The crisis of liberalism: why centrist politics can no longer explain the
world
自由主义已无法解释当今世界， 信任危机在世界蔓延
原文：The Gaurdian https://tinyurl.com/uzwwshh
译文：察网 http://www.cwzg.cn/theory/202001/54447.html
译者：吴淑华
【法意导言：随着逆全球化呼声兴起和民粹主义抬头，西方世界似乎正在被越来越多的“
家事”弄得手忙脚乱，一筹莫展。自由主义市场经济不完善这颗“定时炸弹”更是成了许
多国家头上的“达摩克利斯之剑”。战后的自由主义虽几经演变，直到今天也似乎无法弥
补其侷限性，其地位已岌岌可危。来自哈佛大学的助理教授卡特里娜·弗雷斯特（
Katrina Forrester）在其新书《正义的阴影下：战后自由主义与政治哲学重塑》（In
the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political
Philosophy）中阐述总结了自由主义在20世纪后半叶的发展，指出了其侷限性，并为这一
多年占据主流的意识形态提出了全新的思考和探讨角度。】
We know we’re living through a period of crisis, but it’s sometimes hard to
know of what kind. The financial crash of 2007-8 seemed to mark the beginning
of the most recent crisis of capitalism; 2016 brought news of a crisis of
democracy, and the political and constitutional crisis created by Brexit
marks its second act. Every day the climate crisis heats up. Crisis has
become the new normal.
大家都知道我们正处于一个“危机”时代，但具体是什么危机，有时却说不清楚。2007-8
的金融海啸昭示著资本主义的危机已到来；至于民主制度，在2016年已经历了一次危机，
如今英国脱欧带来的政治和宪政危机则是第二次；气候危机更是日益加剧。危机已然成为
了新常态。
It’s often said that we are also witnessing a crisis of liberalism: liberal
norms are being eroded, institutions are under threat, and across Europe,
parties of the centre are haemorrhaging votes. Meanwhile, the critics of
centrism are louder than they have been for years. Even many in the
mainstream of British politics have begun to acknowledge that in the past
decade centrists have been neoliberalism’s willing bedfellows, supporting
policies to shrink the welfare state and crush unions. Liberal centrism has “
left people behind”, and in its support for free markets and globalisation,
created new forms of exclusion. More damning critiques are also gaining
currency: that the “liberal” way of running politics was always bound up
with imperialism and colonialism, sceptical of democracy and workers and a
cover for capitalist exploitation. Even the Financial Times – the pinnacle
of economic liberalism – recently argued that the capitalist model needs to
be “reset ”.
一种普遍的看法是，我们当下也在见证著一场自由主义的危机：自由主义原则被逐渐蚕食
，自由主义制度遭受威胁。在欧洲，中间党派的选票大量流失，与此同时对中间派路线的
抨击之声也达到历年之甚。英国主流政治也开始意识到，在过去十年以来，中间派与新自
由主义可谓是情投意合，为缩减福利制度、打击工会的政策投下一张张支持票。中间派自
由主义“把人民抛诸脑后”，并在对自由市场和全球化的支持中创造了新的排外形式。更
严厉的谴责如此评论道：政治的“自由”运作总是与帝国主义、殖民主义绑定，对民主、
工人持怀疑态度，而且它只是资本压榨的一块遮羞布。即使是经济自由主义的大拥趸英国
《金融时报》最近也表示：资本主义模型需要“重置”了。
So liberal centrists aren’t wrong that their institutions, parties and ideas
are being challenged. But the problem may be a deeper one: that the
categories of mainstream politics as we know it can no longer explain the
world.
自由主义中间派认为他们的制度、政党和理念都受到了挑战，这话并不假。但真正的问题
可能是更深层次的：在我们认知范围内的的主流政治逻辑已无法解释这个世界了。
As an ideology, liberalism can be hard to pin down. It’s capacious and it
has adapted throughout history. From John Locke to John Maynard Keynes,
liberals have prioritised the values of liberty and equality (though they’ve
disagreed about how much the latter matters to the former and what those
values mean in everyday politics). They have supported the rule of law,
rights and representation, as well as private property, markets and, for the
most part, capitalism against socialism. During the cold war, liberals often
defended the status quo, seeing a slide into totalitarianism behind every
scheme for political change. There is a long liberal tradition of attacking
the left to defend the centre. In the 1980s, a faction of Labour MPs left the
party to found the SDP. In the 90s, as New Labour disciplined the party’s
left wing, liberalism took the form of the Third Way. Today, many liberal
centrists paint Jeremy Corbyn as an extremist on a par with Boris Johnson,
and draw false equivalence between left and right.
