到工作上的饜足，生產率的增長舉世矚目，結束了普遍貧困的現象。
如今，資本主義制度變了質。人們開始認為，管理型國家有責任照顧一切，從中產階級的收入到大公司的盈利能力以及產業升級，無所不包。但是，這樣的制度不是資本主義，而是一種可以追溯到19世紀末期的俾斯麥
(Bismarck)和20世紀的墨索裡尼
(Mussolini)的經濟秩序：企業主義。
企業主義從多個角度扼殺了讓人振奮的工作、高速經濟增長、更大的機會和包羅萬有。企業主義是無生氣、不節約、低效率、彼此根盤節錯的企業產生的溫床，而犧牲了有活力的新手和行外者。企業主義熱衷於聲名的目標，比如工業化、經濟發展、國家而漠視個人經濟自由和責任等等。如今，航空、汽車、農業、媒體、投資銀行、對沖基金和其他多個行業被認為非常重要，不能讓它們暴露在自由市場的競爭中，因此它們以“公共品” 之名領取著政府的援助。
企業主義的成本隨處可見：根本不能滿足客戶需求但仍然存活的低效率公司、產出增長緩慢的僵化經濟、令人乏味的工作、年輕人機會渺茫、為了掩蓋這些問題而最終走向破產的政府，以及財富向那些關系夠硬、在企業主義交易中站對陣營者的不斷集中。
這一權力從企業主和創新者向國家官僚的轉移和資本主義是南轅北轍的。然而，社團主義的辯護者和既得利益者總是輕率地將其失敗之處歸咎於“魯莽的資本主義”和“監管缺失”，大談加強監督和監管——實際上便是企業和國家私相授受的代名詞。
如此糟糕的制度是不可持續的。企業主義模式對於使用互聯網、享受全世界商品和思想的自由市場成長起來的年青一代來說一無是處。互聯網上的企業興衰是對自由市場最好的宣傳：比如，社交網絡網站的興衰幾乎是同時發生著，取決於它們能否更好地服務客戶。
Friendster和MySpace等網站在用戶隱私方面不太干淨，以此尋求額外利潤。但此舉立刻遭到了用戶的懲罰：用戶拋棄它們，轉而使用Facebook和Twitter等更安全的競爭對手。這樣的轉變根本無需政府監管來引導﹔事實上，如果現代社團主義國家試圖這樣做的話，到現在它們就將不得不一邊用納稅人的錢來支持MySpace，一邊信誓旦旦地宣布要對其隱私功能實施“改革”。
互聯網是思想的自由市場，斷然拒絕了社團主義。伴隨著互聯網的分散化和自由競爭思想成長起來的人一定會不容於國家支持大型企業和產業的觀點。不少傳統媒體一再強調“對X公司有利就是對美國有利”這樣的老生常談，但在Twitter上，你是不可能看到這種趨勢的。
企業主義的正統性正在隨其所依賴的政府的財政健康狀況的下降而消失。如果政客不能廢除社團主義，那麼社團主義將在債務和違約中葬送自己，而資本主義制度能夠從名譽掃地的社團主義廢墟中重生。因此，“資本主義”將再一次回歸真正含義，不再成為社團主義者的畫皮，不再受到社會主義者的中傷。
Saifedean
Ammous是黎巴嫩美國大學經濟學教授，哥倫比亞大學資本主義與社會研究中心外籍研究員。Edmund
Phelps是2006年諾貝爾經濟學獎獲得者，哥倫比亞資本主義與社會研究中心主任。