陳平：中國為什麼也要重視皮克提

【法國經濟學家托馬斯·皮克提的著作《二十一世紀資本論》在世界引起軒然大波的同時，也引發了學界的激烈討論。本文為知名經濟學家陳平教授對該書進行系列評論的第一篇。原文由觀察者網供稿，刊載於6月30日美國《赫芬頓郵報》旗下的《世界郵報》（World Post）。以下為中文譯文。】

自金融危機席捲全球經濟至今，已過去了六年。2014年，法國經濟學家托馬斯·皮克提的暢銷作品《21世紀資本論》，給在大衰退中陷於停滯的西方世界帶去了新一輪騷動，引發了一場“皮克提恐慌”。

皮克提的書揭露了資本主義三百年來的總趨勢——貧富差距的擴大——猶如《共產黨宣言》的開頭“一個幽靈在西方遊蕩”。不過這次的幽靈，不是共產主義，而是對空想資本主義弊病的深刻反思。

皮克提關注的問題與中國息息相關：從西方資本主義國家舶來的新自由主義經濟模式已使中國國內不平等現象有加重趨勢。

本文英文發表於《赫芬頓郵報》旗下的《世界郵報》

皮克提批評西方媒體把嚴肅的經濟科學研究政治化，已經不是第一次了。本文願意從經濟學和歷史觀察的角度，來分析皮克提的新資本論。因為該書討論的議題也涉及中國的不平等增長。

皮克提批評的新古典經濟學理論，例如庫茨涅茨（Kuznets）收入不平等的鐘形曲線，和索羅（Solow）的外生增長論，正是中國新自由主義經濟學家鼓吹經濟自由化，攻擊中國獨立自主的產業政策，主張放棄中國經濟模式，轉向英美模式的主要理論依據。所以，皮克提對西方主流經濟學的反思，觸及中國國內關於堅持中國道路還是仿效英美模式的敏感爭論，關乎中國下一階段的“結構性改革”的方向。

中國應重視皮克提的三大原因

中國國內許多經濟學者追隨美國主流的“教科書經濟學”。這次，法國非主流經濟學家教訓英美主流經濟學派，可謂“登泰山而小天下”。中國應該重視皮克提的觀點，原因有三：

第一，皮克提認為要研究西方發達資本主義經濟體不平等現象的歷史趨勢，應以法國、而非英美為參照系。1688年的英國光榮革命並不徹底，至今貴族精英的地位仍然穩固。缺少徹底資本主義革命的洗牌，英國原始財富的繼承並未中斷，所以不具有代表性。美國作為一個個例則更為特殊。美國獨立前夕，全國人口只有300萬，國土面積僅80萬平方公里——如今美國已成為一個擁有3億人口、900多萬平方公里國土的洲級大國。自然，隨着人口與領土的巨幅擴張，美國的貧富差距已在某種程度上被中和了。

法國1789年大革命時人口約3000萬，300年後只增長了一倍，增長幅度類似歐洲大部分國家。至關重要的是，法國大革命廢除了一切特權的繼承，“法律面前人人平等”。

如果趨勢表明，連法國的貧富差距也在不斷增長，那麼其經濟學含義就更為深刻：即使法律平等，也不能保證資本主義社會的經濟平等。這是皮克提經驗觀察的革命性發現，它對在世界經濟研究中以英美模式為規範的做法提出了嚴肅的挑戰。

第二，亞當·斯密的《國富論》沒有對國家財富給出測量方法。皮克提分析不平等的趨勢，沒有采用含義不明的基尼係數，而是把馬克思收入分配的資本與勞動的兩分法數據化，他揭示出一個怵目驚心真相：在整個資本主義歷史中，資本收益一直遠超勞動收益。這個結論粉碎了新古典經濟學的“市場經濟自動達到一般均衡”和“最優分配”的神話。在當代資本結構分析中，皮克提排除了政府債務，因為國內居民購買的政府公債，其資產淨值為零。皮克提把國家資本明確定義為四項資本之和：農地，房產，其他國內產業資本，和外國資本的淨值。然後分別考察其價值的歷史演變。

