全球化、地理、技术和制度时代

The Ages of Globalization, Geography, Technology, and Institutions
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-ages-of-globalization/9780231193740

杰弗里·D·萨克斯  June 2020
哥伦比亚大学出版社

当今最紧迫的问题基本上是全球性的。 如果我们要确保长远的未来，就需要在全球范围内采取协调一致的行动。 但人类的故事始终是全球范围的。 在本书中，著名经济学家和可持续发展专家杰弗里·D·萨克斯 (Jeffrey D. Sachs) 借助世界历史来阐明我们如何应对二十一世纪的挑战和机遇。

萨克斯带领读者经历了一系列七次不同的技术和制度变革浪潮，从早期现代人类通过长途迁徙最初在地球上定居开始，到对当今全球化的反思结束。 在此过程中，他思考了地理、技术和制度的相互作用如何影响新石器时代的革命； 马在帝国兴起中的作用； 古典时代大型陆地帝国的扩张； 从欧洲到亚洲和美洲的海上航线开通后，全球帝国的崛起； 和工业时代。 萨克斯证明，过去这些浪潮的动态为我们这个时代正在发生的进程（基于数字技术的全球化）提供了新的视角。

萨克斯强调需要新的国际治理与合作方法，以防止冲突并实现与可持续发展相一致的经济、社会和环境目标。 《全球化时代》对于所有旨在了解我们快速变化的世界的读者来说都是一本至关重要的书。

评论——Sachs, Jeffrey D.《全球化时代：地理、技术和制度》

作者：蒂姆·W·申克

杰弗里·D·萨克斯 (Jeffrey D. Sachs) 的最新著作《全球化时代》（哥伦比亚大学出版社，2020 年）旨在从人类历史的七个时代（从旧石器时代到数字时代）中吸取经验教训。

萨克斯将自己定位为全球贫困、环境以及外交和国内政策辩论中的进步人士。 他曾担任政府、基金会和联合国的顾问。 他经常被视为国民经济的“救世主”和消除全球贫困的主要斗士。 这本新书试图进一步拓宽这一范围，讲述人类七万年历史的前进历程，以此作为框架，说明需要全球合作来解决世界上最紧迫的问题。

为了评价这篇文章，我们首先必须超越外表的层面来讨论萨克斯本人，包括使他享誉全球的项目以及他目前的隶属关系。

萨克斯在冷战结束时作为反共专家而声名狼藉。 《纽约时报》称他在 20 世纪 90 年代初“可能是世界上最重要的经济学家”，当时他前往莫斯科，将自由市场经济学的“休克疗法”应用于俄罗斯社会。 根据 2009 年发表在医学杂志《柳叶刀》上的一项研究，萨克斯监督的这些大规模私有化政策导致失业率急剧上升，并导致“1000 万人因制度变革而失踪”。 该研究指出，“1991年至1994年间，俄罗斯人口的预期寿命缩短了近五年”，而且艾滋病毒感染率上升、酗酒和吸毒成瘾率上升，以及与资本主义转型相关的严重压力的影响 经济。

萨克斯还被派往玻利维亚和波兰起草类似的亲资本主义经济改革。 此后，他担任联合国特别顾问，并为全球反贫困项目提供建议。 他的主要机构所在地是纽约市哥伦比亚大学的教授，并且是杰出的统治阶级干部组织外交关系委员会的主要代言人。

这一职业轨迹向我们表明，萨克斯四十年来一直是统治阶级的重要有机知识分子。 有了这种理解，我们就不能仅仅将他视为一个分享个人观点的个人，而是将他视为社会中统治少数派的代表，他们需要特定的过去和现在的框架来维持其权力。 也就是说，我们必须能够不主要根据其表面价值来评估《全球化时代》，而是根据我们对那些放大萨克斯声音的人的利益和目标的了解来进行倒推。

