作者： 米歇尔·阿格利埃塔 (Michel Aglietta) 《国外理论动态》2009年第5期
【关 键 词】罗伯特·布伦纳；危机理论
罗伯特·布伦纳（Robert Brenner）对半个世纪以来的美国资本主义经济史进行了深入的分析，但这并不能代表世界经济的历史。他的书虽然也涉及了德国和日本，但主要还是以对美国的分析来阐述他的全球观点。高盛认为，巴西、俄罗斯、印度和中国（金砖四国）作为新的大国集团，将在本世纪前半叶领导世界经济增长。布伦纳与高盛的观点相左：他确信美国处于霸主地位，并且这种地位不会改变。在他看来，世界经济将一如既往地严重依赖于美国的未来投资条件和利润率状况。
在目前经济危机削弱美国金融体制的背景下，布伦纳的观点更应受到质疑。2006年，中国的GDP如按市场汇率计算，已经超过德国，成为第三大经济体；按购买力（PPP）平价计算，中国已跃居世界第二。中国的中产阶级已经达到了3亿左右。很难相信对美国的出口是中国取得如此成就的惟一原因。自2000年以来，新兴市场经济集团以6％的平均速度增长，而同期发达经济体的增长率为2.5％。既然金融危机将使发达国家的经济增长在相当长的一段时间持续放缓，那么，为什么新兴市场经济国家不能保持增长的优势，甚至在实际上扩大优势呢?如果事实如此，那么25年后，这些国家的GDP份额将占世界GDP的66％，由19世纪工业革命、殖民主义、帝国主义和20世纪的战争和革命而导致的双方差距将不复存在。不仅如此，全球经济预计将会显著放缓，增长率将从5％下降到3％。
我认为，如同其他使资本主义历史发生转折的事件一样，20世纪90年代的亚洲金融危机和中国加入世界贸易组织是资本主义分化的重要转折点。全球化进程在柏林墙倒塌后加快。柏林墙倒塌被认为是西方资本主义对非资本主义世界的胜利，其指导政策被灌装在“华盛顿共识”中，弗朗西斯·福山的口号“历史的终结”是其象征。但从1997年到2002年，由经济自由主义表面上的胜利带来的惯性撞上了金融危机的暗礁，然后在伊拉克终止。
从根本上来说，费尔南·布罗代尔对资本主义历史的开创性观点（调节理论是其衍生理论）一直启发着我。在他的学说的基础上，综合我有限的经验，我将提出下面五个理论命题来阐述我对布伦纳理论的看法。
（1）自资本主义在西欧诞生起，资本主义就既有普遍性，又有差异性：不同的社会结构中的资本主义不尽相同。
（2）市场经济与资本主义相联系但不等同。市场的范式是一种等价交换，竞争性均衡是它的形式。资本主义是一种积累冲动，不能自我调节，不能趋向于任何的理想模式。不平等才是它的本质。
（3）经济在社会关系中并不是独立存在的，更不是社会关系的主导方面。资本主义的两个基础都位于市场机制之外：货币是公共产品，劳动更不能被简化成商品。
（4）长期而言，制度将引领经济潮流，特别是一些能代表公众利益、又因所处社会背景不同而有所差异的共同信念。这些共同信念深植于各个社会内部，通过主权国家的法律力量纳入到正式制度中。因为经济资源是内生的，因此资本主义多样性体现在不同的具体模式中。这些模式既相通，又因国家不同而有不同的补充制度。
（5）世界资本主义由不对称的强权政治体系构成，各等级之间的相互依赖关系受经济因素的影响，这就是主导的金融中心一直享有获取价值的特权的原因。因此，紊乱是国际关系的存在方式，和谐是例外。就经济运行而言，世界上一些地区的经济增长放缓并不能阻止其他地区的经济增长加速。
欧洲和美国
布伦纳的数据令人印象深刻。根据他的解释，从20世纪60年代的全盛时期开始，经济增长动力在总体上是呈下降趋势的；上升只在20世纪90年代早期短暂出现过；增长动力下降的原因是制造业利润率的下降。但也可以换个角度解读他的数据。毫无疑问，20世纪60年代是个特殊时期，应该找到60年代以后的增长机制变化的原因。但是可以确认的是，美国和其他盎格鲁-撒克逊经济体国家的发展走向，与日本、德国和如今的欧元区国家明显不同。
美国GDP和劳动生产率上升的数据，显示增长率下降只在20世纪70年代出现过；从20世纪90年代中期到现在，生产率有了显著、持久的恢复。美国制造业利润率在1980—1982年下滑到谷底，然后是带有周期性波动的上升曲线。可以认为，如果杠杆政策没有提高增长率，资本回报率将变得更低。德国和日本与美国不同，几十年来，这两个国家的经济增长变缓，制造业利润率向下徘徊，直至今天也没有复苏。这些差异是资本主义多样性的生动表现，只有引入制度才能加以解释。认为长期的、广泛的产能过剩使利润率收缩、难以吸引投资、难以提高生产率、从而难以恢复令人满意的利润率，这种解释是没有多少说服力的。工资份额的下降和收入不平等的扩大出现在所有发达国家中（德国在统一之后的几年内除外），但劳动者地位的恶化在盎格鲁-撒克逊国家更为明显。
因此，布伦纳的文章提出了几个问题。20世纪60年代的生产率提高和收入分配之间的关系有什么特殊性?为什么这种调节模式没有持续?因为仅仅关注德国一个国家是不全面的，不考虑德国统一的影响是错误的，那么，哪些因素使欧洲在30年来的大部分时间内的增长受阻?投资所需的利润率是多少?投资所需利润率是否因公司治理制度的变化而变化?如果说是制造业投资不足使20世纪70年代的经济增长陷入低迷，那么，在信息技术革命之后，在无形服务业吸纳了巨额资金后，这个理由还有多少的合理性?最后，最重要的问题是：中国和印度冲入世界资本主义行列，会不会导致新的增长机制的诞生，而其规则还不为我们所知?