自由主义是一种难以精确定义的意识形态，它很宏大，也随历史变化不断迭代。从约翰·
洛克到约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯，自由主义一直高举“自由”和“平等”的旗帜（虽然两位
在以下两个问题上看法不一：后者对前者的重要性；这两种价值对日常政治到底意味着什
么）。两位学者都拥护法治、权利及其代表性、私有财产、市场经济，他们支持资本主义
，反对社会主义。在冷战中，自由主义通常倾向于维护现状，因而每一次政治变革的背后
都是滑落极权主义泥淖的可能性。通过攻击左派来维护中间派已经成为了自由主义的一个
传统。1980年代，一小部分议员脱离工党建立了社会民主党（SDP）。1990年代，新工党
（New Labour）打压了党内左翼势力后，自由主义走上了“第三种道路”。今天，很多自
由主义中间派把杰里米·科尔宾描绘成是与鲍里斯·约翰逊一样的极端主义者，错误地把
“左”与“右”划了等号。
Yet in many countries, Britain included, liberals also helped to build the
welfare state and have used the machinery of central government to enact
progressive reforms and benefit the poor – defending the NHS, civil and
human rights, social equality, migration. Often, they aimed not to liberate
workers but compromise with them, in order to minimise the risks individuals
face. Social liberals have sometimes opposed economic liberals: the concern
to limit inequality has trumped the defence of laissez-faire and capital
markets. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown enshrined minimum wage laws but
encouraged the privatisation of public services; they founded Sure Start but
helped sell off the NHS.
但是在很多国家，包括英国，自由主义者也帮助建设了福利制度，并通过中央政府机器实
现了造福穷人的进步性改革 – 维护国家医疗服务体系（NHS），支持公民权利、人权、
社会平等、移民等。但大多数时候，自由主义者的目的不是解放工人，而是寻求妥协，从
而让个人风险降到最低。社会自由主义者有时会与经济自由主义者意见相左：他们认为消
灭不平等应当优先于维护自由资本市场。托尼·布莱尔和戈登·布朗信奉最低工资法，但
同时支持公共服务私有化；他们创立了Sure Start早期儿童养育与发展项目，但也推动出
售NHS体系。
At the end of the 1990s, there was one thing that many liberals shared: an
optimism about the direction of history and about the fate of liberalism.
Famously many agreed that history had ended, following the end of the cold
war. All that was needed was steady incremental reform of the status quo.
These 90s assumptions survived well into the new century. We now know that
such declarations were hugely complacent. The biggest mistake of liberalism
was thinking it was all over.
1990年代末，许多自由主义者都认为历史走上了正确的发展方向，自由主义将一帆风顺。
这群人有一个著名的观点：冷战结束，历史随之结束，接下来只需对现状进行增量改革。
人们持着这些观点进入了新世纪。而现在的我们知道，这些所谓的宣告都极其自满，自由
主义最大的错误就是认为“这一切都结束了”。
Today, few have properly come to terms with that mistake. Many are on the
back foot, insisting that any move away from their ideas marks a step
backwards into a far nastier history. Such defensiveness is not novel:
liberalism has often been a negative sort of politics – a politics of second
best that protects against worse scenarios. Liberals have been the first to
prophesy new end times – the demise of democracy and the Pax Americana –
and see in Brexit and Trump a slippery slope to war and fascism. Where
conservatives look to restore a lost past, liberals defend the gradual reform
of an established order and respond aggressively to any threat to it, whether
real or imagined.
