美国现代性的三轮危机

Three Crises of American Modernity

自从托克维尔写下《论美国的民主》,关于美国的研究就一直存在争议与修正。笔者在长期研究的基础上,确认美国史上有过三组“反民主精英”:一是挑起内战的南方蓄奴派,二是导致1929年大萧条的垄断资本家,三是冷战中坐大的军工利益集团。基于在哈佛大学所学,笔者将美国建国后的240余年历史粗略切分为三段,每段长约80年。换言之,美国每经历约80年迅猛发展,就会遭遇一次严重危机。譬如从独立战争到南北战争,美国度过了85年的少年发育期。而从内战结束到二战胜利,期间也有一个80年的青春骚动期。美国人民仰仗林肯和罗斯福,两次度过难关。第三轮危机在特朗普上台后始露端倪。笔者认为,美国现代性的第一轮危机——南北战争是政治危机,第二轮危机——1929年大萧条是经济危机,目前这一轮则是美国霸权的危机。

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America ushered in constant controversy and revisions in the field of American studies. Long-term research has sustained the author’s confirmation that three groups of “anti-democratic elites” existed in the history of the United States: the first were the southern slave-owners who ignited the Civil War;the second were the monopoly capitalists who caused the Great Depression in 1929;and the third were the interest groups of arms manufacturers empowered with the demands of the Cold War. Based on his studies at Harvard University, the author divides the 240-year history of the United States into three roughly 80-year periods. In other words, every 80 years of rapid growth in the United States was followed by a serious crisis. From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, for example, America underwent 85 years of childhood. Between the Civil War and the victory in the Second World War, 80 years’ restless adolescence elapsed. Thanks to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, the Americans tided over two crises. A third crisis unfolded itself as Donald Trump was sworn in as president. It is the author’s belief that, in nature, the first crisis of American modernity, the Civil War, was political;the second, the Great Depression of 1929, was economic;and this time, it can be a crisis of American hegemony.