统治资产阶级是社会中极小的少数，他们拥有世界上大部分财富，并且拥有以牺牲我们其他人为代价积累更多财富的手段。 他们拥有土地、工厂、银行和大众媒体。 他们的代表和像萨克斯这样受雇的知识分子制定国家和国际政策，为各国政府提供信息和建议，并为每个问题的辩论设定参数。 为了让这么小的少数人控制广大人口，需要强大的意识形态机构。 诺姆·乔姆斯基（Noam Chomsky）将这种现象称为被统治者的“制造同意”。 萨克斯的书必须被视为超级富豪武器库中的一种意识形态武器。

为了简洁起见，这篇评论不会全面探讨萨克斯的所有论点。 在此，鼓励基于对作者两个基本前提的回应对《全球化时代》进行批判性阅读就足够了。 它们是：“人类一直是全球化的”（第23页），人类必须寻求全球合作来解决世界紧迫的问题（第21页）。

首先，顶尖学者将全球化定义为一种较新的现象，可以追溯到 20 世纪下半叶。 （参见全球化社会学家菲利普·麦克迈克尔（Philip McMichael）、威廉·罗宾逊（William I. Robinson）和莱斯利·斯克莱尔（Leslie Sklair）。）确实，人类一直在流动，总是在交换思想和事物。 但这不是全球化。 全球化是指在资本主义生产方式下由跨国公司发展起来的全球生产体系的兴起。

随着计算机芯片驱动的运输和通信技术的廉价化，全球生产成为可能。 大约在同一时间，在资本主义激烈竞争的时代，资本有必要打破与国界有关的经济壁垒，以维持或增加利润率。 那么，全球化的具体目标就是确保日益全球化的资产阶级的利润。 “人类始终全球化”的说法掩盖了历史时期

ch 这种现象的出现，又是因为什么原因。 萨克斯从他的历史讲述中删除了对阶级、权力和财富的所有严肃分析。

萨克斯的第二个主要论点表面上令人信服，但我认为，这是故意误导，最终是阴险的。 萨克斯认为，全人类必须团结起来，共同应对社会最紧迫的问题，“包括控制人类引起的气候变化； 保护生物多样性； 控制和扭转空气、土壤和海洋的大规模污染； 互联网的正确使用和治理； 核武器不扩散； 避免大规模强迫移民； 以及避免或结束暴力冲突始终存在的挑战”（第 21 页）。 这些问题当然是我们大家都关心的。 我们的生命、我们子孙的生命以及地球上许多其他物种的生存都取决于解决这些问题。

然而，这种全球性的武装号召——或者更确切地说是合作号召——的框架方式也掩盖了资产阶级与我们其他人的关系。 并不是全人类都应对气候紧急情况负责。 2017 年碳主要企业报告详细说明了仅 100 家企业就造成了全球 71% 的温室气体排放量。 气候紧急情况并不是要我们减少乱扔垃圾、增加回收利用或缩短淋浴时间。 这是一个纵容和促进少数人谋取利益而不顾地球生存的治理体系。

萨克斯清单上所有最紧迫的全球问题都是由于资本与其他人类和地球的关系而产生的问题。 只有当人们因资本的持续扩张和私有化而被剥夺了在原地生活的手段时，强迫移民才会成为目前所面临的问题。 在资本控制财富来源的驱动下，暴力冲突只会变得更加频繁。 2003 年伊拉克战争就是一个典型的例子。 资本有一种贪婪的、永不满足的增长需求，需要积累越来越多的资金，以超越其他资本——而且它不能也不会“合作”，除非有必要进行公共关系拍照。

简而言之，萨克斯列出的全球问题清单忽略了最大的问题：资本主义及其捍卫者。 保护私人拥有大量金钱和财产的权利高于我们的生存权的环环相扣的机构网络最终威胁着任何可持续的未来。 萨克斯掩盖这一事实暴露了他的立场和动机。 否认具有对立利益的社会阶级的存在，本身就是一种阶级战争行为。

