马凯硕线上参加“中外学者谈民主”高端对话会

马凯硕：

首先我要感谢乐部长热情洋溢的欢迎致辞。虽然我们无法线下见面，但能在线上相会也很好。我也非常高兴能与我的老朋友们线上再会——李世默、张维为、马丁·雅克以及罗思义，看到你们真好。刚才主持人谈到了李光耀先生，我想接着这个话题来谈一下。李光耀先生曾说：“测试一个政治体系优劣的试金石，是看它能否改善这个社会里大部分人的生活。”说到底，这才能真正测试出这个政治制度的优劣。

我在接下来的讲话中会谈到很多数据，这些数据均可在我的书《中国赢了吗？》第7章中找到，该书现已出了中文版。我今天主要想讲的是，美国自诩为“民主航母”。确实，在过去几十年，美国可以说在很多领域都是民主典范，但是在最近这些年，美国显然已不是个民主国家，而是一个财阀政权。

很多美国人已发觉本国的民主体制出现了问题。就在昨天（12月1日），24小时前，哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院发布了新的民调，结果显示，美国52%的年轻人认为美国民主已陷入困境或业已失败，只有7%认为美国民主是健康的。这个哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院的民调结果是个非常重要的警报，因为年轻人常常比我这样年纪大的人更能看清事物的本质。就像伊索寓言《皇帝的新装》里的小孩，美国年轻人更能看透美国体制到底存在什么根本问题。

有人可能以为美国民主只是出现了暂时性衰退，但问题可能要更严峻。我认为这已经反映出了更深层次的结构性问题。我曾在自己的书中写道，带有各种投票仪式的美国民主看似运转正常，但在这一表象下，美国已经成为一个由富豪统治，由金钱左右政治和社会决策的国家。这就是民主政治和财阀政治的区别。民主国家的政府应该是民有、民治、民享的，但是财阀统治的美国是被最富有的1%所有、1%所治理和1%所享用。

在过去一个世纪，美国最负盛名的一位政治学家是约翰·罗尔斯。我在哈佛大学时见过他，我的硕士论文主题就是“解析约翰·罗尔斯眼中的自由和平等”。他在50年前就预见到了美国今日的窘境，他说：“如果拥有更多徇私手段的人被允许利用自身优势去控制公共辩论的进程，那么受到参与原则保护的众多自由权利就会失去大部分价值。”如果金钱能够控制公共辩论，那金钱就将控制决策。

不幸的是，美国最高法院在2010年“公民联盟诉联邦选举委员会”一案中做出了灾难性的裁决。判决大意上就是说，正如人类享有言论自由一样，金钱也享有言论自由。这是美国走向财阀统治，替换掉民主政治的关键一步。《金融时报》副总编马丁·沃尔夫曾经说过，“最高法院就‘2010年公民联盟诉联邦选举委员会’一案做出的裁决认为公司是人，金钱是言。事实证明，这是美国迈向财阀统治的一大步。”

如果各位仍怀疑金钱是否真地控制了美国的政治体系，还有很多严肃的学术研究记录了金钱是如何一步步掌控政治的。普林斯顿大学的马丁·吉伦斯教授和西北大学的本杰明·佩奇教授就深入研究过，美国国会和公共机构的决策反映了哪方的利益。他们的结论是“经济精英独立影响政策变化的能力要远高于普通民众”。因此，“我们的研究表明，美国并不是一个由多数人统治的国家——至少在实际决策权方面，多数美国人是插不上手的”。虽然美国具备所有民主程序，如定期选举、言论和结社自由，但有这些也没用。因为最终的决策并不反映多数人的意愿，所以美国是一个财阀国家，而非民主国家。

“占领华尔街”运动，并没有撬动财阀统治下的美国（图片来源：新华网）

回到刚才李光耀先生的那句话，测试一个政治体系优劣的试金石，是看这个体系能否改善这个社会大部分人的生活。这一点美国并没有做到。

《纽约时报》前专栏作家阿南德·葛德哈拉德斯说过，自1980年至今，美国人口中收入排名前10%的人，平均税前收入翻了一番，排名前1%的人平均税前收入增加了三倍，而最富有的0.001%的人，平均税前收入则上涨七倍多。而与此同时，美国收入排名后50%的人的生活水平却未见改善。

所以回到李光耀的标准，如果测试一个政治体系优劣的试金石是看这个体系能否改善大部分人的生活，那么我们有大量的数据表明，美国一半以上民众的生活水平在过去30多年停滞不前，而最富有的0.001%的人却拿走了一切。其结果就是，美国曾经是一个强大的、健康的、正常运转的民主国家，现在它却变成了一个财阀国家。我们现在要研究它问题到底出在哪里。如果美国就是世界其他国家学习的榜样，那问题就大了。

非常感谢你们邀请我来做这个演讲。

Kishore Mahbubani：

I want to first begin by thanking Vice Minister Le for his very warm words and welcome. It's very good to meet virtually even though we cannot meet physically. I’m also very happy to be connected with my friends, Eric Li, Zhang Weiwei, Martin Jacques across this virtual realm, it's good to see you all. And I’m glad you cited Mr. Lee Kuan Yew in your remarks, because, in a sense, I’m going to build on what you just quoted from him. When he said, “the test of a political system is whether or not it improves the lives of the majority of people”. At the end of the day, that's the real test of a political system.