如果增长是内生的，则稳定的利润率要求供求条件一致。此外，周期性衰退不能发生得太频繁、持续时间不能太长，影响也不能太深入。因为在一个内生机制中，潜在的增长率是路径依赖的。因此，金融危机释放的去杠杆化，几年来降低投资率而释放的去杠杆化将对增长产生反向的影响。“二战”以后，由于自我雇佣率下降，雇佣工人的数量增加，在20世纪60年代早期的“婴儿潮”后继续攀升。劳资谈判受到欧洲劳工法的保护。长期劳动合同与生产率提高挂钩，两者共同作用形成了生产率提高、实际收入上升、内需扩大的良性循环。在盎格鲁-撒克逊经济体中，积极的反周期管理缓和了经济周期；欧洲大陆的社会福利提高。基于未来现金流有相当大的确定性，公司可以选择先于消费者需求进行投资。消费者对耐用品需求的增长和大公司市场定价能力的提高造就了稳定的利润率。美国公司、欧洲公司和日本公司有各自的产权结构和不同的治理机制，但它们都赞成建立在“满意度法则”上的投资政策管理的内部人控制制度和内部劳动力市场。因此，制度上的互补造就了维持增长的宏观关系。
战后统一性的消解
是什么因素导致了这种调节方式的突然失灵?很可能不是单个的结构性改变。布伦纳强调：布雷顿森林体系下的僵化制度安排使真实汇率扭曲，使在扭曲汇率水平上的国际竞争加剧。货币危机——始于1967年11月的英镑贬值和1968年3月的黄金总库解散——为他的说法提供了表面的证据。类似的证据还有初级商品的贸易恶化引发了70年代的供应短缺，揭开了石油危机的序幕。也许有人还会提出另一个因素：主要制造工业装配线的生产率在泰勒主义指导下已达到峰值，无法继续提高。根据报道，“蓝领工人的痛苦”是20世纪60年代晚期频发劳工冲突的原因。
但是这些变化都不足以解释：为什么一个一直有效的调节模式不断趋向瘫痪，使良性循环变成了恶性循环。社会制度的统一性开始瓦解。在美国，联邦政府同时寻求两个目标——构建约翰逊的伟大社会和打赢越南战争，公共财政无法提供有效的反周期管理，通货膨胀开始。法国和意大利分别在1968年和1969年发生了大规模的社会暴动，战后和解受到强烈冲击。在德国，大联合政府执政，难以在治理恶化的社会环境和满足民众对价格稳定的强烈需求间作出平衡（因为一些众所周知的原因，德国人对价格稳定的依恋比任何国家都强烈）。社会冲突引发通货膨胀螺旋式上升；设计不当的国际制度安排推波助澜。主要国家间通货膨胀的差异破坏了布雷顿森林体系，加剧了美、德竞争，破坏了建立新的国际秩序的努力。当货币危机导致了1973年的紊乱的浮动汇率制时，欧洲遭受的冲击比美国更为严重。此后，增长率下降的幅度更大了。
从欧洲煤钢联营到单一欧洲法案
在我看来，如果不研究欧洲一体化的波折，就无法解读所有欧洲国家取得的成就和遭遇的困难。早在马歇尔计划时代，战后欧洲的创建者就作出了令人震惊的突破之举：建立欧洲煤钢联营、欧洲支付同盟、欧洲原子能共同体。新的政治精神诞生了——几个世纪的权力斗争给欧洲政治带来灾难，新的政治精神将坚定地制止国家间的权力斗争。这种大胆尝试的必由之路是经济合作。1957年建立共同市场，之后成立欧盟，这个欧洲工程已经势在必行，不可逆转。
这对经济增长产生了极大的影响，战后变革——对欧洲六个世纪以来形成的社会结构的变革，加上上述欧洲机构的建立，共同导致了欧洲经济共同体（ECC）的诞生。法国去殖民化进程结束，戴高乐和阿登纳都作出了极大的让步。之后贸易以惊人的速度发展，共同市场的刺激效应溢出到其他西欧国家，同行业间和同质国家间的贸易发展迅速。在此背景下，保罗·克鲁格曼等人在20世纪80年代创建了国际贸易新理论。耐用消费品、工业机械和运输设备的贸易扩张带来了规模回报率的增长，从而导致生产率的提高。与美国不同，欧洲的这个过程到20世纪60年代仍未有乏力的迹象。但是，当欧洲的战后增长机制中还保留着相当大的增长动力时，国际性危机开始了。这就是布伦纳所说的，欧洲经济衰退虽与美国危机同步，却比美国来得更加突然。
当然，能源成本的急剧上升使已有的通货膨胀更加严重。但货币危机比石油危机更有害，它扰乱了促进贸易增长的相对价格体系。对那些事实上已经统一的国家来说，汇率的大幅度的、不确定的波动使生产性投资充满风险。公众的不同偏好再次显现——在整个20世纪70年代，与法国人和意大利人相比，德国人更无法忍受通货膨胀。为了恢复一些稳定感，欧洲委员会先后建立了两种汇率体系：1973年的蛇行汇率体系和1978年的欧洲货币体系（EMS）。虽然其他货币对德国马克的定期贬值或多或少缓解了一些不安，但整个体系内的不安仍然持续，并严重束缚了经济政策。德国中央银行压倒一切的目标是遏制通货膨胀。只要美元走弱，其他欧洲政府只能在两种方式之间作出抉择：或者在欧洲货币体系内以贬值来对抗压力，或者放弃对抗、根据德国马克重估它们的货币价值。无论选择哪种方式，后续政策肯定是紧缩政策。这种模式变得非常常见，以至于20世纪80年代的法国财长特里谢把它叫作“竞争性通缩”。这种模式实行了相当长的时间，其结果是，尽管其他货币多次贬值，德国的竞争优势却得以保持到20世纪90年代。但是即使德国的相对繁荣也因欧洲贸易的严重放缓而提前终止，欧洲一体化的进程因此受到了威胁。1985年，时任欧洲委员会主席的雅克·德洛尔建议，欧洲应该朝着统一欧洲市场的目标继续走下去。他的建议得以执行，欧洲一体化进程得以重新启动。
