公平：资本主义的一个悖论

所谓的资本主义的核心构架就是它的民主政体和市场经济。不论是民主政治还是市场经济，它的核心理念又都离不开公平二字。民主的基本意义是与独裁或集权相对立，所以包括推选领导人在内的一切重大决定在原则上应该反映社会大众的声音及利益，一定不能是某个人或某些没有代表性的极少数人说了算，而任何事只要一涉及到社会大众就一定存在公平的问题。因此，公平一定是民主政治所要坚持的一个原则。至于市场经济更是建立在公平的概念之上的，它不但要求买卖之间在价钱和成本上及买卖意愿上的公平，而且要求不同的买方及不同的卖方之间也能够有公平竞争的条件。由于公平对于资本主义体制的重要性，甚至出现了把理想与现实混为一谈而将公平当成是民主政治和市场经济的基本特点的说法，进而得出结论说公平是资本主义的基本特点。

与历史上各种贵族王朝不同，资本主义这场游戏在名义上是全民性的游戏，也就是说在最基本的法理名义上每个人都有资格参与扮演这场游戏中的任何角色。在这种情况下，它需要一个至少在原理上能够让大多数人感到公平的一个游戏规则，这就是各国的宪法。在宪法的基础之上建立起来的法律体系一个重要的职责就是为了要保证在这场游戏中的公平性。不同于历史上曾出现过的以武力进行掠夺式的财富积累，对于比较成熟的资本主义经济来说，它的财富的积累的主要来源是市场销售。因此，市场的扩大及占有对于资本主义经济来说有着至关重要的意义。这也决定了资本主义市场经济的游戏必然是要跨越国界走向世界，所以跨国经济也就成为了资本主义市场经济的一个基本的现象。在这种跨国的游戏中，为了最大限度而且也是最有效地保证游戏的公平性，游戏的参与者们自然希望游戏规则的变动越小越好，这就是为什么资本主义者比人类历史上任何一种意识形态的持有者们更希望世界各国都接受自己的意识形态（资本主义的意识形态）的原因。与这种意识形态的扩张相对应的就是将资本主义成为世界统一的政治体制；相应地，资本主义发展的最高理想境界就是所谓的全球一体化：所有的人都按同样的规则来玩资本主义者们最善于玩的同一种的游戏。

我们知道，在国际事务中不论是资本主义国家还是非资本主义国家通常都会把本国的利益置于他国利益之上；为了本国的商业利益，各国政府甚至可以不惜派出商业间谍，采取各种非法手段为本国的企业获取在海外的最大利益。但是，也有很多发达的资本主义国家又都明确立法，禁止本国企业在海外为了商业利益进行贿赂。这种在道义上自相矛盾的现象是不能用独立于行政的立法的超然正义来解释的，因为在资本主义存在的几百年历史上，资本主义国家的立法院站在本国利益上投票通过包括战争在内的在海外以维护本国利益而不是他国利益为目的的法案不是什么罕见的事。对于象禁止本国企业在海外为了商业利益进行贿赂的这样的情况的比较合理的解释应该是在本国不同的公司的海外利益之间维持公平。就算是再冠冕堂皇一点地说是为了维护本国与其它国家之间的贸易关系的话，说到底还是为了维持本国的不同企业之间的公平而已。

从另一方面来说，当资本主义的企业在海外扩大市场时，从很多方面来说，他们各自的国家政府都是他们的一个后盾。但是，资本主义的游戏规则决定了当在海外的企业家们要得到各自国家政府的支持的时候，他们需要符合本国的法律规范，也就是说他们在道德和技术的层面上会受到本国所制定的诸如禁止海外行贿法这样的法律的限制。在这种情况下如果其它国家的商人不需要受到类似法规的约束的话，那么就会形成对于他们的不公平的竞争。所以，在公平原则的驱动下，资本主义的民主宪政加市场经济的游戏规则会使得游戏的参与者们有一种希望资本主义在全世界范围内得到实现的本能欲望。