《全球化时代》应该被阅读、研究和讨论，但不要从其作为进步论着的角度来看待。 它应该被视为统治阶级撰写和推广的文本，旨在操纵和破坏我们迫切需要的根本性变革的浪潮。

4 条评论

乔安娜·格林
说：
2021 年 2 月 6 日晚上 10:59
感谢蒂姆的分析。

回复

大卫·罗默莱姆
说：
2021 年 3 月 30 日晚上 10:45
这非常有帮助。 它提醒我，有一些人虽然获得了公众的赞誉，但为平民生产的却很少。 感谢您对他的书的介绍。 我会用我所谓的“怀疑解释学”来阅读。

回复

吉米·洛曼
说：
2022 年 10 月 10 日凌晨 4:54
精彩的批评。

回复
DLGP.com | 互保建设
说：
2023 年 2 月 2 日凌晨 1:05
[……]“《全球化时代》应该被阅读、研究和讨论，但不能通过它作为一部进步论文的视角来看待。 它应该被视为统治阶级撰写和推广的文本，旨在操纵和破坏我们迫切需要的根本性变革的浪潮。” 评论链接[...]

全球视野的领导力博士：在互联世界中打造事工
互保建设

作者：迈克尔·西蒙斯，2023 年 2 月 1 日
https://blogs.georgefox.edu/dlgp/mutually-assured-construction/

人们说不要以封面来判断一本书，但我确实仅根据书名来判断这本书。 全球化一词已成为政治、经济和社会结构中的白噪音、一种背景假设。 然而，杰弗里·萨克斯（Jeffery Sachs）的《全球化时代》一书提供了全球化的叙述性历史框架，他将其定义为“[……]跨越广大地理区域的不同社会的相互联系。” 他继续说，“这些相互联系是技术、经济、制度、文化和地缘政治的。”[1]我发现他的工作有助于对全球化发展的背景进行概述，并在范式上得到加强。

全球化常常被认为是一种较新的现象，但萨克斯回顾了旧石器时代的觅食时代，以表明全球化的相互联系如何与人类历史及其发展同时发生。

萨克斯绘制了人类历史上推进全球化的七个时代

旧石器时代（公元前 70,000-10,000 年）：史前、觅食、游牧。
新石器时代（公元前10,000-3,000年）：人类开始耕种和定居。
马术时代（3,000-1,000）：马的驯化和通讯的进步。 这使得远程贸易和通讯成为可能，而这对于全球化的升级至关重要。
古典时代（公元前 1,000 年至公元 1,500 年）：第一个大规模帝国兴起。
海洋时代（公元1800-1500年）：当这些帝国向陆地和海洋扩张时。
工业时代（公元1800-2000年）：英国和美国等少数社会利用科学技术来推动生产和增加财富。
数字时代（公元 2000-2023 年）：当前全球互联和相互依存的时代。[2]
萨克斯在谈到数字时代时写道：

“我们正在从霸权时代转向多个地区强国共存的多极世界。 与工业时代相比，无处不在的信息流动使经济和政治全球化更加直接和紧迫。 我们已经看到世界经济某一部分的小问题如何在几天内造成全球范围的金融恐慌和经济崩溃。”[3]

尽管杰弗里·萨克斯看到了每个时代的转变和区别，但他在小说中声称全球化是人类故事和方向的重要组成部分。 每个时代都会带来新的挑战、维持和破坏生命的新方法，但他非常尖锐地指出，在经济不平等加剧、环境破坏和大规模地缘政治转变的数字时代，我们必须如何前进。 [4]

萨克斯似乎对工业时代黎明以来所带来的进步相当乐观，但他也对最富有的人和最贫穷的人之间的增长差距发出警告。 他详细介绍了联合国渴望的17个可持续发展目标，其中包括全民医疗保健、受教育机会、性别平等、控制气候变化等。这些目标都是崇高的理想，而曾为许多美国外籍领导人提供咨询的萨克斯 在这些主题上，强调需要在全球范围内达成共识和问责制。