但是，1990年的德国统一产生了持久的影响，并削弱了所有欧洲国家的经济。我不能理解有些人怎么能忽略德国统一的影响而研究德国经济史。统一是政治上的胜利、经济上的灾难。德国的社会成本急剧上升，德国中央银行将利率提高到了奢侈的水平，而那些尽量想尾随德国马克的国家则将利率提得更高。同期，美联储正忙于使美国摆脱衰退。但欧洲货币体系在1992年9月还是崩溃了，欧洲进入衰退，之后出现投资不足，一直持续到1997年。这就是欧洲大陆的大国们无法从信息技术革命中受益的原因。欧洲与美国的人均收入差距在过去30多年来一直稳步缩小，但从这时起再一次扩大。这已经成为一种持续的模式。实际利率整体上高于增长率导致投资不足（美国过去十年内大部分时间与此相反）使欧洲经济增长全面受阻。20世纪90年代晚期的投资复苏只持续了很短的时间，在德国则更为短暂。德国的兼并和收购美国高科技资产的狂潮导致了无节制的借债行为，当股市低迷时，经济必然崩溃。危机势不可挡，摧毁了德国的银行体系；银行体系的重组耗时三年，德国的宏观经济复苏因此延迟。从此，公司治理机制的全面革新开始，动摇了德国社会市场经济的根基。
生产力纪录
罗伯特·布伦纳反复强调美国的回报率过低，无法吸引投资。那么，到底需要多高的回报率?谁决定投资量和投资领域?难道制度，特别是公司治理制度，不应被考虑进去吗?毕竟是20世纪70年代晚期和80年代早期的货币政策的剧烈变化引发了金融自由化：包括从间接融资到市场融资的转变，使风险从银行转移到金融机构投资者身上；还包括公司产权结构的巨大的改变，使商业政策从“内部人生产力共享”转变为“股东价值最大化”。利润率规则发生了完全的变化。市场价值核算替代了生产成本核算，成为公司业绩的准绳。此外，在现实中，获得股东价值意味着代替股东收取租金，即股票实际回报率和公司均衡股市回报率之间的正差，由资本资产定价模型（CAPM）决定，乘以公司资本。股票市场长期走高，股东价值规则导致回报率甚至比战后增长的全盛时期还高。大部分商业策略，不仅包括减小规模、让产易股等，还包括通过兼并、收购、股票回购，都取决于公司管理层按照股东价值原则进行的利润调整行为。
20世纪90年代，当欧洲正因为实际利率太高而陷入瘫痪时，美国大规模地采纳了股东价值原则。股东价值并没有阻碍创新投资的增长（私募股权基金，特别是风险资本基金激发了创新投资的增长）；创新投资对生产率增长的影响是巨大的，信息技术革命所需资金主要来自这样的投资基金。因信息技术和无形资产的贡献（即全要素生产力中其他因素的贡献）而引发的显著变化有利于美国，不利于欧洲。从1995年到2005年，美国在信息技术上的投资领先于欧洲，不仅有效提高了资本密集度，而且更重要的是提高了全要素生产力，从而更有利于生产率的提高。全要素生产力不需要更多的资本便可提高利润，是提高利润率的最佳途径。
西方的危机，东方的增长
长期繁荣的美国房地产在2006年后半年开始走下坡路，导致美国经济减速。2007年夏季，金融危机开始于次级抵押市场，并蔓延至全球的资本支持型证券市场。但与之前的衰退不同，新兴市场国家仍保持着相当的增长，没有人知道这种分流是否会持续。必须意识到，当前这些经济体的自主增长动力来自10年来的大规模结构变化。它们挑战了布伦纳的可能会出现新的长期的经济衰退的推断。1997—1998年的亚洲危机不仅仅是又一次的金融意外，它还在新兴市场国家引发了大范围的变革，使这些国家避开了所谓的“华盛顿共识”。这是我在新近出版的书里的一个观点。但在此我只讨论与本文主题相关的问题。
1989年柏林墙倒塌后，主流观点认为西方资本主义已获得全面胜利，并影响到世界的其他部分。在国际货币基金组织和世界银行的引导下，每个国家，无论是转型国家还是发展中国家，都被敦促采取西方制度并实施有利于资本引进的经济政策。短期负债推进了大部分亚洲和拉美国家的自由化，但中国和印度是例外，中国仍保持着严格的资本控制，印度则审慎地实行自由化。
但是这个单边金融一体化过程撞到了另一面墙上：1997—1998年的亚洲危机。这次危机之后经济未经调整便恢复正常。但对危机有着深刻体验的国家革新了它们的增长机制，以重新获得对经济的控制权。它们从债务人变成了债权人。它们拒绝了国际货币基金组织的指导，开始积累外汇储备。亚洲和石油输出国家已经建立了强大的主权财富基金。竞争对手正在尽量把它们的新经济力量转变成购买西方公司的技术力量，它们将崛起，加入美国和欧洲的行列。
得益于1997—2002年间的一连串危机（倒闭的阿根廷货币局发出了对旧秩序的最后一击）之后的竞争性贬值，这些国家的增长源泉从国内需求转变为出口。同时，亚洲新兴市场国家内部的一体化和联系增强，国际贸易趋向多样化。中国对美国和欧洲的出口不超过其出口总量的40％。此外，出口占中国GDP的40％。我们假设欧洲和美国的增长率都下降1％，由于进口收入弹性大致为2.5，因此对中国增长的影响为中国对这些客户出口的2.5％。转换成增长率为增长率下降0.4％（2.5×0.4×0.4），或稍稍高于0.4％，因为西方国家进口的减少会影响到作为中国客户的其他新兴国家，进而影响中国。但对于一个能保持11％年增长率的国家，这几乎不是大的挑战。实际上，这将成为一件好事，因为中国政府在过去几年里正积极寻求遏制过快的投资速度。
