The cost of contentment
RICH IS BEAUTIFUL: A Very Personal Defence of Mass Affluence
Richard D. North
Social Affairs Unit ￡20, 311 pages
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Capitalism has usually had a bad press. Left and right have combined to denounce mass affluence and the Church has been hostile from the beginning. Even one of the quotations printed on the back cover of Rich is Beautiful says it is “the indefensible argued with vigour”.
Business leaders have mostly been unsure of their own case and all too ready to take at face value the critiques of the anti-globalisers, the “stakeholders” and all the rest. One sees it, too, in tycoons on the boards of opera houses who are afraid to say “boo” to sub-Marxist producers for fear of being thought Philistine or rightwing or both. North talks about “cultural cringe”. The defence has been left to a handful of economic intellectuals despised as having their heads in the clouds by “practical businessmen” and written off as soulless apologists by the typical arts page editor.
There is a further irony. Many of the defenders of capitalism have not been particularly enamoured of commercial culture or even very familiar with it - one of the most vigorous ministerial exponents of Thatcherite capitalism hated shopping. They have defended capitalism as the road to prosperity, the product of social evolution or as a necessary but not sufficient condition for personal freedom, which is where my own emphasis lies. The novelty of Richard North’s book is that he embraces affluent mass society, knows what he is talking about and is highly entertaining to boot. The book has on its cover a photograph taken by the author entitled “Woman and Poodle at Motorway Services, France 2003”. He celebrates the modern shopping mall and remarks that more people are better off and “working out how to respect each other” than at any time in history. He notes that “people do not seek happiness. If they have any sense... they seek drama, risks, inner peace, success, applause, wealth, power, goodness”. To oppose this “seems curiously life-denying”.
North knows the protest movement from the inside. His own gurus were not Friedman and Hayek but Teilhard de Chardin, the metaphysical biologist, and Ivan Illich, the radical deschooler. Although he no longer preaches their messages, he has retained some of their insights.
We are left with the question: why, if the modern world is so good, is there such tension and discontent in the air? North starts off his attempted explanation by ridiculing Tony Blair as the “first chav prime minister”, who, in pursuit of perpetual youth, dresses on holiday like a working-class teenager. None of this would worry me in the least if Blair understood the rule of law, due process and civil liberties. North goes on to talk about the decline in respect for authority but then - perhaps realising that he is in danger of echoing the social conservatives whom he criticises earlier in the book - switches to the “suddenness of affluence”.
My own attempt at explanation would focus on the omnipresence of management consultants and similar advisers. It is from such sources that governments absorb the swarm of targets that are undermining public services. Typical of such people is the renaming of the old-fashioned personnel manager as the “human resources director”, who is even more inclined to seek solutions by sacking and short-term cost-cutting, not much redeemed by the semi-velvet glove.
One finds the evidence of these “consultants” everywhere. In the past few weeks I have suffered from hotel rooms with cardboard keys that fail to open the door and which also control the lighting inside the bedroom that is all too inclined to plunge into darkness. Their lunacies include the attempt to save a few farthings on extremely awkward thief-proof hangers. Earlier on they decreed that all walls must have flat surfaces, thus banishing useful coat hooks and condemning us to inadequate light from table lamps. And in department stores, certain sections are moved from one floor to another - then back to where they started.
North himself tends to waver between the belief that “the unfolding of challenges makes life worth living” and the more libertarian insight that we do not all have to compete frantically and can be lotus eaters if we choose. After all, most people can enjoy the peace and tranquility of a country walk if they take a short bus or train ride.
It is the beauty of a market society that it leaves room for people who want to work shorter hours, or in more congenial conditions, in return for less take-home pay. The question is why so few executives and professionals take advantage of this or insist that their employers make them available.
Maybe there is an explanation in evolutionary biology for the phenomena of unnecessarily long working hours and hyper-activity which modern executives complain makes them feel “stressed out”.
Just as their avian ancestors competed for the favour of females by otherwise unnecessary lavish feather displays, and their early human ancestors competed through hunting prowess or skills in warfare, their modern successors display their machismo by coming into the office at 7am to catch up with the Tokyo markets or by being the last to leave their desks in the evening.
Perhaps we can console ourselves with the thought that these are only tendencies and that as new generations come into affluence, more of them will insist on opting out.