奇怪的是，中國的新自由主義經濟學者們似乎並未汲取金融危機的教訓。他們不顧美國虛擬經濟擠出實體經濟的事實，否認西方缺乏嚴格監管的金融市場是製造貧富分化的罪魁禍首，還在用華爾街過去的致富童話來為金融投機辯護，在全球金融災難面前繼續宣揚自由市場如何“藏富於民”。

與這些新自由主義經濟學者的邏輯相反，皮克提發現：即使有完備的法制體系，西方發達國家的大部分財富依然集中於最富的1%人口之手；而只講私有產權，沒有累進所得税和財產税的印度和俄國，更是將國家財富集中於少數大家族和寡頭手中。

第三，皮克提用西方發達國家，主要是法國和英國，18世紀工業革命以來（1700-2012），收入、資本、人口、增長率等歷史數據，加上德國、美國、加拿大、日本和其他發達國家，加上中國、印度等發展中國家的經驗數據。皮克提分析收入結構中勞動和資本的分成比例，發現了“不平等的結構”。作者對21世紀不平等的全球演化的原因，也做了細緻的分析，包括英法的公債，歐洲的財產税，中國的資本擴張，美國的移民改革，多國貿易保護，債務管理，社會資本積累，和自然資本惡化等等。他的實證研究全面否定了英美主導的新古典經濟學的收入分配理論。各國數據明確顯示，市場經濟發展的結果是增加而非減少貧富差距。

皮克提的研究證明，美國諾獎經濟學家庫茨涅茨依據美國曆史數據發現的鐘形曲線（也稱為倒U 形曲線，聲稱美國技術進步的過程中，貧富差距會先增加後減少，所以政府可以容忍一時的不平等擴大，而無需政治干預），不是世界各國的普遍規律！換言之，他駁斥了通過市場完善（或稱“完美市場”）解決收入分配公平問題的概念。

皮克提具體分析了索羅的外生增長論為何沒有導致世界增長率的趨同和貧富差距的縮小；還指出內生增長論者所鼓吹的“人力資本”積累使教育成為鞏固特權的工具，而非擺脱貧困的階梯。

皮克提對中國的意義

皮克提對庫茨涅茨和索羅理論的批評，對中國當前的經濟轉型具有重大的理論意義。批評中國經濟是“粗放增長”的經濟學家，輕浮地將東亞經濟奇蹟完全歸結為高儲蓄高投資的結果，忽略掉所有因國家干預政策而產生的實質性技術進步。

遵循索羅的內生增長論，一些聲名顯赫的中國經濟學者們主張中國經濟結構調整的方向是勞動力和土地等“要素市場”的自由化、去監管化，絕對遵循市場供需原則。

我曾經向一位篤信完美市場的經濟學家請教：在西方發達國家，有什麼要素市場沒有被“扭曲”？顯而易見，並不存在這樣的國家。在西方，工作許可和移民限制扭曲勞動力市場，最低工資法扭曲勞動力價格，土地用途分區扭曲土地市場，基準利率和税收政策扭曲資本市場，放任美國金融寡頭扭曲大宗商品市場，軍事行動和海洋霸權扭曲匯率市場和資本流向，如此等等。

在這個全球競爭和地區性競爭日趨激烈的時代，哪有空想資本主義理想中的完美市場？然而，罔顧現實的西方經濟學教科書勾畫出一幅完美的幻景，中國經濟學者們還如飢似渴地期望從中吸收養分。

在大國博弈中，他們不問如何利用市場規則和策略來維護中國的利益，而建議打造一個去監管化的公平擂台，以為這就是市場化，並期待市場會自動選優汰劣，實現人類共同繁榮。

可惜，這種空想資本主義的美夢，在西方殖民史和經濟史上從來都不存在。筆者的朋友，諾獎經濟學家斯蒂格利茨常常告誡我：“照美國做的做，別照美國説的做”——這才是西方高人的肺腑之言。

