摘要
彭慕兰 (KennethPomeranz)在其新著《大分岔》中提出了一个颇具吸引力的观点 ,即欧洲发展与中国内卷之间的“大分岔”是在 1 80 0年以后才出现的。由于彭书轻视关于具体生活和生产状况的知识 ,偏重理论和书面数字 ,以致在论证过程中出现了不少经验性错误。彭书没有认真对待近 2 0年来西方研究 1 8世纪英国的主要学术成就 ,即对农业革命、原始工业化、城镇发展、人口行为转型以及消费变迁等“五大变化”的证实 ,把这些革命性的变化尽量写成是内卷型(即劳动边际报酬递减 )的演变 ,同时又把长江三角洲经历的人口对土地的压力描述为发展型 (即劳动边际报酬剧增 )的变化 ,结果抹杀了两者之间的差异。其实 ,英国的工业革命起源于上列五大趋势及其与英国煤矿业特早发展的偶合 ,而 1 8世纪的长江三角洲则不具备其中任何一个条件。中国后来进入的现代经济发展道路和英国完全不同 :即首先通过社会革命来进行资本积累 ,尔后通过农村的现代工业化来降低农村 (部分地区 )的人口压力。
Kenneth Pomeranz in his new book The Great Divergence has put forth a surprising argument of considerable appeal: that “the great divergence” between European development and Chinese involution did not occur until after 1800. However, because of his disregard for concrete knowledge about the conditions of production and of life, and his preference for fashionable theories and mere statistics, his book makes major empirical errors. For example, he imagines that Jiangnan peasants consumed ten bolts of cloth and two bolts of silk per person annually. And, he thinks that of the seven days required for producing a bolt of cloth, higher paying weaving took up three days (when it actually took up just one). Moreover, his book does not grapple seriously with the main scholarly achievements of the last two decades of research on 18 th century England, namely demonstrations of five big changes: an agricultural revolution, urban based proto industrialization, development of small towns and cities, new demographic behavior, and changes in consumption. Pomeranzs book tries to turn these revolutionary changes into involutionary ones (i.e. with diminishing marginal returns to labor), and the Yangzi deltas population pressures on land into developmental changes (i.e. with increased marginal returns to labor), thereby erasing the basic differences between the two. In actuality, Englands industrial revolution originated from the conjuncture of those five tendencies with the early development of coal, while the Yangzi delta evinced none of those. Rather than a 19 th century industrial revolution, we find a gigantic social crisis in the making. Chinas path to modern economic development would eventually turn out to be entirely different from Englands: capital accumulation would be undertaken through social revolution, to be followed by the distinctive development of modern industry in the countryside to reduce population pressure (in some areas). Even then, to truly alter the involutionary pattern of the countryside, and to raise labor productivity to the standards of the modern world, will require further development of small towns cities and of industry, as well as the conversion of crops only agricultural production into a more diversified system.
出处
《历史研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2002年第4期149-176,共28页
Historical Research