但是，资本主义的民主政治和市场经济却又是直接导致资本主义游戏向不公平发生异化的直接原因，而在这异化过程中扮演关键性角色的就是金钱。金钱是市场经济的基本媒介，离开了金钱就无法维持资本主义的市场经济。正是由于这个原因，与世袭或贵族特权制不同，在资本主义社会里，除了少数特权官僚之外，能够调动社会和自然资源的主要力量是金钱的力量，而资本主义的公平原则在很大程度上就体现为对于金钱调动社会和自然资源的力量的尊重。在这种情况下，金钱的力量就会自然而然地通过各种合法的形式介入到民主政治方方面面中去。首先，一方面，在民主选举中一个候选人的成败在很大程度上取决于他的包括策略智囊在内的竞选团队，而竞选团队的规模和水准在很大程度上又取决于竞选经费的多少；另一方面现代化的网络媒体为政客们最大限度地影响和吸引选民提供了条件，而在公平的商业环境下，对网络媒体的使用的程度又取决于可用于进行文宣的资金。所以民主的选举便因此而蒙上了金钱的阴影。再则，在资本主义的法制体系里，通过律师的市场价格而使金钱与公平正义划上了等号。

金钱给民主政治的公平性所带来的负面作用主要在于金钱在社会上的不平等的分布，而造成这种不平等的分布的一个重要的原因恰恰是被认为是公平的市场经济。市场经济自身所具有的一个被公认为不同于其它经济模式的优势是它的优胜劣汰的竞争机制，这种机制的一个必然的逻辑结果就是财富在社会上的不平等的分布。这种不平等的分配又会通过它所对应的对于社会及自然的资源的不平等的调动能力而得到逐级的放大，使得资本主义社会的财富日趋两极分化。任何由科技的发展或管理方法的改进所带来的人类对于社会及自然资源的利用的效率的提高都很快会转化为资本方对于劳工（蓝白领劳工）方的支配能力，进而加大社会财富的不平等分配。

所以说，资本主义的游戏一方面是基于公平的原则而且要求在全球范围内最大限度地保证这种公平，而另一方面却在它自身所谓的公平竞争的逻辑的驱动下导致社会的不公平。如果没有在资本主义内在逻辑之外的因素（例如税收及相应的再分配）的有效制约，资本主义的发展将导致社会趋于严重的两极分化，这种两极分化的结果将会最终威胁到资本主义的基本，也就是民主政治和市场经济，从而最终使得资本主义游戏本身由于其公平性所受到的严重破坏而无法继续正常进行。所以，为了使得资本主义经济能够健康地发展，人们需要对于资本主义如何在自身内在逻辑的驱使之下导致不公平的产生的机制有较好的认识，并且找出能够有效地制约这种不公平的内在逻辑的外在的社会机制。。。。。。

[慕容青草]