中国的崛起，以及某种程度上印度的崛起，对目前世界强国来说，是种长期的将改变世界增长机制的潮流。最显著的变化发生于劳动力市场。自20世纪90年代这些国家开放对外贸易以来，特别是自从中国在世纪之交准备加入WTO以来，世界劳动力供给几乎增长一倍。劳动力供给的巨大变化从根本上改变了相对劳动回报率和资本回报率，使通货膨胀变成了在全球范围内高度相关的全球性通货膨胀，使长期通货膨胀变得缓和。随后人们不那么厌恶风险，绝大部分新兴市场国家的利润率增长，资本成本下降。难怪信贷高涨，资产价格暴涨。
全球金融危机的后果
金融危机在2007年8月爆发于美国次贷市场，随后殃及更多的国家和市场：经过多次的复苏假象和重新发作，在2008年9月和10月上旬已演变成了系统性的经济危机。尽管中央银行俱乐部协同注入强大的清算资金——它们实际上在行使国际最后贷款人的功能——但批发货币市场全部失灵。信贷损失如此之多，涉及西方银行体系的范围如此之广，必须在全球范围内展开协同的拯救行动才能阻止其彻底崩盘。政府反应迟缓但力度极大，英国政府首先行动，然后是欧元区的政府，它们将全面担保扩大至所有的银行间新贷款，运用公共资金使银行资产重新资本化，从而有效地使银行损失社会化。美国政府紧随其后。同时，危机使大西洋两岸的实体经济陷入衰退。金融系统去杠杆化将是一个长期的、痛苦的过程，将使西方经济在几年之内走弱。西方将被亚洲国家——主要是中国——赶超，因为中国有强大的资源可以避开西方经济长时间放缓的冲击，且赶超速度要比危机前设想的更快。
中国和印度未来的生产率增长将是可持续的。生产率提高依赖两个渠道：一方面，借鉴发达国家的经验，融合技术和管理进步；另一方面，农村人口向城市迁移和随之而来的大规模的城市化。中国计划在25年内建立200个规模在100万人口左右的新城市。不难想像，如此众多的人口的生活方式改变将会带来怎样的消费、基础设施投资和服务的增长。即使以9％左右的平均速度增长，30年后的中国仍然是个巨人。
诚然，中国需要跨越相当大的难度。但是这些难题与美国资本主义的命运几乎没有关联，除非即将形成的超级大国与现任的超级大国因缺乏国际治理机制而发生冲突。导致中国脱轨的因素可能有：政府不能有效地为发展严重失衡的省份提供公共产品，以及不能有效地管理这样一个幅员辽阔、差异显著的复杂国度。中国的预算应包括惠及全国的福利体系和公共教育体系。农民应有权依靠他们拥有的财产价值进行借贷行为。扭转严重恶化的环境成本是首要任务。为应付这些巨大的挑战，中国必须改变政治进程，但无需选择西方式的民主。一个有着3000年文化持续性的国家对共同利益有着不同的信念。如果按赫希曼的话来说，西方资本主义受退出—呼吁机制支配，中国的民主受忠诚的支配。孔子的道德价值观强调非正式的社会关系而非法律规则，与马克斯·韦伯的“资本主义的精神”很不相同。这就是为什么中国的治理问题处在地方的层次。负责分配公共产品的官员必须任人惟贤，就像贤君盛世中的官员一样，接受人民的监督，以缓解权力滥用的倾向。
崛起的大陆大国们有能力在今后的半个世纪中推进世界经济的增长。但是可能会出现不同因素导致的冲突：如保证能源供应，分摊环境成本，管理人口迁移，确保金融的全面稳定等。总之，全球增长机制仍有空间，在新的增长机制中，资本将从早衰和发达地区向晚衰和快速增长地区转移。但是必须从此规范金融体系，以在全球范围内建立资本和收入流动的安全渠道，防止过去25年来的过度化的再度出现。很显然，七国集团已经过时，必须让位于更具开放度的新组织，新组织的会员构成应体现新的强权政治模式。布雷顿森林体系必须减小弱化成提供专家分析的咨询论坛。世界环境组织早该建立了。国际治理机制只能按照全球化的版图进行调整。
INTO A NEW GROWTH REGIME
Robert Brenner has produced an in-depth inquiry into the economic history of US capitalism over the last half-century. Yet this is not a history of the world economy. The book is much too focused on America to amount to a global view, though it deals in passing with Germany and Japan. Brenner does not follow Goldman Sachs in highlighting Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) as the group of new powers that will lead world growth in the first half of this century. He is sure that the US is the hegemon and will remain so. In his view, therefore, the world economy will still depend crucially on future conditions of profitability and investment in the US, as it has done in the past.