自由市場將把發展帶往何方？

正如筆者在《經濟複雜性和均衡幻夢》一書所批評的 ，索羅把技術進步描寫為隨機衝擊的積累，而非小波模式的新陳代謝，預言世界各國的經濟發展會趨同，完全違背歷史的事實。

受新自由主義意識形態的束縛，索羅的外生增長理論根植於增長要素的市場化，他忽略了干預型產業政策和技術政策起到的作用。而歷史事實告訴我們，國家政策而非自由市場，對技術進步和奠定經濟增長基礎起到了關鍵作用。

在事實面前，新自由主義的説辭顯然站不住腳。

美國的航天工程、互聯網、GPS衞星和導航系統、全球海軍基地和信息監視網絡，是私人產權和和自由市場隨機創造的嗎？它們都是美國政府資助的結果。

離開中國前三十年建立的獨立自主的科技和工業體系，中國後三十年產業的迅速升級能成功嗎？

為什麼二戰後早就建立私有產權和議會民主制的亞洲大國印度、土耳其、和菲律賓，沒有一個有能力發展航天、衞星、高鐵、計算機等現代化工業，擺脱對西方的依賴？

第四，皮克提觀察到歷史上只有兩個時期收入不平等有所下降。一是19世紀70年代之後，二是從二戰之後，直到20世紀70年代。從20世紀70年代開始，不平等的程度再度惡化。總的歷史趨勢是資本收益率為經濟增長率的幾倍。

這對我們有何啓示？收入分配改善的原因不是經濟的內生機制，而是政治的外來干預，包括戰爭、革命、和發展中國家的獨立運動，導致發達國家資產的大幅縮水；政府經濟干預包括房租管制、國有化、證券交易和資本流動的監管等等，都會影響市場的資產價格。

新古典經濟學資產定價理論描寫的自由經濟和有效市場，完全是數理經濟學的烏托邦，和真實資本主義沒有關係。皮克提的發現對中國經濟學界和媒體上氾濫的新自由主義思潮，是一個嚴重的打擊。

中國如不留意皮克提的非主流經濟學，可能在前進的道路上遭遇嚴重挫折。只有堅持產業技術獨立自主、堅持混合型經濟模式，中國才能在走向繁榮的道路上取得更大程度上的、具有社會主義特色的平等。

（觀察者網楊晗軼 / 譯  請翻頁查看英文原文）

  Reading Piketty in Peking: The Case Against Capitalist Inequality in Communist China

By:Ping Chen

It has been six years since the financial crisis engulfed the global economy. In 2014, a bestselling book -- French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century -- brings yet another round of agitation to the stagnant West that some have called the “Piketty panic.”

Mr. Piketty’s book reveals a 300-year-old macro trend of capitalism -- the widening gap of inequality -- that reminds one of the first line of The Communist Manifesto about a spectre haunting the West. This time the spectre may not be communism per se, but nonetheless a deep appreciation of the flaws of utopian capitalism.

Piketty’s concerns are also relevant to the growing inequality in China that has resulted from adopting the neo-liberal capitalist model from the West.

Piketty criticizes neoclassical economic theories, such as Simon Kuznets’ inverted U curve of income inequality and Robert Solow’s exogenous growth theory, which are the very foundation of the campaign by Chinese neoliberal economists against China’s independent industrial policies and a Chinese economic model in favor of the Anglo-Saxon model. Hence, Piketty’s reflection on mainstream Western economics indirectly treads a delicate ground in China. It fits right into the current raging debate over which path China’s reformers should take in the next stage of “structural reform.”

THREE REASONS CHINA SHOULD LISTEN

Many Chinese economists follow the mainstream doctrines of textbook economics from the United States. This time, ironically, a non-mainstream French economist lectures mainstream Anglo-Saxons. There are three reasons China should listen.