直到今天，很多人仍不能承认这一错误，他们还在为自己辩护，认为任何不服从于这种观
点的都是历史的倒退。这种防御心理并不新奇：自由主义一直都是一种消极的政治意识形
态 – 是防止落入最糟糕境地的“次优选择”。自由主义者率先预言了新的“终结时代”
– 民主制度和美式和平（Pax Americana）的失败，并视英国脱欧和川普执政为世界滑
入战争和法西斯主义深渊的前兆。当保守派只想寻回失落的从前时，自由主义者维护的是
现有秩序及其基础之上的缓和改革，并强烈反击任何威胁，无论这些威胁是想像的还是真
实的。
All this worry about values and norms makes it possible to miss the fact that
liberalism as an ideology still dominates how we see the world. It does not
just occupy a place between left and right; it cuts across both.
这些关于价值和制度常规的焦虑可能让我们忽略了一个事实：自由主义意识形态仍然支配
着我们的世界观。它并不存在于“左”和“右”之间的某处，而是贯穿了两者。
The liberal worldview frames politics as something that happens mostly in
Westminster, and about which most voters care little, so it downplays the
politics of everyday life in the home and workplace. On this view, the
political realm is inhabited by powerful individuals whose decisions make a
difference, and who operate in institutions that are neutral. Values
conflict, but compromise is the aim – except where liberal values are deemed
to be threatened; it can sometimes seem that liberals believe in the
possibility of consensus, but only if the other side accept the basic facts
that liberals hold as true. This can mean touting virtues in principle but
refusing them in practice: the Liberal Democrats demanding compromise and
cooperation while they reject a Corbyn-led coalition is a case in point.
在自由主义世界观之下，人们认为政治只是在威斯敏斯特宫发生的事情，大多数选民都不
关心，但政治对他们日常生活工作的深刻影响却被轻描淡写了。这样的观点认为，政治只
是那些供职于中立机构的、强大到所做决定会带来非凡影响的人所参与的领域。价值观也
许互相冲突，但妥协是目标 – 当自由主义价值受到威胁时除外；有时看来，自由主义者
相信达成一致是可能的，但前提是对方要接受其认可的基本事实。这意味着他们可能嘴上
吹捧著某种美德却拒绝付诸行动。扬言要“妥协与合作”的自由民主党拒绝接受科尔宾领
衔的联合政府就是一个很好的例子。
For liberal remainers, Brexit is either a giant misunderstanding or a
mistake: it has been brought about by voters’ lack of knowledge, or by party
misjudgments and the rightwing media; it has been prolonged by Rasputin-like
advisers (whether Dominic Cummings or Seumas Milne). Undoubtedly, centrist
thinkers, with their focus on institutions and those who control them, can
provide answers to important questions: how the common law relates to the
constitution; how EU regulations and the referendum dilute parliamentary
sovereignty. At a time when we are meant to have had enough of experts, it is
ironic that expert knowledge is in extremely high demand in public
institutions – in the civil service, parliament, the courts, and the press.
But it’s easy to mistake symptoms for causes. Though Brexit will surely have
disastrous consequences – hurtling us towards a neoliberal, deregulated and
depressed Britain with an empowered right on the rise – that doesn’t mean
the liberal diagnosis tells the full story.
于留欧派而言，脱欧若非一场巨大的误会，就只能是一个错误：它是由于选民的无知或党
派误判及右翼媒体煽动发生的；而脱欧过程迟迟未决则归因于拉斯普京般的政府顾问（无
论是多米尼加国·卡明斯还是索玛斯‧密尔恩）。毫无疑问，针对如“普通法如何与宪法挂
钩”、“欧盟监管与全民公投如何稀释议会主权”等重要问题，聚焦于制度及其控制者的
中间派自然能给出答案。我们身处一个“专家”时代，但讽刺的是，在公民服务、议会、
法庭、媒体等公共机构，相关专业知识却极其稀缺。不过，把症状当病因也是易犯的错误
。我们都知道英国脱欧灾难性的后果 – 它将带领我们急速进入一个右翼崛起、经济萧条
、管制放松的新自由主义英国，但这并不意味着自由主义的判断是全面的。
Hampered by the need to defend the EU as a site of cosmopolitanism in the
name of stopping Brexit, many remainers have framed any opposition as a
threat to a political order that has no need for change. The rightward drift
of the Lib Dems as they look to rebuild their vote by becoming the party of
remain illustrates this bias to the status quo. For all its references to
history (particularly to the totalitarian threats of the 1930s), the current
liberal vision is often quite ahistorical: we don’t hear much about Britain
before the referendum. Even the most radical version of liberal centrism has
only a partial diagnosis: it points to rising inequality and a growing
generational and educational gap. Liberals may focus on defending norms, but
norms themselves are only how particular political settlements are made
legitimate. They don’t tell us much about the limits of the settlement
itself.
