编者按：本系列围绕对“国家”这个概念的讨论展开，将于每周二更新，长期推送
We live in a society that is divided into classes, in which a few people have vast amounts of private property, and most of us have virtually none. Naturally, we tend to take it for granted that things have always been like this. But in fact, for the greater part of human history, there were no classes, no private property, and no armies or police. This was the situation during the half a million years of human development up to 5,000 or 10,000 years ago.
我们生存在划分为阶级的社会里，少数人拥有大量私有财产，大多数人事实上一无所有。自然，我们倾向于想当然地以为事情一向如此。而事实上，人类历史的大部份时期并没有阶级，没有私有财产，也没有军队警察。在人类发展的五十万年里，直到五千或一万年以前，情形都是如此。
Until more food could be produced by one person’s work than was needed to keep that person fit for work, there could be no division into classes. What was the point of keeping slaves if all that they produced was needed to keep them alive?
在一个人的劳动还没能生产出比维持劳动力所需的更多食物以前，阶级划分是不会存在的。假如奴隶的产出只够维持他们自己的生存，那么拥有奴隶又有何用？
But beyond a certain point, the advance of production made class divisions not only possible but necessary. Enough food could be produced to leave a surplus after the immediate producers had taken enough to stay alive. And the means existed to store this food and to transport it from one place to another.
但在一定阶段以后，生产的进步使阶级划分不仅可能，而且成为必要。那就是，除了维持直接从事劳动者的生存之外，食物的产出尚有剩余；贮存食物和在不同地点之间运输的手段也已存在。
The people whose labour produced all this food could simply have eaten the extra ‘surplus’ food. Since they lived fairly meagre, miserable lives, they were strongly tempted. But that left them unprotected against the ravages of nature, which might lean famine or a flood the next year, and against attacks from angry tribes from outside the area.
通过劳动生产出这些食物的人们可以简单地吃掉这些额外的“剩余”食物。由于他们过着相当贫困、匮乏的生活，这种诱惑很强烈。但那会使他们无力抵御自然灾害，比如来年的饥荒或洪水，也无力对抗外来的狂暴部族的攻击。
It was, at first, of great advantage to everyone if a special group of people took charge of this extra wealth, storing it against future disaster, using it to support craftsmen, building up means defence, exchanging part of it with distant peoples for useful objects. These activities came to be carried out in the first towns, where administrators, merchants and craftsmen lived. Out of the markings on tablets used to keep a record of the different sorts of wealth, writing began to develop.
起初，由一个特别的集团看管剩余财富，将之储存起来以防未来的灾祸，用它供养手工艺者，建造防御工事，为了有用的目的拿出部份产品跟远方的人们交换，这对每个人来说，都是很大的便利。在最早的城镇里这类活动已开始进行，存在着行政官、商人和手工艺者。通过在书版上做记号来登记各类财富，书写开始得到发展。
Such were the first, faltering steps of what we call ‘civilisation’. But – and it was a very big but – all this was based on control of the increased wealth by a small minority of the population. And the minority used the wealth for its own good as well as the good of society as a whole.
这就是最早的、向我们所说的“文明”迈出的蹒跚步伐。但是——这非常重要——所有这一切建基于少数人口控制下的财富增长。总体上这少数人既为社会也为自己的利益使用这些财富。
The more production developed, the more wealth came into the hands of this minority – and the more it became cut off from the rest of society. Rules, which began as a means of benefiting society, became ‘laws’, insisting that the wealth and the land that produced it was the ‘private property’ of the minority. A ruling class had come into existence – and laws defended its power.
随着生产的发展，这少数人掌握了更多财富，并与社会其它部分日益脱离。起先作为服务于社会的手段而订立的规章，现在成了“法律”，坚称用于生产的土地和财富是这少数人的“私有财产”。一个统治阶级开始出现，并以法律捍卫它的权力。
You might perhaps ask whether it would have been possible for society to have developed otherwise, for those who laboured on the land to control its produce?
你或许会问，社会是不是有可能以别的方式发展，由那些在土地上劳作的人来支配产品？
The answer has to be no. Not because of ‘human nature’, but because society was still very poor. The majority of the Earth’s population were too busy scratching the soil for a meagre living to have time to develop systems of writing and reading, to create works of art, to build ships for trade, to plot the course of the stars, to discover the rudiments of mathematics, to work out when rivers would flood or how irrigation channels should be constructed. These things could only happen if some of the necessities of life were seized from the mass of the population and used to maintain a privileged minority which did not have to toil from sunrise to sunset.
