【编译】隐身的亿万富翁（雅各宾杂志书评：《亿万富翁和暗箱政治》）

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU4Mjg1NTg1NQ==&mid=2247483684&idx=1&sn=5c3f8b0bc4170d6c1ed5035ccda6772f&chksm=fdb0bce4cac735f27687ee981ba402adacffff3979c217aef91d6075c65a8834267767aae07c&token=378040658&lang=zh_CN#rd

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/billionaires-political-influence-donations-conservatism

编者按：

为什么贫富两极分化的社会不可能有真正的民主？这篇书评介绍了一本分析美国富人是如何隐秘操纵政治的新书，闷声发大财的少数富人无论何时何地都会威胁到整个社会的健康。他山之石，可以攻玉。

雅各宾杂志（www.jacobinmag.com）是近几年由美国的一些社会主义青年创办的网络媒体，取名自特立尼达和多巴哥历史学家詹姆斯1934年为海地革命的领导人杜桑·卢维杜尔所写的剧本，1967年修订时改名为黑色雅各宾派。海地革命是美洲地区第一次成功地反抗了欧洲国家殖民统治的黑人奴隶革命，也是拉美独立运动的第一枪，其主要领导人杜桑·卢维杜尔原是奴隶出身的种植场马车夫，受法国启蒙思想家卢梭、孟德斯鸠等人的影响，宣扬自由、平等、友爱的思想，并在革命后废除了奴隶制，宣布所有海地人不分肤色、种族，一律平等。

欢迎读者向公众号小编推荐和翻译雅各宾杂志的优秀文章，小编微信号：670132606。

The Hidden Billionaires, By MEAGAN DAY

隐身的亿万富翁（作者：梅根·戴伊）

Media-friendly, politically moderate billionaires like Bill Gates get a lot of airtime. But the vast majority are nothing like him. Most are highly secretive — and extremely right-wing.

像比尔·盖茨这样对媒体友好的、政治观点适中的亿万富翁经常在媒体上出现。但绝大多数亿万富翁并不是这样的，他们大多高度保密，而且倾向于极右翼。

Review of Billionaires and Stealth Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2018) by Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe.

评论书目：《亿万富翁和暗箱政治》，芝加哥大学出版社2018年，作者Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, Matthew J. Lacombe

Do you have a hundred thousand dollars? Even if you don’t, let’s pretend you do. The least wealthy member of the top 1 percent is one hundred times wealthier than you.

你有十万美元吗？即使你没有，也假装有吧。最有钱的那百分之一的人中间钱最少的也比你富有一百倍。

Let’s call that least wealthy member of the 1 percent Bob. Bob has ten million dollars. Bob is very different from you, but he’s also very different from a billionaire. The least wealthy billionaire is one hundred times wealthier than Bob.

我们给这个钱最少的前百分之一级别的富翁取个名字，叫他鲍勃。鲍勃有一千万美元，他虽然和你我非常不同，但他也和一个亿万富翁非常不同。亿万富翁里钱最少的人也比鲍勃富有一百倍。

Let’s call this least wealthy billionaire Bill. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, is over one hundred times richer than Bill, who is one hundred times richer than Bob, who is one hundred times richer than you — in this fictional scenario where you, unlike roughly half of Americans, have a hundred thousand dollars.

我们再给这个钱最少的亿万富翁取个名字，叫他比尔。杰夫·贝佐斯，世界上最有钱的人，比比尔富有一百倍以上，比尔又比鲍勃富有一百倍，鲍勃又比你富有一百倍。在这个虚构的情况中，你有十万美元，已经比大约一半的美国人要更有钱了。

Billionaires are not just slightly richer millionaires, just as millionaires are not just slightly richer average people. Billionaires are aliens, financially speaking. They may breathe the same air as us, they may be mortal (though they’re working on that), but they have different faculties and powers than we do. Their money gives them access to dimensions that are not accessible or even perceptible to mere humans.