This perspective must be challenged—all the more so, since the ongoing crisis that has been weakening the US financial system. In 2006 China overtook Germany to become the third-largest world economy, measuring GDP at market exchange rates. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) it is already by far the second largest. It has created a middle class of some 300 million people. It is hard to believe that such an achievement results solely from China’s export drive to the US. The group of emerging market economies has grown at 6 per cent on average since 2000, against 2.5 per cent for the average of the developed economies. Why should they not maintain this lead, indeed even widen it—since growth in the developed countries will remain subdued for a considerable time ahead, as a result of the financial crisis? If they do, twenty-five years from now their share of worldGDP will be 66 per cent, almost reversing the gap created by the industrial revolution, colonialism and imperialism in the nineteenth century, followed by the wars and revolutions of the twentieth. Nonetheless, global growth can be expected to decelerate markedly from 5 to about 3 per cent.
I contend that the Asian crisis of the 1990s, followed by China’s entry into the WTO, was the turning point that started a major bifurcation of capitalism, like the others that have punctuated its history. Globalization accelerated after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was conceived as the projection of Western capitalism over the rest of the world. The policy for achieving this goal was encapsulated in the Washington Consensus and symbolized by Francis Fukuyama’s slogan of ‘the end of history’. But the momentum generated by the apparent triumph of economic liberalism crashed on the reefs of successive financial crises between 1997 and 2002, before it was definitively halted in Iraq.
More fundamentally, I have always been inspired by Fernand Braudel’s monumental work on the history of capitalism, of which regulation theory is an offshoot. From his teaching, mediated by my own modest experience, I will draw five theoretical propositions to help structure my reading of Brenner’s findings.
1) Since its emergence in Western Europe, capitalism has always been both global and embedded in particular, endlessly differentiated social structures.
2) A market economy and capitalism are linked but not identical. The market paradigm is one of exchange among equals; it can be formalized as competitive equilibrium. Capitalism is a force of accumulation. It is not self-regulating and does not converge to any ideal model. Inequality is its essence.
3) The sphere of the economy is not an independent, still less a predominant, realm within social relations. Two basic underpinnings of capitalism lie beyond market mechanisms: money is a public good and labour is by no means reducible to a commodity.
4) In the long run, institutions—especially collective beliefs which express the common good and differ from one society to another—lead economic trends. These deeply rooted beliefs are embodied in formal institutions by the legitimate power of sovereign states. Because economic resources are endogenously generated, the diversity of capitalism lies in specific patterns of coherence, composed of complementary institutions under the authority of states.
5) World capitalism comprises an asymmetrical system of power politics, working through hierarchical interdependencies mediated by finance. This is the reason why the financial centres dominant at any one moment are the privileged sites for capturing value. It follows that turbulence is a way of life in international relations and harmony the exception. So far as economic performance goes, deceleration of growth in some parts of the world does not preclude acceleration in others.
Europe and America
Brenner exhibits an impressive array of data. According to his interpretation, there has been a general decline in economic dynamism from the heyday of the 1960s, determined by a fall in the rate of profit in manufacturing, except for a short lapse of time in the US in the early 1990s. But his data can be looked at in another way. There is no question that the 1960s form a special period, and that the change in growth regimes that followed it needs to be explained. But it can be argued that trends in the US—and for that matter the other Anglo-Saxon economies—differed markedly from those in Japan, Germany and what is today the Eurozone in general.
Brenner’s table 13.1, reproduced above, displaying GDP and labour productivity gains in the US, shows a decline in growth only for the 1970s. There has been a noticeable and enduring recovery in productivity from the mid-1990s to the present. So too, looking at the rate of profit in American manufacturing—his figure 15.2, likewise above—what one sees is a slide to a nadir in 1980–82, followed by an upward curve modulated by cyclical fluctuations. However, it might be argued that the collapse of leverage-induced growth will generate much lower rates of return on capital. By contrast, Germany and Japan have indeed suffered decelerating growth, decade after decade, and a downward drift in the manufacturing rate of profit, so far without recovery. The divergence is a graphic illustration of the diversity of capitalisms, which can only be explained by bringing institutions into the picture. It is not very convincing to argue from a universal and permanent pressure of over-capacity, contracting the rate of profit to levels incapable of attracting investment and of increasing productivity enough to restore satisfactory profitability. A decline in the share of wages and a widening in income inequality have occurred in all developed countries, with the exception of Germany for a few years after reunification; but the deterioration in the position of labour has been much more pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon countries.