本文的英文版：

Fairness: A paradox of capitalism

Democratic political framework and market economy have been deemed as the core of a capitalist system, while fairness is the cornerstone for both democratic politics and market economy. Democracy stands against the dictatorship of very few over the majority and demands the reflection of the voices and interests of the majority on important issues including election of leaders of the community; accordingly, fairness would be the fundamental principle for democracy since fairness is the utmost concern for anything involving a multitude of people. Fairness is even more critical for market economy. Not only would the fair pricing and fair respect of the wills to do transactions be essential for market economy, but also would the environment of fair competition be critical for any market based economy.
This ultimate importance of fairness for capitalism actually has created some confusion between the ideal principle and the social reality and thus so much often we might hear someone claim that fairness is the fundamental characteristic of capitalism. As a matter of fact, while capitalism as a social logic demands fairness in everyday life, it also is an immense source of unfairness for people living within a capitalist society. A better understanding of the paradoxical nature of capitalism in terms of fairness would help us to better deal with many crises we are facing today around the world.
An ideal capitalist society is a system that offers a game which is nominally fair to everyone in the sense that every person in principle could play any role in this game (As we all know that even the nominal fairness for every single person could be very questionable in the early stage of a capitalist society). Obviously, that game would be very big in its size since it involves everyone in the society, and thus it would require a clear common rule of game that would sound fair to all (or most significant) players, which is the constitution of each country. One of the essential roles of the whole legal system of any country that is constructed on top the constitution is to guarantee a fair play of this capitalist game. This clear awareness and demand of systematic fairness would function as a driving force behind the social evolution in capitalist systems, which would differentiate the social games in a capitalist system from those in its preceding hierarchical social systems. For example, personal or collective wealth accumulation by the big guys in a capitalist society is mainly achieved through legal market transactions instead of predatory deprivation by force. In this sense, the so called democratic political processes and market economy, the core of capitalism, are indeed all entailed consequences of this demand of general fairness within the grand social game that is then titled as capitalism due to the decisive role of capital (i.e. money) in the game.
Because of their dependence upon market for wealth accumulation, capitalist businessmen would not be refrained by the geopolitical borders of their countries and they would go to the world to sell their products, and to obtain their raw materials as well. Consequently multinational economy would become a basic phenomenon of capitalist economy. In order to have a maximal fairness to everyone in this multinational economy, it would be desired that the uncertainties or variations of the rule of the game across the world market could be restrained at a minimal level. This determines that capitalism by nature is outward aggressive in the sense that capitalists or players of the capitalist game would naturally be eager to propagate capitalism as ideology throughout the whole world, not only for the expansion of its market, but also for the desire of fairness that everyone in this world would play by the same rule of game. The need of multinational economy and the desire to have capitalism all over the world would then logically lead to an endeavor of so called globalization: people all over the world would play the same game based upon the same capitalist rule.
It is a common knowledge that in international affairs governments of different nations (capitalist or noncapitalist) would normally place the interests of their countries above the interests of other countries; sometimes they might even go extreme in order to protect the commercial interests of their own countries through espionage or other illegal measures. However, many developed capitalist countries have established laws to prohibit their own people from bribery practices in their overseas business activities. This kind of moral self-contradiction could not be solely explained by the separation of legislative and executive powers. It is not uncommon in world history for the legislative houses to vote for some extreme approaches including wars to protect the interests of their own countries above others. The rationale of prohibiting enterprises from overseas bribery practices might be best interpreted as protecting the fairness between different domestic enterprises in their overseas business activities. Consequently capitalism not only regulates domestic capitalist games played within each capitalist country but also regulates the business activities of their own people in overseas market of capitalist or noncapitalist countries. As a result, people from capitalist countries might face some unfair competition from noncapitalist countries where business morality is less regulated. This would also turn the demand of fairness by people from capitalist countries into a desire to change the social system of noncapitalist countries into capitalist regime all over the world.
Therefore, it is quite fair to say that capitalist system is formed in the history by the demand of fairness and acquires its enormous competitive power from its relative respect of the fairness in capitalist games. However, capitalism as a social logic is indeed also a monstrous source of unfairness in this world which could potentially hinder or even destroy capitalist system itself. As we have seen from the above discussion that capitalism is a social game driven by the demand of fairness and structured as democratic political scheme plus market economic system. The very common essence of all games of capitalism, as the name literally tells, is capital or more generally speaking money. This essence leads to another fundamental logic, which might be simply called the logic of capitalism, that money (i.e. capital) determines the consequence of social events (and thus the political and economical status) of a society.