亿万富翁就像是这个星球上的外星人。他们和我们这些平凡人类一样，也要呼吸空气，也会死亡（不过正在砸钱研究怎么克服死亡），但财富给予他们的能力和权力是我们望尘莫及的，甚至连想都想不到。

With some notable exceptions, including the current president of the United States and a few outspoken types like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, billionaires are very secretive. It has therefore been difficult for researchers to figure out exactly what they’re up to politically, and what that means for democracy.

虽然有一些著名的亿万富翁很喜欢在媒体上露面，比如现任总统特朗普、沃伦·巴菲特、比尔·盖茨等人，但这只是一些例外。大多数亿万富翁是非常隐秘的，所以很难知道他们的政治倾向。

A new book called Billionaires and Stealth Politics by Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe attempts to decode the political secrets of American billionaires. The researchers make “systematic use of web-scraping techniques to identify virtually all publicly available words and actions — concerning certain specific issues of public policy — by the one hundred wealthiest billionaires, over a ten-year period.”

新书《亿万富翁和暗箱政治》试图揭开美国亿万富翁的政治秘密。这些研究人员采取了系统化的网页抓取的技术，在为期十年的时间里采集了最有钱的一百个亿万富翁的几乎所有的公开言论和行动。

They conclude that billionaires are extremely active in shaping political outcomes, but in a very particular way:

他们的结论是，亿万富翁极其活跃地影响政治，但途径非常特别：

They try hard to influence public policy. They make large financial contributions to political parties, candidates, and policy-focused causes. They hold political fundraisers and bundle others’ contributions. They establish, join, or lead policy-advocacy organizations. But despite these billionaires’ prominence and their easy access to the media — which provides abundant opportunities to say just about anything they want to large audiences — they rarely talk openly about public policy.

他们非常努力地去影响公共政策。他们给政党、候选人、政策议程提供大量的资助。他们组织政治筹款，从别人那里获得资助。他们建立、加入或领导着政策倡议组织。但尽管这些亿万富翁地位显赫，也很容易能获得媒体报道，媒体提供给他们充足的机会对大批观众说任何他们想说的话，他们却很少公开谈论公共政策。

The researchers call this approach to influencing politics — heavy on behind-the-scenes activity and light on public statements — “stealth politics.” Its implications for democracy are grim. Billionaires are some of the most important political figures in the country, but they are unelected, which means the public has no direct way of holding them accountable. Furthermore, their activities are often clandestine and difficult to trace, which means that even if we could easily take them to task, we wouldn’t always know what for.

研究人员把这种影响政治的方式称为“暗箱政治”：大量的幕后活动和极少的公开言论。这对于民主制度来说不是什么好事。亿万富翁属于这个国家里最重要的政治人物，但由于他们没有担任公职，公众没有办法直接向他们问责。而且由于他们的活动常常是秘密进行的，不留下什么痕迹，所以即使我们可以轻易地向他们问责，我们也不知道该问些什么。

Their silence, write Page, Seawright, and Lacombe, “is often designed to conceal billionaires’ advocacy of policies that most Americans oppose.” They can command a media audience quite easily. Their furtiveness is a deliberate political strategy.

作者写道，“这种沉默常常被用来掩盖亿万富翁对大多数美国人反对的政策的支持。”他们鬼鬼祟祟的行为其实是一种故意的政治策略。

Not all billionaires keep mum, but the researchers point out that the ones we’re most likely to hear from are the ones whose views are closer to those held by most Americans. For example, in surveying the public statements of one hundred billionaires over ten years, the researchers found that only three had ever made public comments about Social Security policy, an issue that billionaires are heavily invested in (most of them want to cut it). The three who spoke out were Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, and George Soros — whose views on Social Security just happen to more closely resemble those of most Americans (who do not want to cut it).