Brenner’s thesis thus raises several questions. What was peculiar to the correlation between productivity gains and income distribution in the 1960s? Why did this mode of regulation not last? What were the problems in Europe that impaired growth for most of thirty years, since it is not enough to look at Germany alone, and wrong not to mention the consequences of reunification? What rate of profit is sufficient for investment? Is the required rate not conditional on the institutional setting of corporate governance? If it is right to point out that a shortfall in manufacturing investment lay at the heart of the downturn in the 1970s, how much is this explanation worth after the IT revolution and the huge investment in intangible services? Finally, and above all, is the eruption of China and India into world capitalism not introducing a new growth regime whose rules we have yet to find out?
If growth is endogenous, a stable rate of profit requires that supply and demand conditions be consistent. Furthermore, cyclical downturns must be neither too frequent nor too long and deep, since in an endogenous regime potential growth is path-dependent. That is why the deleveraging unleashed by the financial crisis, by lowering rates of investment for several years, will have an adverse impact on growth. After World War Two, wage labour expanded first with the decline in self-employment, then in the aftermath of the baby-boom from the early 1960s onwards. Collective bargaining was well-entrenched and protected by labour law in Europe. Long-term labour contracts, indexed on productivity gains, regulated a virtuous circle between productivity, real income and domestic-demand expansion. Active counter-cyclical management smoothed business cycles in the Anglo-Saxon countries, as did rising social benefits in continental Europe. With considerable certainty as to future income streams, firms could thus invest ahead of consumer demand. Rates of profit were stabilized by the rising demand for consumer durables and the power of corporations over market prices. Corporate governance mechanisms differed between the US, Europe and Japan, each with its own property structures. But all favoured an insider control of management over investment policy, inspired by principles of ‘satisficing’ that maintained insider labour markets. There was therefore a complementarity in institutions that created growth-preserving macro-relationships.
Dissolving post-war coherence
What derailed this mode of regulation? Probably no single structural change. Brenner is right to emphasize rising international competition at distorted real exchange rates due to the rigidity of the Bretton Woods arrangements. The monetary disorders that began with the devaluation of sterling in November 1967 and the abandonment of the gold pool in March 1968 are plausible evidence for this. So too is the deterioration in the terms of trade for primary commodities that triggered shortages of supply at the end of the decade, the preamble to subsequent oil shocks. One might also add the exhaustion of productivity gains on the assembly lines of major manufacturing industries under Taylorist principles. ‘Blue-collar blues’ were reportedly the reason for numerous labour conflicts in the late 1960s.
But these changes are not enough to explain the progressive paralysis of a hitherto effective mode of regulation, which transformed a virtuous into a vicious circle. The coherence of social institutions began to crumble. In the US the federal government simultaneously pursued both Johnson’s Great Society and the Vietnam War. Public finances could no longer deliver efficient counter-cyclical management and inflation took off. In France in 1968 and Italy in 1969 social uprisings on a huge scale shook the post-war compromise. In Germany, with a Grand Coalition in power, it became difficult to arbitrate between a deteriorating social climate and a collective attachment to price stability that was stronger in Germany than elsewhere, for well-known reasons. Social conflicts triggering inflationary spirals then interacted with misconceived international arrangements. Inflation differentials between the major countries destroyed the Bretton Woods system and exacerbated the rivalry between the US and Germany, undermining attempts to build a new international order. When the monetary crisis led to chaotic floating exchange rates in 1973, Europe underwent a far more severe shock than the US. The subsequent reduction in growth was much larger.
From ECSC to SEA
In my view, it is impossible to account for the achievements and subsequent difficulties of any European country without studying the bumpy road of European integration. Already at the time of the Marshall Plan, the founders of post-war Europe had made astonishing breakthroughs: the Coal and Steel Community, the European Payments Union, Euratom. A new political spirit was born, with a resolve to supersede the power struggles between nations that had plagued Europe’s politics for centuries. The linchpin of this bold endeavour had to be economic cooperation. In 1957 the establishment of the Common Market, then of the European Commission, made this European project irreversible.
The impact on growth was tremendous. The creation of European institutions complemented the post-war transformation of social structures within the six countries that made up the European Economic Community (EEC). When France finally completed decolonization, and De Gaulle and Adenauer were spectacularly reconciled, trade developed at breathtaking speed. The stimulus of the Common Market spilled over into the rest of Western Europe. Trade in the same industries and between similar countries boomed, inspiring the new theory of international trade formulated in the 1980s by Paul Krugman and others. The expansion of trade in consumer durables, industrial machinery and transport equipment brought increasing returns to scale that accelerated productivity growth. Contrary to the US, this process was far from showing signs of exhaustion by the late 1960s. Europe was struck by the international crisis while there was still a great deal of momentum left in the post-war growth regime. This is why the downturn was much more abrupt than in the US, though synchronized with it, as Brenner has noted.
