原文标题 : Economic historyIs the age of Milton Friedman over?Some may say so. But we are still living in it经济史米尔顿·弗里德曼的时代结束了吗?有些人会说结束了,但我们依然生活在其中
Milton Friedman. By Jennifer Burns《米尔顿·弗里德曼传》作者:詹妮弗·伯恩斯
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IT IS VOGUISH to declare the ideas of Milton Friedman dead, whether you think they deserve damnation or eulogy.
无论你认为米尔顿·弗里德曼的思想应该受到谴责还是受到赞扬,宣扬“他的思想已死”的观点都很盛行。
The most influential American economist of the 20th century is routinely disparaged as a heartless fetishist of Ayn Randian capitalism, who evangelised corporate greed at home and authoritarianism abroad.
这位20世纪最有影响力的美国经济学家经常被贬低为无情的安·兰迪安资本主义的迷信者,她在国内宣扬企业要贪婪,在国外宣扬威权主义。
Friedman is a special bugbear of President Joe Biden. While running for office in 2020, he declared that “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”乔·拜登总统特别讨厌弗里德曼。在 2020 年竞选时,他宣称“米尔顿·弗里德曼的思想不再主宰一切”。

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Meanwhile, the current, populist standard-bearers of American conservatism—the political movement with which Friedman was identified throughout his life—agree, having turned their backs on fiscal discipline and open markets. 与此同时,当前美国保守主义(弗里德曼一生都认同的政治运动)中的民粹主义标杆人物也同意这一点,他们已经背弃了财政纪律和开放市场。
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It might be tempting to buy into the thesis that Friedman’s ideas are passé and even to wish them good riddance.
人们可能很容易接受弗里德曼的思想已经过时的论调,甚至希望他的思想能永远消失。
But that would be a mistake. Few thinkers are as important (and as grotesquely caricatured) as Friedman.
但这样做是错误的。很少有思想家像弗里德曼一样重要(尽管他的形象被极度*化丑**了)。
His critiques of Keynesianism, his advocacy of the importance of central banks, his emphasis on the primacy of the monetary supply in explaining inflation and his prioritisation of real interest rates over nominal ones were once unorthodox.They are now mainstream. 他批判凯恩斯主义,倡导中央银行的重要性,强调货币供应量在解释通货膨胀中的首要地位,以及坚持实际利率优先于名义利率,他的观点曾经都很离经叛道。然而现在,这些观点已经成为了主流思想。
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A recent biography by Jennifer Burns, a professor at Stanford University, dispels fallacies.
斯坦福大学教授詹妮弗·伯恩斯最近出版的一本传记驳斥了这些谬论。
Because of Friedman’s long life (he was born in 1912 and died in 2006) and prolific career involving the modern era’s most important economic debates, Ms Burns’s book functions as an intellectual guide to the entire 20th century, benefiting from nearly a decade of archival research. 由于弗里德曼高寿(他出生于 1912 年,逝世于2006年)且高产,他的职业生涯涉及现代最重要的经济辩论,伯恩斯女士的这本书得益于近十年的档案研究,可作为整个20世纪的知识指南。
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The Friedman who emerges here is one of astonishing economic brilliance, establishing monetary policy as a field worthy of serious study.
书里所展现的弗里德曼具有惊人的经济才华,他将货币政策确立为一个值得认真研究的领域。
It is a portrait of a surprisingly heterodox economist, who was perhaps the last great political economist and thought deeply about the connection between political and economic freedom. 这本书展现了一位出人意料的异端经济学家的形像,他可能是最后一位伟大的政治经济学家,对政治和经济自由之间的联系有着深刻的思考。
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Friedman is best known for revolutionary ideas on the importance of money to the macroeconomy, which is now seen as blindingly obvious but once was not.
弗里德曼最著名的思想是关于货币对宏观经济重要性的革命性观点,这些思想现在看来清晰明了,但当时却并非如此。
With Anna Schwartz—his greatest intellectual partner other than his wife, Rose Director Friedman—he wrote “A Monetary History of the United States” (1963), which computed aggregate monetary supply to argue that the Federal Reserve had contributed to the Great Depression.