并不是所有的亿万富翁都装哑巴，但那些我们最有可能听到的来自亿万富翁的声音只是那些和大多数美国人的意见接近的观点。例如，在这个为期十年的对一百个亿万富翁的调查中，研究人员发现其中只有三个人对社保政策做过公开评论，他们是沃伦·巴菲特、迈克尔·布隆伯格、乔治·索罗斯，他们的观点正好与大多数美国人接近，即不想削减社保，而大多数的亿万富翁都想削减社保。

Many of the country’s other richest billionaires, like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers, spend lavishly on campaigns to privatize and slash Social Security, but say nothing about it at all. The researchers note that “the intense, decades-long campaign to cut or privatize Social Security that was led by billionaire Pete Peterson and his wealthy allies appears to have played a part in thwarting any possibility of expanding Social Security benefits.” But we almost never hear billionaires come out and say that this is what they’re doing, much less present an argument for Americans to consider and debate, to accept or reject.

很多美国的亿万富翁都大量砸钱给宣传削减社保和私有化社保的运动，但表面上什么也不说。研究人员注意到，亿万富翁皮特·彼得森和他的盟友们领导了长达数十年的高强度的宣传运动，看上去对阻碍任何增加社保福利的可能性起到了作用。但我们基本从来没听到亿万富翁站出来说这就是他们干的，也没有听到过他们在社保问题上表达一个观点来让大众考虑或讨论、接受或反对。

Some billionaires live their lives in the public eye, but are still very selective about what political issues they publicly champion. In some cases they appear to prefer social issues — terrain on which they can appear liberal and forward-thinking — to economic ones. For example, Jeff Bezos contributed $2.5 million in support of a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington State. Since then he has received glowing coverage for his tolerant stance in the Washington Post (which he owns), and was even awarded the Human Rights Campaign’s National Equality Award.

一些亿万富翁在公众的眼皮底下生活，但依然精心挑选自己公开倡导的政治议题。在一些案例中，他们表现出更偏好社会议题而不是经济议题，因为在社会议题上他们能显得比较开明和进步。例如，杰夫·贝佐斯捐了250万美元支持华盛顿州的一个同性婚姻全民公投。在那之后他得到了华盛顿邮报对他的宽容立场的大量报道（他是华盛顿邮报的老板），甚至还被授予人权运动理事会的国家平等奖。

According to the data compiled by the researchers, Bezos has never said anything publicly about tax policy. Amazon is set to pay zero dollars in federal taxes for 2018.

根据研究人员搜集的数据，贝佐斯从来没有在税收政策上公开说过话。而他的亚马逊公司在2018年将会得到美国联邦税务局的免税待遇。

The country’s richest individuals devote massive amounts of money to the cause of privatizing and cutting government programs and slashing taxes on corporations and the rich, against the wishes of the majority of Americans. But only a handful of highly atypical billionaires say anything about politics publicly, and they almost always say things that Americans broadly agree with or that will improve their image. From media exposure alone, an average person might miss the selection bias and reach the conclusion that billionaires, like Americans as a whole, are an ideologically heterogeneous bunch.

美国最有钱的人把大量金钱投入到对政府项目进行削减和私有化以及减少对公司和富人征税的活动，这些活动的目标是与大多数美国人的愿望相背的。但只有少数几个非典型的亿万富翁在公开场合谈论政治话题，而且他们说的几乎总是那些得到美国人广泛同意的事情或者是能提升他们个人形象的事情。普通人如果仅仅看媒体上的曝光，可能觉察不到这种选择的偏向性，从而得出结论说亿万富翁群体和美国人群体一样，在意识形态上持有多样化的观点。

This perception helps billionaires as a group, because one of their primary defenses against public outrage is the prevailing impression that many of them are good-hearted, charitable, and have the interests of the general public in mind. Indeed, this pattern of outspokenness on the part of billionaires only when their views line up with the majority’s promotes a right-wing worldview in which billionaires are seen as society’s paternalistic benefactors.