书评: 为财富辩护
《富即美：非常个人化的大众富裕辩》(RICH IS BEAUTIFUL: A Very Personal Defence of Mass Affluence)
作者：理查德?诺思(Richard D. North)
社会事务小组(Social Affairs Unit)
20英镑，311页
资本主义通常遭到新闻舆论界的苛评。左翼和右翼联手批判大众富裕，而教会则从一开始就持敌视态度。就连印在《富即美》封底上的一条引文也说，“大力为无法辩护之事抗辩”。
商界领袖大多对自己的辩解没有把握。而对于反全球化人士、“利益相关方”和其他所有人的批评意见，他们都太容易光看表面。人们也能在担任歌剧院董事会成员的大亨身上看到这一点，这些人不敢对准马克思主义的制作人发出嘘声，惟恐被人认为没有修养或右倾，或二者兼有。诺思谈到“文化畏怯”，于是为少数经济学知识分子留下了辩护的余地。“务实的商人”把他们贬为充满空想之辈，、不切实际，而那些文艺版编辑也不理会这些人，认为他们是呆板乏味的申辩者。
还有一个更具有讽刺意味的地方。许多资本主义的捍卫者并不特别爱好商业文化，甚至对此不太熟悉，一位最大力倡导撒切尔式资本主义的大臣讨厌购物。他们辩护说，资本主义是通往繁荣的道路，是社会进化的产物，或者说是实现个人自由的必要而非充分条件，这也是我所强调的地方。理查德?诺思这本著作的新颖之处在于，他接受大众富裕的社会，知道自己在说什么，而且文风有趣动人。该书封面上有一幅作者拍的照片，题为“高速公路服务处的妇女和狮子狗，法国，2003”(Woman and Poodle at Motorway Services, France 2003)。他称颂现代购物中心，并评论说，经济宽裕的人越来越多，而且比以往任何时候都“明白如何相互尊敬”。他指出，“人们并不寻求快乐。如果他们有点头脑的话……他们寻求戏剧性、冒险、内心宁静、成功、赞誉、财富、权力、善意”。如果反对这一观点，“似乎就是很反常地否定生命了”。
诺思从内部了解这场抗议运动。他自己的大师不是弗里德曼(Friedman)和哈耶克(Hayek)，而是形而上学的生物学家德日进(Teilhard de Chardin)和提倡废除传统学校的激进派伊万?伊里奇(Ivan Illich)。尽管他不再宣扬他们的思想，但仍保留了他们的一些见解。
我们面临一个问题：如果现代世界这么好，那么为何到处弥漫着如此紧张、不满的情绪呢？诺思试图对此进行解释。他先是奚落托尼?布莱尔(Tony Blair)，称其为“第一位时尚首相”，为了追求青春长在，在假日里穿得像个工人阶级家庭的青少年。如果布莱尔懂得法治、应有程序和公民自由的话，上述情况丝毫不会让我担忧。诺思接着谈到人们对权威的敬意下降，但接着，也许是意识到他有附和社会保守人士的危险，而他在该书之前部分还批评过那些人，于是他将话题转向了“富裕的突然性”。
如果由我来尝试做出解释，我会重点探讨管理咨询师和类似顾问无处不在的现象。政府正是听从这类人的建议，确立了大量正在破坏公共服务的目标。这类人的典型做法是，把原来的人事经理重新命名为“人力资源总监”，而这些人力资源总监更倾向于通过解雇员工、采取短期的成本削减措施来寻求解决方案，刚柔闭并用的方式也不能挽回多少。
人们到处都可以发现这些“咨询顾问”的迹象。过去几周里，我入住的宾馆客房让我很不痛快，卡式钥匙打不开门，这张卡还控制着卧室的照明，而卧室动不动就陷入一片黑暗。他们的愚蠢行径还包括为了省几分钱，使用极其笨重的防盗衣架。以前他们曾规定，所有墙面上必须空无一物，因而去除了有用的衣帽钩，并迫使我们只能使用光线不足的台灯。而在百货商店里，某些部门被从一层楼搬到另一层楼，然后又回到原来的地方。
诺思本人也常常在两个想法间徘徊不定。他一方面相信“各种挑战不断出现，使人生充满意义”，但另一方面又持自由论者的观点，认为我们并非全都得疯狂竞争，如果我们愿意，也可以悠闲度日。毕竟，只要搭上短途公交车或火车去乡间，大多数人可以享受乡间漫步带来的宁静和安谧。
这就是市场社会的美好之处，它为一些人留有余地，那些人愿意减少一些实得工资，换取更短的工作时间或是更惬意的工作环境。问题在于，利用这种条件，或坚持让雇主提供这种条件的管理人员和职业人士这么少。
现代经理人抱怨说，不必要的长时间工作和高强度业务活动令他们感到“疲惫不堪”，也许用进化生物学能够解释这一现象。
对于经理人来说，正如他们的鸟类祖先为了博得雌性的青睐，大肆炫耀自己的羽毛（若非为了这个目的，这种炫耀是没有必要的），也正如他们早期的人类祖先通过狩猎本领或战争技艺来展开竞争，在如今的现代社会，他们的继任者也是早上7点去办公室赶东京市场开盘，或晚上最后一个离开办公桌，以此来展示自己的男子气概。
也许我们可以这样想而聊以自慰：这些只是趋势而已，而随着新的一代代人变得富裕起来，他们中将有更多人坚持选择退出。