从表面上看，萨克斯的书在措辞上似乎相当进步，但一些进步人士认为他的著作只是谈论变革，而没有真正倡导其实施。 一位评论家这样评价这本书，

“《全球化时代》应该被阅读、研究和讨论，但不能通过其作为进步论着的视角来看待。 它应该被视为统治阶级撰写和推广的文本，旨在操纵和破坏我们迫切需要的根本性变革的浪潮。” 评论链接

在一个播客中，萨克斯建议对美国政治结构进行革命性变革，例如废除总统和修改宪法，他认为这与数字时代不再相关。

最后，杰弗里·萨克斯描绘了全球化历史和未来的清晰图景，尽管他无疑是一个理想主义者，但我相信这些理想植根于实现共同利益和相互保证建设的目标。

The Ages of Globalization, Geography, Technology, and Institutions

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-ages-of-globalization/9780231193740
Jeffrey D. Sachs  June 2020
Columbia University Press

Today’s most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future. But humanity’s story has always been on a global scale. In this book, Jeffrey D. Sachs, renowned economist and expert on sustainable development, turns to world history to shed light on how we can meet the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century.

Sachs takes readers through a series of seven distinct waves of technological and institutional change, starting with the original settling of the planet by early modern humans through long-distance migration and ending with reflections on today’s globalization. Along the way, he considers how the interplay of geography, technology, and institutions influenced the Neolithic revolution; the role of the horse in the emergence of empires; the spread of large land-based empires in the classical age; the rise of global empires after the opening of sea routes from Europe to Asia and the Americas; and the industrial age. The dynamics of these past waves, Sachs demonstrates, offer fresh perspective on the ongoing processes taking place in our own time—a globalization based on digital technologies. 

Sachs emphasizes the need for new methods of international governance and cooperation to prevent conflicts and to achieve economic, social, and environmental objectives aligned with sustainable development. The Ages of Globalization is a vital book for all readers aiming to make sense of our rapidly changing world.

Review – Sachs, Jeffrey D. The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions

By Tim W. Shenk

Jeffrey D. Sachs’s latest book, The Ages of Globalization (Columbia University Press, 2020) sets out to draw lessons from seven eras of human history, from the Paleolithic to the digital era.

Sachs has styled himself as a progressive in debates on global poverty, the environment and foreign and domestic policy. He has been an adviser to governments, foundations and the United Nations. He is often presented as a “savior” of national economies and a leading crusader against global poverty. This new book attempts to broaden that scope even further to present a telling of the forward march of 70,000 years of human history as a framework for the need for global cooperation to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

In order to evaluate this text, we must first go beyond the level of appearances to discuss Sachs himself, including the projects that brought him to global prominence and his current affiliations.

Sachs gained notoriety as an anticommunism expert around the end of the Cold War. The New York Times called him “probably the most important economist in the world” in the early 1990s when he traveled to Moscow to apply the “shock therapy” of free-market economics to Russian society. These policies of mass privatization Sachs oversaw led to crushing spikes in unemployment and upwards of “10 million missing men because of system change,” according to a study published in 2009 in the medical journal The Lancet. The study noted, “the Russian population lost nearly five years of life expectancy between 1991 and 1994” and also suffered rising HIV rates, higher alcoholism and drug addiction rates, as well as the effects of the acute stress related to the transition to a capitalist economy.

Sachs also was brought into Bolivia and Poland to draft similar pro-capitalist economic reforms. He has since been a special adviser to the United Nations and has advised global anti-poverty programs. His primary institutional home is as a professor at Columbia University in New York City, and he is a leading voice in the preeminent ruling-class cadre organization, the Council on Foreign Relations.

This professional trajectory shows us that Sachs has been an important organic intellectual for the ruling class for 40 years. With this understanding, we must evaluate him as not just an individual sharing his personal views, but rather see him as a representative of a ruling minority of society that requires a particular framing of past and present to maintain its power. That is, we have to be able evaluate The Ages of Globalization not primarily based on its face value, but rather work backwards based on what we know about the interests and goals of those who amplify Sachs’s voice.

