Now that both the obsequies and the ritual condemnations of Margaret Thatcher are over, the time has begun for a more analytical look at her legacy. I am not a bad person to start this off as I was neither a passionate anti-Thatcherite nor regarded by her inner circle as “really one of us”.
既然玛格丽特•撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)的葬礼已经结束，对她照例的谴责也已平息，现在是时候更加深入地评析她的遗产了。我大概是开这个头的合适人选，因为一方面我不是积极的反撒切尔分子，另一方面撒切尔的小圈子也不把我当成“自己人”。
A point that has been missed in all the verbiage of recent days is how much her thinking owed to Keith Joseph, the Conservative who helped to put the idea of a genuine free market back on the political agenda.
近日诸多长篇大论都忽视了一点：撒切尔的思想有多少要归功于基斯•约瑟夫(Keith Joseph)？作为一名保守党员，约瑟夫曾帮助推动真正的自由市场思想重新登上政治议程。
In saying this I am far from trying to detract from her legacy. On the contrary, she often said: “One day people will realise what they owe to Keith Joseph.” Anyone can confirm this by looking at her Joseph Memorial Lecture of 1996 given to the Centre for Policy Studies. The first part of the lecture, on the connection between a free economy and a free society, and the last part, on the perils of the euro currency project, are still fresh and relevant.
我这么说并非要贬低撒切尔的遗产。恰恰相反，她常说：“有一天人们将认识到他们有多感激基斯•约瑟夫。”1996年，她在政策研究中心(Centre for Policy Studies)纪念约瑟夫的演讲中发表了上述言论。演讲上半部分讲述自由经济和自由社会的联系，下半部分讨论欧元计划的危险性。这些内容历久弥新，至今仍具有重要意义。
I should like to start with a comment she made that has defined her – it was even raised at her funeral. Some see it as one of the worst things that she said; I regard it as one of the best.
我要用她的一句话开始论述，这句话定义了她这个人，甚至还在她的葬礼上被提起。有人认为这是她所说过最差的一句话；我却认为这是最好的一句。
“I think we have been through a period when too many people have been given to understand that when they have a problem it is government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant. I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They are casting their problems on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no governments can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours. People have got their entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There is no such thing as an entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
“我想我们经历了这样一个时期，太多人理所当然地认为，如果遇到问题，政府有责任解决这个问题。‘我遇到问题了，我需要政府的资助。我无家可归，政府必须为我提供房屋。’他们把问题都扔给社会去解决。可是，你们明白，根本就没有‘社会’这种东西。世上有个体的男人和女人、有家庭。政府只有通过人民才能有所作为，而人民首先必须指望自己。我们有责任照顾自己，然后是照顾邻里。人们过于重视自己的权利，却忽视义务。若不履行义务，则无权利可言。”
Thatcher meant, I believe, that people should first try to solve their own problems and those of their families and friends, and only as a last resort rely on government. The government is simply a mechanism with which people can help each other and force would-be free riders to make a contribution. I interpreted her remarks as an expression of methodological individualism (although I pity any speech writer who sought to persuade her to say those words).
我想，撒切尔的意思是，人们首先应当试图解决自己的问题和亲友的问题，走投无路时才能依赖政府。政府只是一种机制，通过它，人们可以互相帮助，并强迫不劳而获的人做出贡献。在我的理解中，她的话是“方法论的个人主义”(methodological individualism)的表达（但愿她不是在演讲稿撰写者的劝说下说出这番话的）。
I have tried to explain all this in my book Capitalism With a Human Face . Very briefly it means that the workings of complex wholes must be capable of being expressed in terms of individual components – chemical elements in terms of atoms, atoms in terms of subatomic particles and nations in terms of their citizens. Methodological individualism has been espoused by a long line of empiricist thinkers, some of very different politics to Thatcher.
我在我的著作《有人性的资本主义》(Capitalism With a Human Face)中尝试过解释这一切。简而言之，方法论的个人主义是指，复杂整体的运作机理一定能够以个体成员的形式表达出来——化学元素用原子表达，原子用亚原子粒子表达，国家用公民表达。方法论的个人主义得到一大批经验主义思想家的支持，其中有些人的政治观点与撒切尔大相径庭。
The classical liberal philosopher Karl Popper, for instance, looked at the abstract concept of war. “What is concrete is the many who are killed, or the men and women in uniform.” The 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume remarked that a nation was a collection of individuals. This doctrine has also been denied by many supposedly eminent philosophers, such as the overrated G.W.F. Hegel, who said: “All the worth which the human being possesses in all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the state.”
例如，古典自由主义哲学家卡尔•波普(Karl Popper)探讨了战争的抽象概念。“战死的许多人——或者说是身着军装的男人和女人——才是确定的。”18世纪的苏格兰哲学家大卫•休谟(David Hume)提出，国家是个人的集合。很多所谓杰出的哲学家否认这一理论，如被高估的黑格尔(G.W.F.Hegel)。黑格尔说：“人类具有的一切价值——一切精神的现实性，都是由国家而有的。”
Thatcher was well aware that the support she has been accused of withholding from declining industries in the north of the UK would have come not from a mysterious entity known as the state. It would have come from fellow citizens. She may have been right or wrong. But it was not a matter of her personal generosity. Nit-picking political philosophers have said that if she wanted to be a true methodological individualist she would not have added “and there are families” in her famous statement. It was like saying: “There are no forests, only trees and copses.” She was not so stupid as to fail to see this. But she was not teaching a political philosophy class. She was pointing out that aid for the poor, or distressed regions, had to come from somewhere – namely the inhabitants of the country concerned.
撒切尔被指责没有为英国北方的衰落工业提供支持。她清楚地认识到，这种支持不会来自一种称为“国家”的神秘实体，而应来自公民同胞。她可能是对的，也可能是错的。但这与她个人的慷慨与否无关。有吹毛求疵的政治哲学家认为，如果撒切尔想成为真正的方法论个人主义者，她本不会在那场著名的讲话中加上“家庭”。这好比说“世上没有森林，只有乔木和灌木”。她不会愚蠢到没有发现这一点，但她并不是在给别人上政治哲学课。她要说的是，为穷人和困难地区提供的援助必须来自别处——即所在国家的居民。
It was a pity that she was incapable of applying this reductionist thinking to foreign affairs. There are no beings such as Germany, Britain or Argentina – only complex entities composed of individuals. It is reasonable for a British citizen to value a British life more than an Argentine life, but it is unreasonable to put a zero value on the latter. It must be admitted that even if people habitually thought in these terms they might still support death as a necessary evil to avoid territorial losses and the like. But if this translation were always made it might sometimes lead to less nationalist policies. Even Thatcher must have been intuitively aware of this when she wept for 40 minutes at the loss of life when a battleship went down near the Falklands.
遗憾的是，她未能将这种简化主义(reductionist)的思想应用于外交事务。世上不存在德国、英国和阿根廷，只有由个人组成的复杂实体。一位英国公民对英国人性命的重视有理由超过对阿根廷人性命的重视，但认为后者毫无价值则是不合理的。必须承认，即便人们习惯性地从这些角度思考，他们或许仍然会认同死亡是避免领土丢失等等的“必要之恶”。但假如总是进行这样的解读，有时或许会催生出民族主义色彩较弱的政策。即便是她想必也直觉地意识到了这一点——当一艘战舰在福克兰群岛(Falklands)附近沉没时，撒切尔为丧生的将士哭泣了40分钟。