占领华尔街运动给商界的启示

    探索“抵抗的日常形式”（斯科特语）是这本书的中心议题。权力和制度通常是在它们引发的不听从、颠覆性和不服从行为的背景下得到确立的。斯科特指出，具有讽刺意味的是，盲目地遵循规划和政策往往是最有效的抵抗方式。他非常喜悦地列举了许多“照规则行事”——即不折不扣地遵守正式的制度准则和法规——几乎使运营陷入停顿的例证（参见阿林斯基的第4条规则：“让对手践行他们自己设定的规则。可以通过这种方式干掉他们，因为他们根本不能完全遵守他们自己的规则，就如同基督教教会无法完全遵行基督教教义一样”）。

    《为无政府主义喝两声彩》一书显得散乱无章，不成体系。无论是从语气，还是从内容来看，这本书都与斯科特另一部权威著作《国家的视角》（Seeing Like a State）有着很大的不同。这部出版于1999年的巨著摧毁了技术专家治国论的虚饰，以及他所称的“高度现代主义”的嚣张气焰——这种带有政治敏感性和美感的观点认为，结构复杂的城市、国家和地区可以由富有经验的精英来规划和设计。

    斯科特以一种几乎毫无感情色彩的冷静笔触，探索了那些宏伟规划不那么宏伟的失败，以及规划者为何一以贯之地自欺欺人的原因。相比之下，他对来自民间，自下而上的创新行为的热情支持清楚地表明，他曾经非常严肃地认为，组织应该努力在个人首创和制度性强制力之间创造一种有意义的平衡。这是一本不可思议，令人惊叹的好书。

    《为无政府主义喝两声彩》同时也是一部更加个性化、更加亲密，坦率地说，也更加自我放纵的著作。这本书最精彩、而且最能引起共鸣的一部分是它的“前言和致谢”。读完这部分后，读者就会深刻理解，斯科为什么要撰写一本如此凸显无政府主义美德的小书。斯科特内心的矛盾和自我怀疑其实也是读者所具有的。每一位为授权与监督或非正式与正式流程之间的取舍（抑或如何区别建设性的异见分子和不服从行为）感到担忧的领导者或管理者，都会在这本书中看到他们自己的影子。

    笔者个人最喜欢的一部分是“第16片段——一个朴实无华，、反直觉的例证：移除红灯”。斯科特在这里介绍了荷兰交通工程师汉斯·毛德曼通过移除市中心的交通灯提高交通安全和公民礼仪的成功实践。放弃交通灯使得每个人（行人、骑自行车者和司机）都更加警觉，更加自觉地意识到他人的存在。为什么呢？因为强制性外部控制的消失催生了更大的个人自主权和责任心。

    “交通管理模式的转变带来的影响令人陶醉，”斯科特写道。“荷兰小镇骄傲地竖起了一个写着‘没有交通标识’字样的标牌，还举行了一个会议，讨论宣称‘不安全即安全’的新哲学。”

    Exploring "everyday forms of resistance," as Scott calls them, is central to his work. Power and institutions are frequently defined in the context of the disobedience, subversiveness, and insubordination they provoke. Ironically, Scott points out, slavish adherence to plans and policies often proves the most effective way to revolt. He delights in examples of how "work to rule" -- that is, ruthlessly following formal institutional guidelines and regulation to the letter -- virtually guarantee that operations will grind to a halt. (Cf. Alinsky's Rule 4: "Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.")

    Discursive and impressionistic, Two Cheers for Anarchism is different both in tone and substance from Scott's magisterial Seeing Like a State, his 1999 opus that dismantled the technocratic pretentions and arrogance of what he called "high modernism" -- the political sensibility and aesthetic that complex cities, states and regions can be meaningfully planned and programmed by sophisticated elites.

    With an almost clinical dispassion, Scott explored the not-so-grand failures of grand planning, and the reasons why grand planners so consistently delude themselves. His passionate support of vernacular, bottom-up innovation, by contrast, made abundantly clear that he had thought seriously about how organizations should strive to create meaningful balances of power between individual initiative and institutional imperatives. It's a wonderful, breathtaking book.

    Two Cheers is more personal, more intimate and, frankly, more self-indulgent. The best and most resonant part of the book is the "Preface and Acknowledgements." The reader will come away with an excellent sense of Scott's reasons and rationale for writing a smaller book in which anarchism's questionable virtues loom so large. Scott's internal ambivalence and self-doubt become those of his readers. Every serious leader or manager worried about the trade-offs between empowerment and oversight, or informal versus formal processes, or drawing lines between constructive dissent and insubordination, will see themselves here.

    My favorite slice was "Fragment 16 -- A Modest, Counterintuitive Example: Red Light Removal." Here Scott describes Dutch traffic engineer Hans Moderman's successful effort to improve traffic safety and civic comity by removing traffic lights from city centers. Abandoning traffic lights made everyone -- pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers alike -- more alert and aware of one another. Why? Because the absence of imposed external controls elicited greater personal autonomy and responsibility.

    "The effect of what was a paradigm shift in traffic management was euphoria," Scott writes. "Small towns in the Netherlands put up one sign boasting that they were 'Free of Traffic Signs' ... and a conference discussing the new philosophy proclaimed 'Unsafe is safe.'"