留欧派必须以阻止英国脱欧之名来维护欧洲作为推行世界主义的阵地，对他们而言，任何
反对的声音都是对当下政治秩序的威胁，而这种秩序是无需改变的。自由民主党为了重建
选民基础而向“右”倾斜支持留欧就印证了其对现状的偏见。从历史（特别是1930年代极
权主义带来的威胁）角度出发，自由主义留欧派的观点是站不住脚的，因为他们极少考虑
到英国在此次全民公投前的历史状况。即使最极端的中间派自由主义也只给出了一种片面
的判断：不断加剧的不平等、不断扩大的代际和教育鸿沟。自由主义者专注于维护现有制
度和常规，但事实上制度和常规只是一些政治解决方案的合理化手段而已，它们无法昭示
这些政治解决方案的侷限性。
The view of Brexit and Trump as a crisis of institutions, norms or civility,
and the focus on the narcissism or hubris of political personalities, is too
limited. The alternative is not merely to accept the narratives of the right
– that Brexit is about a defence of sovereignty or kicking it to liberal
elites. Both of these inhabit the conventional terms of debate. By slipping
into a kneejerk defence of the status quo, we risk not understanding where
the threats come from and how they can be fought. By focusing on individuals,
we ignore how classes are changing. By looking to reason and forgetting
ideology, we miss the pleasures of resentment and commitment, and how new
political forces have developed to capitalise on those pleasures – in
particular how the Conservative party has reinvigorated itself by building
new class alliances and using a heady mix of Thatcherite, nationalist and
colonial tropes (a strategy that is haphazard but may well prove successful).
把英国脱欧和川普执政看作制度、常规、文明的危机，把焦点放在政治人物的自恋自负上
，眼光未免太侷限了。我们需要的新逻辑不仅仅是去接受右翼的说法，即英国脱欧是为了
维护国家统一，或是将这一事务留给自由主义精英去解决。两者都是老生常谈了。如果我
们下意识为现状辩护，便很可能无法判断威胁的真正来源，从而无法正确进行反击。当我
们聚焦个人时，便忽略了阶层正在改变的事实；当我们忙着寻求解释，却忘了意识形态的
存在时，我们便忘了仇恨和承诺可以带来愉悦感，从而忽略了另一个事实：新的政治力量
正在利用这种愉悦感崛起 – 通过建立新的阶层联盟和以撒切尔主义、民族主义、殖民主
义等修辞为噱头（一种杂乱无章的策略，但效果也许还不错），保守党已经迎来复兴。
If we define politics too narrowly and dwell on historical parallels, we miss
our own history and the social and economic changes that have paved the way
to where we are now – a situation where the institutions and infrastructure
of British public life are dysfunctional, where productivity, investment and
wages are low, where the public sector has been hollowed out and the steady
job all but disappeared. If we worry only about the breakdown of
parliamentary checks-and-balances, we miss that this gives the lie to the
liberal dream that certain institutions are neutral and beyond politics. When
we see the rise of the right in terms of a crisis of civility, we fail to ask
what resentments the veneer of civility masks, as well as who it benefits and
harms. When we focus on constitutional crisis, we risk forgetting how Brexit
manifests deeper disruptions and social instability – and that the coming
election is also about our prospects for fixing these.