他与安娜·施瓦茨——他妻子罗斯·弗里德曼之外最重要的学术伙伴——共同撰写了《美国货币史》(A Monetary History of the United States,1963),该书通过计算货币供应总量论证了美联储是导致大萧条的罪魁祸首。
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Ben Bernanke, the man who would lead the Fed through the global financial crisis of 2007-09, gave cheeky tribute to this argument in a speech at a gathering celebrating Friedman’s 90th birthday.在庆祝弗里德曼90岁的生日聚会上,即将领导美联储度过2007-2009年全球金融危机的本·伯南克对弗里德曼的这一论点表示认同。
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By the 1980s Friedman was catapulted to global renown, claiming a Nobel prize, a column in Newsweek and even a popular TV series.
到了1980年代,弗里德曼享誉全球,获得了诺贝尔奖,在《新闻周刊》开设专栏,甚至还出现在了热门电视剧中。
He was a perpetual gadfly at the Fed. Were he alive today, he would probably jab at Jerome Powell for thinking that dramatic growth in the monetary supply would not manifest in higher inflation. 他一直是美联储的牛虻。如果他今天还活着,他可能会抨击杰罗姆·鲍威尔认为“货币供应量的大幅增长不会出现通胀加剧”的观点。
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He became a bogeyman of the left for a six-day trip to Chile. Other trips, to China and to countries east of the Iron Curtain, did not provoke so much conspiracism, outrage or damage to his reputation. 他成了左派的噩梦,因为他曾前往智利进行为期6天的访问。其他访问,如对中国和铁幕以东国家的访问,并没有引起那么多的阴谋论、愤怒或有损他声誉的事情。
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Although Ms Burns admires Friedman, her book is not a hagiography .
尽管伯恩斯钦佩弗里德曼,但她的书并不全是吹捧之词。
She argues that his concept of freedom, the nominal core of his political philosophy, could be “woefully thin”. 她认为,弗里德曼政治哲学的名义核心——自由概念,可能“过于浅薄”。
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Much as the three Abrahamic religions lay claim to one saviour, conservatives, libertarians and classical liberals all claim Friedman. But he defies easy categorisation.
正如亚伯拉罕三大宗教都宣称自己是救世主一样,保守主义者、自由主义者和古典自由主义者都声称代表人物有弗里德曼。但他不容易被归类。
Unlike some libertarians, Friedman accepted the legitimacy of the state (though he fought against it and advocated eliminating some government departments).
与一些自由主义者不同,弗里德曼接受国家的合法性(尽管他反对它并主张消除一些政府部门)。
Unlike many conservatives, he deemed redistribution acceptable to alleviate poverty.
与许多保守主义者不同,他认为再分配可以减轻贫困。
Indeed, Friedman envisioned the school-voucher and health-care programmes still in effect in America, as well as the tax policies that top up working class wages—perhaps the country’s most important anti-poverty programme.事实上,弗里德曼早就预想了美国目前仍然有效的教育券和医疗保健计划,以及提高工人阶级工资的税收政策——这也许是美国最重要的脱贫计划。
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Despite consulting for Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Friedman considered himself a classical liberal.
尽管弗里德曼曾为巴里·戈德华特、罗纳德·里根和玛格丽特·撒切尔做过顾问,但他仍认为自己是古典自由主义者。
He was critical of overly doctrinaire, laissez-faire philosophy that “assigned almost no role to the state other than the maintenance of order and the enforcement of contracts”.
他批评过于教条的自由放任哲学,这种哲学认为 "除了显示秩序和执行契约的重要性外,几乎没有赋予国家任何作用"。
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Ms Burns insists on dubbing Friedman “the last conservative” because “the synthesis Friedman represented—based in free-market economics, individual liberty and global co-operation—has cracked apart” in politics.