答案是否定的。不是因为“人性”，而是因为社会仍然相当贫穷。地球上的多数人口忙于耕种土地，维持贫困的生活，没有时间发展读写规则，创作艺术品，建造商船，绘制星宿的轨道，探索初等数学，计算出什么时候江河泛滥，或解决如何建造灌溉的水渠。只有当多数人口的生活必需品被侵夺，用来供养一个享有特权、无需终日劳作的少数人时，这些活动才会发生。
However, that does not mean that the division into classes remains necessary today. The last century has seen a development of production undreamt of in the previous history of humanity. Natural scarcity has been overcome – what now exists is artificial scarcity, created as governments destroy food stocks.
然而，这并不意味着阶级划分现在仍然必要。上一世纪，生产已有了以往人类历史所梦想不到的发展。自然界的匮乏已经被克服——目前存在的是人为的匮乏，是由政府销毁库存食品造成的。
Class society today is holding humanity back, not leading it forward.
今天的阶级社会不是带领人类前进，而是拉向倒退。今天的阶级社会不是带领人类前进，而是拉向倒退。
It was not just the first change from purely agricultural societies to societies of towns and cities that gave rise, necessarily, to new class divisions. The same process was repeated every time new ways of producing wealth began to develop.
从纯粹的农业社会发展到城镇社会而造成的必然的、新的阶级划分，不只是第一次变迁。每当新的生产财富的手段开始发展，同样的过程就会重复发生。
So, in Britain 1,000 years ago, the ruling class was made up of feudal barons who controlled the land and lived off the backs of the serfs. But as trade began to develop on a big scale, there grew up alongside them in the cities a new privileged class of wealthy merchants. And when industry began to develop on a substantial scale, their power in turn was disputed by the owners of industrial enterprises.
因此，一千年前的英国，统治阶级是由控制着土地、靠农奴劳动来生活的封建贵族组成的。但当贸易大规模发展，在城市里，从他们旁边成长起一个新的特权阶级：富裕商人。而当工业开始大规模发展，他们的权力接着为企业主所夺得。
At each stage in the development of society there was an oppressed class whose physical labour created the wealth, and a ruling class who controlled that wealth. But as society developed both the oppressed and the oppressors underwent changes.
在社会发展的每个时期，都存在着一个以体力劳动创造财富的被压迫阶级，和一个控制着财富的统治阶级。但随着社会发展，压迫者和被压迫者也经历了变化。
In the slave society of Ancient Rome the slaves were the personal property of the ruling class. The slave owner owned the goods produced by the slave because he owned the slave, in exactly the same way as he owned the milk produced by a cow because he owned the cow.
在古罗马奴隶社会中，奴隶是统治阶级的个人财产。奴隶主因占有奴隶而占有了奴隶生产的产品，这跟他占有母牛因此占有了牛奶是一样的。
In the feudal society of the Middle Ages the serfs had their own land, and owned what was produced from it; but in return for having this land they had to do a number of days work every year on the land owned by the feudal lord. Their time would be divided – perhaps half their time they would be working for the lord, half the time for themselves. If they refused to do work for the lord, he was entitled to punish them (through flogging, imprisonment or worse).
在中世纪的封建社会里，农奴拥有自己的土地，并拥有土地上的出产；但作为拥有土地的报偿，他们每年不得不在封建领主的土地上工作许多天数。他们的时间被分开来——可能一半时间为地主劳动，一半时间为自己。假如他们拒绝为地主劳动，地主有权处罚他们（通过鞭打、囚禁或更坏的办法）。
In modern capitalist society the boss does not physically own the worker nor is he entitled to physically punish a worker who refuses to do unpaid work for him. But the boss does own the factories where the worker has to get a job if he or she wants to keep alive. So it is fairly easy for him to force the worker to put up with a wage which is much less than the value of the goods the worker makes in the factory.
在当代资本主义社会里，老板对工人并无人身占有权，对拒绝无偿劳动的工人也无权进行体罚。但老板拥有工厂，工人想要维生，就不能不获取一份工作。因此对老板来说，要强迫工人只拿到比他在工厂里生产出来的商品价值低得多的工资，是相当容易的。
In each case the oppressing class gets control of all the wealth that is left over once the most elementary needs of the workers have been met. The slave owner wants to keep his property in a good condition, so he feeds his slave in exactly the same way as you might oil your car. But everything surplus to the physical needs of the slave, the owner uses for his own enjoyment. The feudal serf has to feed and clothe himself with the work he puts in on his own bit of land. All the extra labour he puts in on the lord’s fields goes to the lord.
在每一种情况下，统治阶级都控制着劳动者用以满足最基本的需要之外的所有剩余财富。奴隶主要想很好地保持他的财产，就要像给汽车加油一样养活他的奴隶。但超出奴隶的生理需要以外的所有剩余，都归奴隶主自己享用。封建农奴必须耕种自己的小块土地以获取衣食。他在地主土地上的额外劳动则统统归地主所有。
The modern worker gets paid a wage. All the other wealth he creates goes to the employing class as profit, interest or rent.
当代工人得到的是工资。他所创造的其余财富都以利润、利息和租金的方式归雇主阶级所有。
网友评论