First, Piketty suggests that in order to study the historical trend of inequality in advanced Western economies, France instead of Britain or the United States, is a more appropriate benchmark country. English aristocracy has remained intact since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The absence of a thorough capitalist revolution and the unbroken lineage of wealth thus make England an unrepresentative case in the study of inequality.

The U.S. case is one of a kind. By the eve of its independence, the U.S. only had a population of 3 million and an area of 800 thousand square kilometers. Now the U.S. population is near 300 million -- a continent of 9 million square kilometers. Naturally, as the country expanded massively in population and territory, the effects of inequality were to some extent neutralized.

In 1789, the French population was around 30 million; 300 years later, the figure had only doubled -- a growth pattern commonly observed in many other European nations. Most crucially, the French Revolution had brought all inherited prerogatives to nought, and established the principle of égalité devant la loi(equality before the law).

If even here the trend shows the French wealth gap continuously widening, the implication for economics are profound: even equality before the law could not safeguard economic equality in capitalist societies. This is the revolutionary finding of Piketty’s empirical analysis, and it poses a great challenge to the Anglo-Saxon model as the normative model in assessing world economies.

Secondly, Adam Smith did not specify any means to measure national wealth in The Wealth of Nations. In Piketty’s analysis of the inequality trend, instead of employing the dubious Gini coefficient, he quantifies the Marxian dichotomy between capital and labor in income distribution, and thereby reveals a shocking truth: throughout the history of capitalism, capital gains has always exceeded by far labor gains. This shatters the myth of “market general equilibrium” and “optimal income distribution” theory of neoclassical economics.

Piketty excludes governmental debts from the capital structure, because treasury bills purchased domestically have zero net value. He defines the composition of national capital as the sum of farmland, housing, other domestic capital, and net foreign capital; and then he looks into the historical evolution of their values respectively.

Oddly, Chinese neoliberal economists did not learn from the financial crash. Turning a blind eye to the American real sector squeezed out by the financial sector, they are still in denial that the poorly regulated financial market has been the main culprit in creating an ever larger wealth gap. They continue to defend speculation with old fairy tales from the Wall Street, and advocate the idea that a free market could still “leave wealth with the people” in the face of the global financial calamity.

In direct opposition to their logic, Piketty finds that even with the proper rule of law in place, the most affluent 1 percent in the West still gets the lion’s share of wealth; and in countries without progressive income tax and property tax, such as India and Russia, national wealth is highly concentrated within a small circle of clans and business magnates.

Thirdly, Piketty employs an impressive range of historical data such as income, capital, population and growth rate, etc. that date back to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. He also investigates the causes of global evolution of inequality in the 21st century, including public debts in France and Britain, property tax in Europe, capital expansion in China, immigration reform in the U.S., multinational trade protection, debt management, social capital accumulation and the degeneration of natural capital.

Piketty’s empirical study negates the income distribution theory of neoclassical economics dominated by the Anglo-Saxon school and shows that the development of the market economy has exacerbated -- instead of reduced -- inequality.

This refutes Simon Kuznets’ bell curve, also known as Kuznets’ inverted U curve, which claims to show that as technology progresses, the income inequality gap will first widen but eventually narrow -- and thus government should wait for inequality to run its course without intervening. In other words, Piketty’s study undermines the idea that a “perfect market” will ensure fairness in income distribution.

Piketty also looks into why Robert Solow’s exogenous growth theory has failed to lead the world’s economic growth to convergence and narrow the gap between rich and poor. He also shows how “human capital,” the favorite term of endogenous, or internal growth, theorists has turned education into a tool to entrench privileges instead of a ladder out of poverty.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR CHINA

Piketty’s criticism of Kuznets and Solow bears significance for China’s present economic transition. Those who dismiss China’s growth as “extensive” frivolously attribute the economic success of East Asia solely to high rates of savings and investments, ignoring substantive advancement in technology due to state interventionist policies.