伯恩斯坚称弗里德曼是“最后的保守主义者”,因为 "弗里德曼所代表的以自由市场经济、个人自由和全球合作为基础的综合体在政治上已经分崩离析"。
Friedman may no longer be running the show, but he is still one of economics’ most influential acts. 弗里德曼的思想可能不再主导大局,但他仍然是经济学界最具影响力的行动者之一。
(恭喜读完,本篇英语词汇量924左右,有删减)原文出自:2023年12月16日《The Economist》Culture版块精读笔记来源于:自由英语之路本文翻译整理: Irene本文编辑校对: Irene 仅供个人英语学习交流使用。
【补充资料】 (来自于网络) 米尔顿·弗里德曼(Milton Friedman,1912年7月31日—2006年11月16日),美国著名经济学家,芝加哥大学教授、芝加哥经济学派领军人物、货币学派的代表人物,1976年诺贝尔经济学奖得主。弗里德曼以研究宏观经济学、微观经济学、经济史、统计学、主张自由放任资本主义而闻名。1976年获诺贝尔经济学奖,以表扬他在消费分析、货币供应理论及历史、和稳定政策复杂性等范畴的贡献。
弗里德曼的代表作《资本主义与自由》(Capitalism and Freedom)于1962年由芝加哥大学出版社首次出版,之后又被翻译成18种语言出版,他在书中提倡将政府的角色最小化以让自由市场运作,以此维持政治和社会自由。他的政治哲学强调自由市场经济的优点,并反对政府的干预。他的理论成了自由意志主义的主要经济根据之一,并且对1980年*开代**始美国的里根以及许多其他国家的经济政策都有极大影响。
安·兰德的客观主义伦理思想主要成熟于1960年代。在全球经历两次世界大战的洗礼后,整个世界陷入价值上的混乱。虚无主义和非理性主义盛行,以及当时占据伦理学主导地位的元伦理学无法解决现实生活中的道德问题。因此,兰德以“理性的自私”为核心,建立了自己的客观主义伦理思想。
她试图重新确立客观的、科学的、理性的道德标准,以反对传统伦理学思想中的集体主义和利他主义道德。兰德以个体生命为出发点,通过人的生命现象洞悉人的本质,肯定个人理性与个人的主体性地位,力图维护个*权人**利、自由和尊严,意图为个人追求利益与幸福建立一个世俗的道德基础。在人际关系中,她认为理性个体之间互为交易者,由此提出将“交易准则”普遍适用于所有人际关系,由此建立无冲突的人际关系;在社会公共领域中,兰德从个*权人**利出发,论证政府的有限权力与职能范围,最终目标构建自由资本主义社会。
民粹主义(Populism)可译为平民主义,是在19世纪的俄国兴起的一股社会思潮。内容理论包括:极端强调平民群众的价值和理想,把平民化和大众化作为所有政治运动和政治制度合法性的最终来源;依靠平民大众对社会进行激进改革,并把普通群众当作政治改革的唯一决定性力量;通过强调诸如平民的统一、全民公决、人民的创制权等民粹主义价值,对平民大众从整体上实施有效的控制和操纵。
希腊哲学家苏格拉底把自己比喻为牛虻,说自己甘冒天下之大不韪,对当时社会的弊端实行针砭,即使自己为此而死也在所不惜。伏尼契以“牛虻”作为新生亚瑟的名字,意味着他将是一个坚定的反教会统治的革命者。当“牛虻”出现在读者面前时,人们看到的是一个饱经忧患、意志坚强、机智勇敢的革命者的形象。 铁幕(Iron Curtain)原意为*锁封**某国家或某集团,后转为某国家或某集团对自己实行铁桶似的禁锢。1946年3月5日,英国前首相温斯顿·丘吉尔在美国富尔顿城威斯敏斯特学院的演说中(铁幕演说),运用“铁幕”一词之意而首先公开使用,攻击苏联和东欧社会主义国家“用铁幕笼罩起来”。此后,西方国家(资本主义国家)用“铁幕国家”来蔑称社会主义国家。
【重点句子】 (3个)His critiques of Keynesianism, his advocacy of the importance of central banks, his emphasis on the primacy of the monetary supply in explaining inflation and his prioritisation of real interest rates over nominal ones were once unorthodox.They are now mainstream.他批判凯恩斯主义,倡导中央银行的重要性,强调货币供应量在解释通货膨胀中的首要地位,以及坚持实际利率优先于名义利率,他的观点曾经都很离经叛道。然而现在,这些观点已经成为了主流思想。
The Friedman who emerges here is one of astonishing economic brilliance, establishing monetary policy as a field worthy of serious study.书里所展现的弗里德曼具有惊人的经济才华,他将货币政策确立为一个值得认真研究的领域。 Although Ms Burns admires Friedman, her book is not a hagiography.尽管伯恩斯钦佩弗里德曼,但她的书并不全是吹捧之词。

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