Of course, the steep increase in the cost of energy fed an inflation that was already under way. But the monetary crisis was more harmful than the oil crisis, disrupting the whole structure of relative prices that supported the growth of trade. Large and uncertain fluctuations in exchange rates made productive investment hazardous for countries that were already substantially integrated. Divergences in collective preferences surfaced once more, with inflation much less tolerated in Germany than in France and Italy throughout the 1970s. To restore some sense of stability, the European Council established two successive exchange-rate systems: the monetary snake in 1973, then the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1978. But tensions in the system—though somewhat alleviated by periodic devaluation of almost all currencies against the deutschmark—persisted, constraining economic policy severely. The over-riding objective of the Bundesbank was to contain inflation. Whenever the dollar weakened, other European governments were forced either to try to resist pressure to devalue within the EMS, or to surrender and realign their currencies against the deutschmark. Contractionary policies followed in either case. The pattern became so familiar that Trichet, director of the French treasury in the 1980s, labelled it ‘competitive disinflation’—a process so protracted that Germany kept its competitive edge until 1990, despite the recurrent devaluations of other currencies. But even Germany’s relative prosperity was curtailed by the severe slowdown in European trade, which threatened the very process of integration itself. It was to reignite it that Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, successfully proposed moving ahead toward a single European market in 1985.
But German unification in 1990 delivered a lasting shock that impaired all the European economies. I do not understand how it is possible to study German economic history without even mentioning unification, at once a political feat and an economic disaster. Social costs rocketed in Germany. The Bundesbank raised interest rates to extravagant levels, increased yet further in countries that tried to shadow the deutschmark, at the very time the Fed was busy trying to get the US out of recession. Even so, the EMS exploded in September 1992 and Europe plunged into a recession followed by under-investment until 1997. This is why the larger countries of continental Europe were unable to benefit from the IT revolution. The gap with the US in income per capita, which had been steadily narrowing for more than thirty years, began to widen once more. This has become a lasting pattern. Lack of investment, due to real interest rates that are systematically higher than growth rates—the opposite has been true for the US over most of the last ten years—has pervasively handicapped European growth. The recovery of investment in the late 1990s was short-lived, particularly in Germany. There a mergers and acquisitions frenzy to buy high-tech assets in the USled to an orgy of debt, with a corresponding debacle when the stock market turned down. A sweeping crisis devastated the German banking system, requiring a restructuring that took three years and delayed the macroeconomic recovery of the country. Since then the whole system of corporate governance has been overhauled, and the German social market economy shaken to its very foundation.
Productivity records
Robert Brenner repeatedly says that the rate of return in the US has been too low to attract investment. But what is the required rate of return? Who decides how much and where to invest? Should not institutions enter the picture, especially the institutions of corporate governance? After all, the radical change in monetary policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s triggered financial liberalization. Not only was there a shift from intermediate to market financing that redistributed risk-taking from banks to institutional investors; there was also a dramatic change in the ownership structure of corporations, that has shifted business strategy from ‘insider productivity-sharing’ to ‘shareholder value-optimizing’. The norm of profitability has changed altogether. Market-value accounting has replaced reproduction-cost accounting as the yardstick of corporate performance. Furthermore, achieving shareholder value in practice means extracting a rent on behalf of shareholders. This rent is the positive difference between the actual rate of return on equity and the equilibrium stock-market rate of return of the corporation, given by the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), multiplied by the capital of the firm. Combined with the long ascending wave in the stock market, the imperative of shareholder value gave rise to a much higher required rate of return than in the heyday of post-war growth. Most business strategies—downsizing, spin-offs and the like, but also external growth via mergers and acquisitions and share buybacks—were driven by the lucrative adjustment of corporate executives to the principle of shareholder value.
The US adopted shareholder value on a large scale in the early 1990s, at a time when Europe was crippled by extravagantly high real interest rates. Shareholder value does not hamper innovative investment spurred by private-equity funds, especially venture-capital funds; it has had a large impact on productivity growth—the IT revolution was largely financed by such investment funds. The table overleaf highlights the dramatic shift against Europe and in favour of the US that is due to the contribution of IT and intangibles—i.e. other components of total factor productivity. In the years 1995 to 2005 the US took the lead over Europe with IT investments that were more productive, both in increasing capital intensity and, above all, in improving total factor productivity. The latter is the best fillip to profitability, since it raises profit without requiring more capital.
Crisis in the West, growth in the East
In the US, the long boom in real estate began to turn negative in the latter part of 2006, leading to a slowdown in the American economy. In the summer of 2007 a financial crisis started in the subprime mortgage market and spread widely throughout asset-backed security markets worldwide. Contrary to former downturns, emerging-market countries continue to enjoy substantial growth. No one knows whether this decoupling will last. Nonetheless, the present autonomous dynamism in these economies stems from huge structural changes occurring in the last ten years, that need to be recognized. They challenge Brenner’s conjecture that a new long downturn is likely. For the Asian crisis of 1997–98 was much more than another financial accident. It was the trigger of sweeping transformations that allowed emerging-market countries to escape from the so-called Washington Consensus—a view I have developed in a recent book. [1] I will sketch here the arguments that are relevant to the present discussion.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the mainstream view was that the triumph of Western capitalism would now be completed with its projection onto the rest of the world. Under the tutorship of the IMF and the World Bank, every country—whether transitional or developing—was urged to adopt Western institutions and implement economic policies hospitable to the import of capital. Short-term indebtedness fuelled the liberalization of most Asian and Latin American countries, with the exception of China, which kept tight capital controls, and India, which liberalized cautiously.