The ruling capitalist class is a miniscule minority of society that owns the majority of the world’s wealth and the means to accumulate more wealth at the expense of the rest of us. They own the land, the factories, the banks and the mass media. Their representatives and hired intellectuals like Sachs shape national and international policy, populate and advise national governments and set the parameters of debate on every issue. In order for such a small minority to control the mass of the population, a powerful ideological apparatus is required. Noam Chomsky has called this “manufacturing consent” of the governed. Sachs’s book must be read as one such ideological weapon in the arsenal of the superrich.

For the sake of brevity, this review will not fully explore all of Sachs’s arguments. It will be enough here to encourage a critical reading of The Ages of Globalization based on a response to the author’s two basic premises. These are: that “humanity has always been globalized” (p.23), and that humanity must seek global cooperation to tackle the world’s pressing problems (p.21).

First, leading scholars define globalization as a much more recent phenomenon, dating to the latter half of the 20th century. (See sociologists of globalization Philip McMichael, William I. Robinson and Leslie Sklair.) It’s true that humans have always been on the move and have always traded ideas and things. But that’s not globalization. Globalization refers to the rise of a global production system developed by transnational corporations that came about under the capitalist mode of production.

Global production became possible with the cheapening of transportation and communications technologies driven by the computer chip. Around the same time, it became necessary for capital to break down economic barriers related to national borders to maintain or increase profit margins in an era of tight capitalist competition. The specific goal of globalization, then, is to secure the profits of an increasingly globalized capitalist class. Saying that “humanity has always been globalized” obscures the historic period in whi

ch this phenomenon has arisen, and for what reason. Sachs removes all serious analysis of class, power and wealth from his telling of history.

Sachs’s second major argument is compelling on the surface but is, I believe, deliberately misleading and ultimately insidious. Sachs argues that all of humanity must come together as one to battle society’s most urgent concerns, “including the control of human-induced climate change; the conservation of biodiversity; the control and reversal of the massive pollution of the air, soils, and oceans; the proper uses and governance of the internet; the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons; the avoidance of mass forced migrations; and the ever-present challenge of avoiding or ending violent conflicts” (p.21). These problems are certainly of concern to all of us. Our lives, the lives of our grandchildren and the survival of many other species on planet Earth depend on solving them.

Yet this global call to arms – or rather cooperation – is framed in such a way that it too obscures the relationship of the capitalist class to the rest of us. It’s not all of humanity who is to blame for the climate emergency. The 2017 Carbon Majors Report detailed how just 100 corporations are responsible for 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. The climate emergency is not about us littering less, recycling more or taking shorter showers. It’s about a system of governance that condones and facilitates the profits of a few over the survival of the planet.

All of the most pressing global problems on Sachs’s list are problems because of the relationship of capital to the rest of humanity and the planet. Forced migration only becomes an issue of its current proportion when people are dispossessed of their means to live where they are, which comes about because of capital’s continued expansion and privatization. Violent conflict has only become more incessant under capital’s drive to control sources of wealth. See the 2003 Iraq War as a prime example. Capital has a voracious, insatiable need to grow, to accumulate more and more, to outcompete other capitals – and it cannot and will not “cooperate” except when it’s necessary for a public relations photo op.

In short, Sachs’s list of global problems is missing the biggest problem of all: capitalism and those who defend it. The interlocking web of institutions that protect the right to privately own ludicrous amounts of money and property over our right to live is what is ultimately threatening any sort of sustainable future. That Sachs would obscure this fact is revealing of his position and motivation. Denying the existence of social classes with oppositional interests is in itself an act of class warfare.

The Ages of Globalization should be read, studied and discussed, but not through the lens of its billing as a progressive treatise. It should be treated as a text penned and promoted by the ruling class, meant to manipulate and derail the groundswell for fundamental change we so desperately need.

Comments

David Rommereim says:
March 30, 2021 at 10:45 pm
This is very helpful. It has reminded me that there are those few who are provided wonderful public acclaim yet, produce so very little for the commoners. Thank you for this introduction to his book. I will read with what I call a “hermeneutic of suspicion.”