如果总是以其狭义去理解政治，总是沉湎于历史的相似之处，我们就会错过自己正在经历
的历史，也会忘记是哪些社会和经济变革推动形成了今日的社会 –一个公共制度和基础
设施失效、投资和工资水平低迷、公共事业行业被掏空、稳定工作几乎消失殆尽的英国。
如果担忧的仅仅是议会制衡的失衡，我们就忽略了一点：这恰恰揭露了一个事实，即自由
主义者梦想中的“中立机构”仅仅是个谎言。我们看到了在所谓文明危机中右派的崛起，
却无法看清到底是什么仇恨带来了这样的危机，以及它会使谁获利、对谁造成伤害。当我
们聚焦于制度危机，就会忘记英国脱欧本身昭示了更深的混乱和社会动荡 – 即将到来的
大选则给予了我们一个修正的机会。
These alternative diagnoses have major implications. The end of the liberal
dream of neutrality opens up a view of the world where politics is found in
new places – the courts, the market, the workplace, the home – and where
political analysts take seriously arguments that have long been made by those
outside mainstream politics, who have been marginalised by class, race,
gender, geography, immigration status and age. This may be unsettling, but it
can point us away from the old divisions of parliament versus the people, so
easily deployed by the right and point to new battle lines: not between norms
and their violation, or Brexit and its reversal, but to what we want for the
future of the UK.
这些新的逻辑都有着重要启示。自由主义“中立”梦想的终结之处，是一个新的世界。在
这个世界里，政治会出现在许多新的地方，如法庭、市场、公司、家里；政治分析人士也
会开始重视过往因阶层、种族、性别、地理、移民身份、年龄等因素被排除在主流之外的
政治观点和主张。这样的世界也许令人不安，却为我们走出议会与人民对立的困境指明了
一条道路。右派势力则轻而易举地利用之，将人民的目光引向了新的战线。这一新的战线
无关制度与其破坏，也无关脱欧与留欧，而是：英国人民想要一个什么样的未来。
Crucially, these diagnoses can also show us where the deeper political crisis
lies. The lasting damage to Britain may not be caused only by the
constitutional chaos, but by the long-term collapse, defunding and decay of
our public institutions – the NHS, legal aid, our underfunded schools.
Paradoxically, it was the stability of such institutions that made liberal
centrism make sense as a way of thinking about politics. With public
institutions dysfunctional and liberal democracy hollowed out, liberalism no
longer looks like an ideology that can explain the world: its basis falls
away. Liberal political thinking is stuck. It can no longer give a convincing
account of politics, except to describe what’s happening as an assault on
itself. What would help liberalism make sense again is the rebuilding of
those public institutions. It is an irony for liberals that this is precisely
what the Labour party today is proposing.
至关重要的是，这些新逻辑还能告诉我们更深层的危机藏在何处。英国遭遇持久性损害，
原因不仅在宪法困境，还源于NHS、司法援助机构、学校等公共机构的长期衰败和资金撤
离。矛盾的是，这些机构的稳定性正是自由主义中间派逻辑站得住脚的前提。随着公共机
构失效、自由主义民主被掏空，自由主义作为一种意识形态，它用于解释这个世界的逻辑
再也行不通了。自由主义政治思想从此陷入停滞，除了能够解释它自身如何陷入此等境地
，再也拿不出有说服力的政治阐述和主张。只有重建这些公共机构才能让自由主义重获新
生。可对自由主义者来说讽刺的是，这正是今日的工党所推行的政策。
What is needed is a longer and wider view than the liberal vision of politics
allows – one that enables us to see how social, economic and ideological
changes intersect with and shape personality and procedure. This is why
elements in the press have started to listen to the left once again,
discussing “resetting” capitalism in the context of inequality and climate
crisis, and engaging with talk of interests, class and ideology that has for
so long been labelled as irrelevant. Now liberals also have to choose: to
stay where they are and try to squeeze new developments into old paradigms,
or to recognise these limits. Instead of a revival of liberalism, we might
need a reckoning with it.
相比侷限的自由主义，我们需要的是一种更长远、更宽阔的政治视野，它能让我们看到社
会、经济、意识形态的变革是如何与个体个性、社会程序产生联系，并塑造它们。这也是
为什么媒体开始再次倾听左派的声音，在社会不平等和气候危机的背景下讨论“重置”资
本主义，以及积极参与对过去被贴上“无关”标签的不同政治兴趣、阶层、意识形态的讨
论。现在，自由主义者也面临一个选择：是停留在当下，把新的发展强硬“塞”进旧的解
释逻辑？还是承认自身的侷限性？对于自由主义，我们需要的也许不是一场复兴，而是一
场审判。