Here, my message, to it very simply, you'll find a lot of the data, I'm going to use a lot of data, in case you're wondering where to get the data, the data is taken from chapter seven of my book “Has China Won?” And I’m happy to announce it has also been published in Chinese now. The main case I’m going to make to you is that the country that claims, clearly, that it is a mother ship of democracy, is the United States of America. And, I’ll say, for many decades, the United States was, in many ways, the gold standard for democracy in many areas. But in recent times, clearly, the United States is not functioning as a democracy. It is functioning as a plutocracy.

I can tell you that many Americans themselves feel that something has gone wrong with the democracy. And, by the way, just yesterday, literally 24 hours ago, the Harvard University Kennedy School Institute of Politics came out with a new poll showing that 52%, believe that the country's democracy is either in trouble or a failed democracy, and only 7% said that democracy in the United States is healthy. And, I would say, this poll from the Harvard Kennedy Institute of Politics is a very significant warning sign, because quite often, young people can see things more clearly than old people like me can. You know the old fable, of the child who could see that the emperor was wearing no clothes, that's an old western fable, Aesop’s fable. So, in the same way, you also find that the young people can see through very clearly what has fundamentally gone wrong in the American political system.

The key point I want to make is that while you may think that this may be just a temporary downturn in the performance of American democracy, it actually may be much more serious, and my case is that it has become a structural problem. What I say is, “under the surface guise of a functioning democracy, with all the rituals of voting, America has become a society run by moneyed aristocracy that uses its money to make major political and social decisions”. This is a difference between a democracy and a plutocracy. A democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. A plutocracy is a government of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.

And what is actually quite shocking about this development in the United States is that America’s greatest political philosopher in the last 100 years, he's a man I actually met in Harvard, his name is John Rawls, I wrote my master's thesis, explaining the concepts of freedom and equality in the writing of John Rawls. And John Rawls said this, in a very prescient fashion 50 years ago, he said that “the liberties protected by the principle of participation, lose much of their value whenever those who have greater private means are permitted to use their advantages to control the course of public debate”. So, if money can control public debate, then money will take over the decision making.

And unfortunately, the one decision that the supreme court made, that was disastrous, was the decision that is known as Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission in 2010. That decision basically said, this is a rough summary, that money has the right to free speech. So, just as human beings have the right to free speech, money has the right to free speech, and the result of that is that that was the critical step towards creating a plutocracy instead of a democracy. Martin Wolf from the “Financial Times” said, “the Supreme Court’s perverse 2010 Citizens United decision held that companies are persons and money is speech. This has proved a big step on the journey of the US towards becoming a plutocracy”.

If you have any doubts that money has taken charge of the political system, there are very serious academic studies that document how money has taken charge. In particular, I cite two Princeton University professors, Martin Guilens and Benjamin Page, they have very careful measurements about whose preferences are reflected in the decisions made by the US congress and US public institutions. And their conclusions, which they said, “the preferences of economic elites have far more independent impact on policy change, than the preferences of average citizens do”. And the conclusion, therefore, is this, “in the United States, our findings indicate the majority does not rule”. Maybe I should repeat that. “In the United States, our findings indicate the majority does not rule, at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes”. They say that while you have all the processes of democracy, like regular elections, freedom of speech and association, all that makes no difference. At the end of the day, the decision do not reflect the wishes of the majority, and therefore, that is a plutocracy and not a democracy.

Going back to the point that Mr. Lee Kuan Yew made, that you cited, he said that, “the test of a system is whether or not it improves the livelihood of the majority of people”. But that hasn’t happened.

And another writer, Anand Giridharadas, a former New York Times columnist, said, and these are his figures, the average pretax income of the top 10% of Americans has doubled since 1980, that of the top 1% has tripled, and that of the top 0.001% has risen more than 7 fold. And at the same time, the bottom 50% have not seen any improvement in their standard of living. So if you go by what Mr. Lee Kuan Yew said, if the test of a democracy is whether or not it improve the livelihood of the majority of the people, there is overwhelming data that shows that the livelihood of more than 50 % of Americans have stagnated over 30 years, and the top 0.001% have taken everything. The net result of this, therefore, is that the United States, which used to be, I would argue, a strong. healthy, functioning democracy has functionally become a plutocracy. And really, we need to understand what has gone wrong there, because if this is going to be the model for the rest of the world, then we have a problem. I want to thank you very much for inviting me to make this contribution.

（翻译：李泽西、许馨匀）

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