占领华尔街运动给商界的启示

    如果你对参加占领华尔街运动（Occupy Wall Street）的人群，以及那些在“西雅图之战”中对抗世界贸易组织（WTO）的反全球化主义者抱有哪怕一丁点同情，你就会发现詹姆斯·C·斯科特的著作《为无政府主义喝两声彩》（Two Cheers for Anarchism ）对这些抗议者观点的陈述远比他们自己更加连贯。即使你认为他们不过是一群令人恶心、非常伪善的暴徒，你也依然会认真思考这本书的观点。倘若你真的钦佩这些抗议者，那么你肯定会爱上这本书——它或许是常青藤联盟（Ivy League）给予抗议活动最为深刻有力的支持。

    时而闪烁着洞察力，时而富有煽动性，间或又流露出一丝侮辱意味，斯科特以其特有的学术气质陈述了一个观点：技术官僚精英们不值得信任，不服从是一种应该倍加珍惜的美德。无需赘言的是，斯科特是耶鲁大学（Yale University）斯特林讲座政治学教授。

    “社区组织者”兼政治煽动家索尔·阿林斯基为激进分子制定了《反叛守则》（Rules for Radicals），斯科特则非常有效地为无政府主义者提供了一些警句。这本书讲的是颠覆制度性权力。简言之，斯科特是拥有终身教职席位的阿林斯基（美国激进主义政治家——译注）。

    拜Facebook、Twitter等社交媒体所赐，个人不服从行为在全球范围的蔓延为似乎根深蒂固的精英和潜在反叛者创造了一个“新常态”。这就是理解现代抵抗运动的学术（和反学术）基础为何如此重要的原因所在，无论你掌管的是埃克森美孚公司（Exxon Mobil）、谷歌公司（Google），还是一个独裁或极权国家。

    “我们对不服从行为非常感兴趣，尤其是那些堪称楷模、能够引发连锁反应、促使其他人竞相模仿的不服从行为，”斯科特指出。“我们所面对的，与其说是一种出于懦弱或良心（也许两者兼而有之）的个人行为，倒不说是一种能够产生巨大影响的社会现象。如果乘以数千倍，这种看似微小的拒绝行为最终或许会使将军和国家首脑们构想的计划沦为彻头彻尾的笑话。但正如数以百万计的珊瑚虫息肉杂乱无章地形成一个珊瑚礁一样，成千上万个不服从和逃避行为也将创造出一个经济或政治珊瑚礁。”

    Should you hold even the slightest sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the anti-globalists who took on the World Trade Organization in the "Battle in Seattle," you'll find that James C. Scott's Two Cheers for Anarchism makes their arguments far more coherently than they do. Even if you consider them obnoxious mobs of hypocritical hooligans, you'll still find yourself taking the book's arguments seriously. If you actually admire them, then you'll love this book; it's the most sophisticated Ivy League support you're likely to see.

    Alternately insightful, inciteful, and insulting, Scott makes an idiosyncratically intellectual case that technocratic elites aren't to be trusted, and insubordination is a virtue to be cherished. Needless to say, Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale.

    Where "community organizer" cum political provocateur Saul Alinksy had his Rules for Radicals, Scott effectively offers aphorisms for anarchists. This book is about the subversion of institutional power. In short, it's Alinsky with tenure.

    Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, et al, the global scalability of individual acts of insubordination creates a "new normal" for seemingly entrenched elites and potential rebels alike. That's why it's important to understand the intellectual -- and anti-intellectual -- underpinnings of modern resistance movements, whether you're running Exxon Mobil (XOM), Google (GOOG), Greenpeace, or an authoritarian/totalitarian state.

    "Acts of disobedience are of interest to us when they are exemplary, and especially when, as examples, they set off a chain reaction, prompting others to emulate them," Scott observes. "Then we are in the presence less of an individual act of cowardice or conscience -- perhaps both -- than of a social phenomenon that can have massive social effects. Multiplied many thousandfold, such petty acts of refusal may, in the end, make an utter shamble of the plans dreamed up by generals and heads of state ... But just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, so do thousands upon thousands of acts of insubordination and evasion create an economic or political barrier reef of their own."