这种错觉对于亿万富翁这个群体来说是有好处的，因为他们针对公众愤怒的主要辩护手段之一就是这种盛行的印象，好像他们中的很多人都是好心的、慈善的、心里有着普通公众的利益。实际上，亿万富翁的这种只在他们的观点与多数人一致的时候才公开发言的模式，有助于形成一种右翼的世界观，把亿万富翁看作是这个社会中像家长一样的施主。

That couldn’t be further from the truth: billionaires are self-interested, and they go to great lengths to promote their own well-being over the well-being of everyone else. The purpose of their political activity is usually either to directly push a privatization and austerity agenda, or to buy political influence so they can indirectly push that agenda.

然而真相却是：亿万富翁是利己主义者，他们从来都是优先促进自己的幸福而不是其他所有人的幸福。他们参加政治活动的目的，通常要么是直接推动私有化或政府财政紧缩的议程，要么是花钱买到政治影响力从而能够间接推动这些议程。

For these reasons, billionaires support Republicans more than Democrats, but they support Democrats too. The researchers call this “strategic contributing,” in that its primary purpose is to command an audience with and compel allegiance from politicians, rather than to express approval or trust. Billionaires engage in strategic contributing with Republicans, too: they are often less socially conservative than Republican politicians, but “many libertarian billionaires contribute money to Republican candidates with whom they disagree markedly on social issues” in order to advance the economic agenda they desire.

由于这些原因，亿万富翁支持共和党多于支持民主党，但他们也会支持民主党。研究人员称之为“策略性捐助”，它的主要目的是赢得听众和政客的忠诚，而不是表达赞同或信任。亿万富翁也会策略性地捐助共和党，他们在社会议题上往往不像共和党政客那么保守，但许多自由放任主义的亿万富翁向那些与他们在社会议题上存在明显分歧的共和党候选人捐款，目的则是推进他们所希望的经济议程。

In short, billionaires are heavyweight political players, and as a group they are primarily committed to moving the country in a libertarian, free-market, pro-capitalist, pro-billionaire direction.

简而言之，亿万富翁是重量级的政治玩家。作为一个群体，他们主要致力于推动国家朝着自由放任主义、自由市场、亲资本主义、亲亿万富翁的方向发展。

Some billionaires, like the Koch brothers, also “fund politically oriented foundations and think tanks, provide infrastructure and logistical support for social movements, build coalitions from the ground up, and indeed rival the power of major political parties.” And then there’s dark money, the untraceable backchannel financial contributions that are usually only uncovered by journalists who dedicate years of their lives to following the trail, and are otherwise elusive even to researchers like Page, Seawright, and Lacombe.

一些亿万富翁，比如科赫兄弟，也为有政治倾向的基金会和智库提供资金，为社会运动提供基础设施和后勤支持，从基层开始建立政治联盟，其权力之大，可以和重要政党相匹敌。此外还有黑钱，这种难以追踪的幕后资金通常只有那些经年累月跟踪线索的记者才能发现，即便是对本书作者这样的研究人员来说也是无迹可寻。

The researchers note that phenomena like these — complex political structures that transcend mere donations, and dark money that usually avoids detection altogether — mean that campaign finance reform, while sorely needed, will not eradicate the threat that billionaires pose to our democracy. The real problem is that people are allowed to amass such enormous fortunes to begin with. As long as individuals are allowed to be this rich, they will use that money to buy political influence, one way or another.

研究人员指出，超越单纯捐赠的复杂政治结构、通常不被察觉的黑钱等现象意味着尽管迫切需要进行竞选资金制度的改革，但这并不能根除亿万富翁对美国的民主构成的威胁。真正的问题是，人们一开始就被允许积聚如此巨大的财富。只要个人被允许如此富有，他们就会以这种或那种方式用钱来购买政治影响力。

Ultimately, to have democracy, we need to do away with billionaires.

因此，民主和亿万富翁是不能共存的。要有民主，就不能有亿万富翁。