But this process of unilateral financial integration crashed against another wall: the Asian crisis of 1997–98. This time there was no adjustment, followed by resumption of business as usual. Instead, the countries that experienced the full force of the crisis overhauled their growth regime to regain control over their economies. From debtors they have become creditors. They have rejected IMFguidance and accumulated foreign-exchange reserves. The Asian and oil-exporting countries have built up powerful sovereign wealth funds. Rivalries will arise with Europe and the US, as they are now trying to convert their new financial power into technological power by acquiring Western firms.
The sources of their growth have shifted from domestic demand to exports, thanks to competitive devaluations in the aftermath of the chain of crises between 1997 and 2002, when the collapse of Argentina’s currency board proved the final blow to the old order. Meanwhile, international trade has diversified, with intra-Asian integration and linkages between emerging-market countries. China’s exports to America and Europe combined make up no more than 40 per cent of its total; furthermore, exports make up about 40 per cent of China’s GDP. Let us suppose that Europe and the US both experience a slowdown of 1 per cent in their growth rates. Since the income elasticity of imports is roughly 2.5, the impact on China’s growth would be 2.5 per cent on its exports to these customers. This would translate into a 0.4 per cent reduction in growth (2.5 x 0.4 x 0.4), or slightly more because of the roundabout effect of lower imports in the West on other emerging countries that are clients of China. For a country capable of sustaining 11 per cent annual growth, this is scarcely Armageddon. In fact, it would be something of a blessing, since the Chinese government is actively seeking to restrain the breakneck pace of investment of the last several years.
The rise of China, and to some extent of India, to the status of world powers is a long-standing trend restructuring the world growth regime. The most dramatic change it has brought has been to the labour market. The world supply of labour has almost doubled with the opening of these countries to foreign trade since the mid 1990s, and above all since China prepared its entry into theWTO at the turn of the century. This huge supply shock radically changed the relative returns on labour and capital. It made inflation global, meaning that its rates have become highly correlated all over the world, and it subdued long-run inflation. Subsequently risk aversion abated, and in most emerging-market countries the cost of capital has fallen, while the rate of profit has risen. No wonder that credit surged and financed a boom in asset prices.
The aftermath of the global financial crisis
The financial crisis that erupted in August 2007 in the American subprime market has since spilt ominously across further countries and markets. After multiple rounds of pseudo-recoveries and relapses, the crisis became systemic in September and early October 2008. The wholesale money markets seized up completely, despite a formidable co-ordinated injection of liquidity by a club of central banks, acting in effect as an international lender of last resort. However credit losses are so huge and so widespread in the Western banking system that a rescue operation on a global scale was required to avert its complete collapse. Reacting belatedly, but dramatically, governments—first in the UK, then in the Eurozone—extended a blanket guarantee to all new interbank loans, and by recapitalizing the banks with public money, effectively socialized their losses. The US followed suit. Meanwhile the crisis has driven the real economies into recession on both sides of the Atlantic. The process of deleveraging the financial system will be long and painful, weakening Western economies for several years. The result is going to be that catch-up by Asian countries—principally of China, where the state has powerful resources to ward off the impact of a prolonged Western slowdown—will be faster than could have been expected before the crisis.
The prospects for productivity growth in both China and India are durable. They rest on two sources: on the one hand, diffusion of technology and improvement of management, drawn from developed countries; on the other, migration of the rural population into cities and the ensuing massive urbanization. The Chinese Economic Council plans to create two hundred new cities with a size of around one million people each in the next 25 years. The potential for growth in consumption, investment in infrastructure and development of services involved in such a shift in the life pattern of so many people is not hard to imagine. It remains gigantic even after thirty years of average growth at 9 per cent or so.
Admittedly, the hurdles are high, too. But they will have nothing to do with the fate of capitalism in the US, unless the upcoming superpower clashes with the incumbent superpower for lack of mechanisms of international governance. What could derail China’s trajectory is more likely to be inefficiencies on the part of the state in providing collective goods in provinces with very uneven levels of development, and in regulating such an enormous, disparate and complex country. The Chinese budget needs to encompass a universal welfare system and universal public education. Reform of land ownership in the countryside is vital to give farmers the capacity to borrow on the value of their holdings, or sell them. Reversing the deadly progression of environmental costs is a top priority. To handle these immense tasks the political process will have to change, though not in the direction of Western-style democracy. An empire with a cultural continuity of three millennia has other beliefs about the common good. If, in Hirschman’s terms, Western capitalism is ruled by exit and by voice, Chinese capitalism is ruled by loyalty. Confucian moral values, emphasizing informal social ties rather than legal rules, are quite at odds with Max Weber’s ‘spirit of capitalism’. That is why the problem of governance in China lies at the local level. The bureaucrats who allocate collective goods must be recruited for their competence, as they were in the heyday of the successful emperors, and subjected to the scrutiny of the people, to mitigate the drift to the abuse of power.
The rising continental powers can spur world growth for the next half-century. But occasions for conflict might arise on more than one matter: securing energy supplies, sharing environmental costs, managing demographic transitions, assuring overall financial stability. All in all, there is room for a world growth regime in which early-ageing and developed regions transfer capital to late-ageing and fast-growing regions. But the financial system needed to channel capital and income flows safely around the globe must henceforward be regulated, to thwart the excesses of the past twenty-five years. The G7 has obviously become obsolete and must give way to a new and more open grouping, whose membership should reflect the new pattern of power politics. Bretton Woods institutions must be downsized to forums of consultation informed by expert analysis. A world environmental organization is long overdue. The mechanisms of international governance cannot but adjust to the geography of globalization.
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