Money is the basic media in market economy, and without money there wouldn’t be capitalist economy. For this reason, different from hierarchical social schemes with privileged classes, in a capitalist society, except for very few governmental bureaucratic officials, money is the main power for mobilizing social and natural resources. In fact, the principle of fairness in a capitalist society is also reflected through the respect of the possession and function of money. Therefore, the power of money would naturally sneak into various areas of democratic processes. This might be best demonstrated through the influence of money upon democratic election process and the constitutional legal process. First of all, democratic election is normally influenced by the power of money. As we know that the success of a public campaign would depend largely upon the quality and size of the campaign team. It would be fair to the campaign team members, especially those of high quality, to be well compensated for their hard work, which means the candidate needs to have enough money available to pay for the members of the team. Besides, nowadays high-tech media and internet provides huge opportunities for candidates to maximize their influences over and attractions to the voters. Those who could have better access to the media and internet campaign might have better chance to win in the election. It would be fair to the media workers to profit from the services they provide to the candidates. As a result, the democratic election process would be under the mercy of money. Second of all, within a capitalist legal system, an equal sign would be simply drawn between the meaning of justice and the prices of lawyers in the free legal market, in addition to various legal fees charged by the court. Money could actually influence the justice in a capitalist society through many more approaches as well.
The root cause of social unfairness created by the influence of money is indeed the unequal distribution of money (wealth) across the society. If everyone owns the same amount of money, they could have the fair equal influence in capitalist social life; however, difference, especially severe disparity, in the distribution of social wealth would inevitably have great impact upon social life in an unfair manner. It might be a surprise to many people that market economy, which is formed upon the demand of fairness and is widely deemed as a fair economic system, is indeed the main reason to cause the unequal distribution of social wealth in a capitalist society.
There are two important attributes of a capitalist market economy: 1) it promotes (nominally) fair trading and respects private interests of people; 2) it encourages market based competitions. These two attributes are commonly acknowledged by economists and many ordinary people as the fundamental strengths that differentiate capitalist economy from other economic systems. The first of these two attributes is responsible for producing more to this world and the second is the key factor of rewarding the winner through favored distribution of wealth within the capitalist market system. Because of the free trading, capitalist economy could enjoy the greatest productivity over human history; however, because of the competition, the logic of capitalist economy alone would cause unequal distribution of wealth among people. This unequal distribution of wealth would then be further self-amplified due to the unequal power of utilizing social and natural resources, which would eventually lead to social polarization of wealth among people. Even worse, any technical progress of human civilization, in terms of the efficiency in leveraging natural and social resources as the result of scientific and managerial development, would soon be converted into the controlling power of capital over labor (of both blue and white collars), which would further magnify the gap between rich and poor.
Consequently, capitalism is such a paradox of fairness: on one hand, capitalism is constructed on the principle of fairness, and even demands a maximal fairness all over the world for capitalist games; on the other hand, it would drive the whole world into an unequal and unfair society by its own logic of so called fair competition. This paradox is an important cause of many crises we are facing today around the world. Obviously, we could not solve this paradoxical problem of fairness caused by capitalism with capitalist logic alone; rather, we need to use something outside the capitalism itself to solve the paradox of capitalism. This means that we need some mechanism that would have the power to redistribute social wealth so that it could counteract the polarizing effect of capitalism, meanwhile it should also not be part of the capitalism for otherwise it would bring the game back to the original paradoxical cycle.
Taxation is a good example for this role, which could be very well utilized to help offset the trend of polarization created by the nominal fair competition within a capitalist system, and taxation itself is not part of capitalism. However, traditionally the main functionality of taxation has been considered as the means to collect money from the society for centralized usage. Even though fairness has been a consideration during the making of taxation policies in different countries, it has usually not been considered in the sense that taxation should be used as a main mechanism to counteract the polarizing effect of the capitalism.
Once we have a better understanding of the paradoxical nature of capitalism in terms of fairness, philosophically we might need to review many of our social policies including our taxation policies. We need to have a clear idea in the process of policy making that we need maintain the positive power of capitalism as a result of demanding fairness and in the mean time we also need to systematically work against the polarizing effect of capitalist logic. Otherwise, the intrinsic paradoxical nature of capitalism would not only harm the world economy and stability, but might bring capitalism itself to an end in a suicidal manner.