DLGP.com | Mutually Assured Construction says:
February 2, 2023 at 1:05 am
[…] “The Ages of Globalization should be read, studied and discussed, but not through the lens of its billing as a progressive treatise. It should be treated as a text penned and promoted by the ruling class, meant to manipulate and derail the groundswell for fundamental change we so desperately need.” Link to Review […]

Doctor of Leadership in Global Perspectives: Crafting Ministry in an Interconnected World
Mutually Assured Construction

BY: MICHAEL SIMMONS ON FEB 1, 2023
https://blogs.georgefox.edu/dlgp/mutually-assured-construction/

They say do not judge a book by its cover, but I certainly judged this book by its title alone. The term globalization has become white noise, a contextual assumption, within the political, economic, and social structures. However, Jeffery Sachs’ book The Ages of Globalization provides a narrative, yet historical arch of globalizations, which he defines as the, “[…] interlinkages of diverse societies across large geographical areas.” He continues, “These interlinkages are technological, economic, institutional, cultural, and geopolitical.”[1] I found his work to be helpful as a contextual overview of globalization’s development, and paradigmatically enhancing.

Globalization is often posed as a more recent phenomenon, but Sachs points back to the foraging era of the Paleolithic Age to show how the interlinkages of globalizations are a concurrent with human history and its development.

Sachs charts 7 ages in human history that advanced globalization

Paleolithic Age (70,000-10,000 BC): Prehistoric, foraging, nomadic.
Neolithic Age (10,000-3,000 BC): Humans began farming and settling land.
Equestrian Age (3,000-1,000): Domesticating of the horse and advancements in communication. This enabled distant trade and communication, both which are essential to the escalation in globalization.
Classical Age (1,000 BC-1,500 AD): The first large scale empires galvanized.
Ocean Age (1800-1500 AD): When those empires expanded across land and sea.
Industrial Age (1800-2000 AD): A few societies, Great Britain and the United States namely, utilized science and technology to drive production and increase wealth.
Digital Age (2000-2023 AD): The current age of global interconnection and interdependence.[2]
Sachs writes of the digital age:

“We are moving from an era of hegemonic power to a multipolar world, in which several regional powers coexist. The ubiquitous flows of information have globalized economics and politics more directly and urgently than in the Industrial Age. We have seen how a hiccup in one part of the world economy, […] can within days create a global-scale financial panic and economic crash.”[3]

Though he sees the shift and distinction of each age, Jefferey Sachs makes the novel claim that globalization is an essential part of the human story, and orientation. Each age presents new challenges, new ways of sustaining and destroying life, but he’s quite pointed about how we must move forward now in the digital age with rising economic inequality, environmental destruction, and massive geopolitical shifts.[4]

Sachs seems quite optimistic about the advances brought about since the dawn of the Industrial Age to present, but also warns of the growth disparity between the wealthiest people and the poorest. He details 17 sustainable development goals which the United Nations aspire to, which include universal healthcare, access to education, gender equality, control of climate change, etc. These goals are high ideals, and Sachs, who has advised many American foreign-national leaders on these topics, stressed the need for consensus and accountability on a global scale.

Upon face value, Sachs book seems rather progressive in its verbiage, but some progressives feel his work only speaks of change, without truly advocating its implementation. One reviewer wrote of the book,

“The Ages of Globalization should be read, studied and discussed, but not through the lens of its billing as a progressive treatise. It should be treated as a text penned and promoted by the ruling class, meant to manipulate and derail the groundswell for fundamental change we so desperately need.” Link to Review

In one podcast, Sachs suggested revolutionary changes within the American political structure, such as the elimination of a president, and a revisioning of the Constitution, which he feels is no longer relevant for the digital age.

In the end, Jeffery Sachs paints a clear picture of globalizations history and future, and though he is certainly an idealist, I believe those ideals are rooted in an aim toward the common good, and mutually assured construction.