Following Solow, some prominent Chinese economists advocate structural reform in the direction of liberalizing the “factor markets “such as labor and land to free them from any regulation and subject them only to the unfettered law of supply and demand. This will supposedly lead greater prosperity and equality because lack of state controls will let the market create wealth unhindered.

I once consulted a strong believer in perfect market son the existence (if any) of an undistorted factor market in advanced Western economies. It could not be more obvious that such a thing doesn’t exist. In the West, work permits and immigration rules distort the labor market; minimum wage laws distort the price of labor land-use zoning distorts the land market; benchmark interest rate and tax policies distort the capital market. America’s laissez-faire policy on financial oligarchs distorts the commodities market. Military actions, including dominance of the seas, by Western powers distort foreign exchange markets and capital flows. One could go on.

In an era characterized by intense global and regional competition, where can one possibly find this perfect market idealized by utopian capitalism? Yet, Western economics textbooks enthusiastically digested by mainstream Chinese economists paint just such a rosy picture despite the reality.

Instead of asking how to utilize market rules and strategies to defend China’s interests in the game of big powers, they recommend building a deregulated arena for “fair market competition” hoping that the invisible hand will do the rest of the job and eventually achieve prosperity.

Sadly, throughout the colonial history of the West and even the entire history of economics, this utopian capitalist fantasy never had any semblance to the real world. My friend, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, often advises me “do what Americans do, don’t do what Americans say”-- a sincere remark from one of the greatest Western economists.

WHERE DID A FREE MARKET EVER LEAD TO DEVELOPMENT?

As I have commented in my book, Solow depicted technological advancement as a cumulative process of random shocks, instead of a metabolic process with a wavelet pattern, and predicted that all nations would move along a convergent path in which disparity in development would eventually disappear.

Because of its neoliberal ideology, Solow’s exogenous growth theory rooted in the idea of marketizing factors of growth, ignored the role of interventionist industrial and technological policies. Yet, reality shows that state policies, not free markets, have been critical to unleashing technological advance and building the foundations for growth.

This reality raises a number of doubts about neoliberal claims.

Does private ownership and free market have anything to do with America’s aeronautical projects, Internet, GPS system, global presence of the U.S. Navy, and the extensive information-monitoring network? All were initially funded by the state.

Without its independent scientific and industrial systems -- a solid foundation laid in the first three decades (1949-1978) of the People’s Republic -- could China’s rapid industrial upgrading have taken place at all?

Why have emerging powers such as India, Turkey, and the Philippines -- all countries that established private ownership and parliamentary governments -- not been able to cut their economic dependence on the West and develop their own modern industries, build their own spacecraft, satellites, high-speed rail and information systems?

Fourthly, according to Piketty’s observation, there were but two periods in history during which inequality in income distribution had improved. The first time in the 1870s, and the second period was from the end of World War II to 1970s -- soon afterwards inequality had worsened again. The overall historical trend is that the rate of return on capital has almost always been several times the rate of economic growth.

What is the lesson here? It is that no market mechanism has ever substantively improved income distribution; the adjusting force came from political intervention in the form of war, revolution or independence movements which shrunk the size of total assets in developed countries. Income distribution also only occurred as a result of economic interventions such as rent control, state ownership, regulations on securities exchange and capital flow measures that impact asset prices in the market.

The free economy and efficient market hypothesized in neoclassical economics are nothing more than a hypothetical utopia of mathematical economics; they have nothing to do with real world capitalism. Piketty’s discovery delivers a heavy blow to China’s neoliberal camp in academia and media.

It would be a big mistake for China not to heed Piketty’s skewering of mainstream Western economics as it charts its own path forward. Only a hybrid model that mixes the state and the market along with technological independence will enable China not only to prosper but also to build the socialist aspect of greater equality.