西方的“免煮柿油”為何滯銷

最近，東歐一些國家的知識分子在匈牙利的“中歐大學”聚會，討論1989東歐“蘇東波”以及2011年的“阿拉伯之春”問題。（見Hundary’s Revolution and the Arab Spring—by Christia Freeland @Reuters, 06/19/2011）。

其中有兩個觀點很有意思，特評介如下。

（1）在1989年“蘇東波”前後，人們普遍相信：有了民主自由就會有經濟繁榮。可是20多年後的今天， “民主”變成了滯銷品。據人權活動家和由億萬富翁索羅斯讚助的《開放基金會》的負責人阿耶爾•奈爾說，那時候，美國非常成功地向全世界推銷了這麽一種觀念：一個國家隻要有政治上的自由，就會自然獲得經濟上的繁榮。可是現在，美國這套“免煮柿油”已經不吃香了。中國的崛起，以及西方國家在2008年金融風暴之後所麵臨的種種困難，打破了政治自由可以帶動經濟繁榮的神話。[評：“免煮柿油”終究不是好貨。]

（2）通訊技術革命為人們提供了方便推翻專製政府的手段。但同時，這些技術也使得一個社會更加難於建立持久的、穩固的民主政治。政治科學家和研究民主與專製的著名思想家伊萬•克拉斯蒂夫認為，通訊技術革命製造了“公共空間碎片”現象。互聯網社會媒體的誕生，使得人們難於建立一個單一的公共討論平台。人們往往傾向於接受“能夠證實自己偏見的信息”（如成千上萬的、互相取暖的博客）。這種“物以類聚”的現象，或許有利於人們組織起來去推翻一個暴君，但卻非常不利於建立一個實行民主所依賴的公民空間。[評：積極推崇“民主”的人士，繞了半天，才知道“民主集中製”是必需的！]

 譯後：

中國的一些所謂的“知識分子”（如常常在港台報刊雜誌上撰文的許知遠等），也哀歎中國“公民力量碎片化”。許知遠甚至表露過埋怨、嫉妒韓寒的意思。不少華人知識分子，好高騖遠，不想做艱苦的工作，隻幻想著“一呼百應”。可悲！

原文如下：

– The first is that selling democracy has become harder now than it was 20 years ago. That’s because, as Aryeh Neier, the human rights activist and head of the Open Society Foundations, explained, the equation of prosperity and democracy, which was universally acknowledged in 1989 and the period that followed, has broken down today.

“In 1989, the U.S. had succeeded in conveying the view that economic prosperity and political freedom go hand in hand,” Mr. Neier said. “That is by no means so certain today. The rise of China and the difficulty the West continues to have in recovering from the financial crisis have broken the link between prosperity and freedom.”

– A second big idea was that while technology has probably made it easier to rebel against authoritarian governments, it has also made it tougher to build enduring, deeply rooted democratic polities to replace them.

Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist and one of the world’s leading thinkers about democracy and authoritarianism, argued that the communication revolution had created a “fragmentation of the public space.” Instead of all of us being part of a single public debate, the Internet and social media have allowed us all to consume only “the information that confirms our biases.” That may be useful when you are trying to bring together a crowd to topple a tyrant, but, as Krastev explained, it makes constructing the common civic space upon which a functioning democracy depends much harder.