信任利维坦:不列颠的税收政治学(引进版) 上海财经大学出版社 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt

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本套丛书包含：

《发展中国家的税收与国家构建 上海财经大学出版社 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《税收公平与民间正义 上海财经大学出版社 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《税收公平与民间正义 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《税收公平与民间正义 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《税收公平与民间正义 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《新财政社会学 比较与历史视野下的税收 上海财经大学出版社 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦:不列颠的税收政治学(引进版) 上海财经大学出版社 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦:不列颠的税收政治学(引进版) 马丁·唐顿 著 魏陆 译 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《发展中国家的税收与国家构建 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《税收公平与民间正义 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《新财政社会学 比较与历史视野下的税收 上海财经大学出版社 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《新财政社会学：比较与历史视野下的税收 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《新财政社会学：比较与历史视野下的税收 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦:不列颠的税收政治学(引进版) 上海财经大学出版社 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

《信任利维坦:不列颠的税收政治学(引进版) 上海财经大学出版社 电子书网盘下载 2024 pdf mobi txt》

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• 与巨兽对视：帝国转型与英国现代财政制度

  作者：陈毓秀 发布时间：2023-07-11 13:05:16

  马丁·唐顿的《信任利维坦：英国的税收政治学（1799～1914）》一书涉及的乃是自拿破仑战争到一战这个时间段里，与英国财政和税收制度有关的构建与变化，尤其着重介绍了皮尔与格莱斯顿政府是如何使一直饱受国民抨击的英国财税体系，重新获得公众信任，并具有更强的资源动员能力以从容应对包括战争在内各种危机的挑战。

  在残酷的拿破仑战争过后，只有一个国家，也就是英国的财政经受住了考验，没有因为战争而崩溃，这是因为英国是少数在绝对主义时代保留议会制度的国家，提供了一个不同利益集团与政府讨价还价的上诉渠道，国民对税收充满认同，较少抗税避税，于是能在不出现政治经济危机的情况下增加税收。

  同时，由于拥有复杂的资本市场和信用网络，它还能借到规模空前的巨款，这与它较晚参与欧陆争霸有关，而没有英吉利海峡保护的欧陆国家，在之前三个世纪的战争与生存危机刺激下，以及因为专制君主缺乏国会制衡的缘故，无限制借贷，结果普遍负债累累，根本不可能偿还债务，不得不反复宣布破产、违约，导致信用低下，借贷成本高昂。

  再加上光荣革命以来的经济繁荣，虽然人均税负是它最大敌手法国的2～3倍，英国抗税运动却远少于法国。于是英国能比其他国家汲取与动员更多的资源，为军队与盟友提供源源不断的支持，最终打垮了强横一世的拿破仑帝国。

  但尽管英国在拿战中笑到了最后，长年的战争还是给财政带来了沉重的压力，这与它的税收结构有关。整个18世纪，财政越来越依赖国内消费税、关税和印花税等间接税，最主要的直接税土地税在郡和自治市按1693年时的贡献而不是现在的地区繁荣程度分配，导致税收没有考虑到近百年来主要地区的经济调整和变化，也没有反映出18世纪后期税负水平的增加。这使得税收收入没有与经济增长保持一致，并且税负的压力主要压在穷人身上。

  为了应对庞大的战争开支，小皮特政府进行了改革，并在1799年引入所得税，但因为皮特最初采取的税收评估和征收方式依靠对个人所有来源收入的综合评估，这种对收入事无巨细的评估引发激烈反弹，当时人认为政府这是以调查罪犯的态度对待守法公民。

  于是1802年的和平时期所得税被废除，在次年重新引入后，改为根据收入的不同形式将其列入不同的税率表中，不必再汇总所有来源的收入。这缓解了政府与纳税人之间的紧张关系，税收收入上升。

  然而1814年末由于国内收入委员会停止向伦敦委派素来由民间人士充任的负责管理所得税的外行委任专员，试图收回控制权，激怒了伦敦市民。对一个侵犯性官僚机构的恐惧，再加上更重要的，对战争时期沉重税负的不满，引发了强烈抗议，促使所得税战后被废除。

  可是所得税虽然被废除了，战争时期累积的高昂国债对高水平税收的需要依旧迫切——尽管利率下降了一半，但用来偿还债务的金额从不足税收的1/4上升至超过一半。这使战后政府陷于两难：政府意识到继续征税的必要，也希望重新引入所得税解决债务问题。但回归和平意味着大量开支失去正当性，人们同时也畏惧过于强大的中央政府威胁地方自治，打破权力平衡，危害国民自由，国内收入委员会的作为一定程度强化了大众这一观点。

  债务也提供了反对所得税的理由，因为所得税收入被从生产者手中转移到寄生性的食利者手中，用来供奉一个穷兵黩武、奢侈浪费，充斥庞大的领取养老金冗员的政府，是富裕资本家和地主对实业家与商人的掠夺，而后者自认为是经济增长与社会进步的支柱与根源。

  拒绝支持延长所得税，还被视为迫使政府节减开支的手段，特别是可以迫使政府减少补贴、消除冗员、压缩军事开支和减半支付政府官员薪水。于是对“旧式腐败”的攻击，成为战后政治的核心：在过去，不同利益集团在国会协商，有利于建立合法性并获得一致认同。但随着战后对食利者的攻击，越来越多人认为国会代表着一种充满偏见和失衡，为权力阶层和既得利益者服务的政治制度。

  对此，战后的利物浦政府努力减少开支，并做出了成效，但单纯的节流不足以解决支出问题。英国直接税比重低于欧洲国家，可国内政局又是反对所得税的。于是这陷入了一个恶性循环，1816、1819两次所得税引入失败，使得财政更加依赖关税和消费税，打击了商业和贸易，工人阶级消费者背负了更沉重的负担。

  而战时债务的沉重负担以及用累退性税收支付食利者利息，也使财政制度的合法性在战后遭到了更大程度的质疑，人们不相信其他纳税人为国家支出做出了应有的贡献，也不相信国家的花钱方式在不同阶级和利益群体之间是公平的。

  攻击政府低效臃肿不民主的激进主义运动于是在20年代兴起，在接下来的二三十年里发展成宪章运动。在激进人士看来，真正需要的不是强有力的政府，而是一个活跃的公民社会，建立在合作社、工会、互助会和俱乐部等协会文化基础上。他们还主张贫困和苦难从根本上不是经济问题，而是政治问题，本质是税收制度对穷人的不公，解决方法也应是政治的——为了确保对财政政策和国家支出的控制，应该引入男性公民的普遍选举权和年度性的国会审查制度。

  面对激烈的批评，政府进行了一系列的改革，虽然战后托利党政府起初期望在不改变宪政制度的情况下，保持少数政治精英的统治，但在强烈的压力下还是做出了让步：1832年国会改革，重新分配选区，取消了衰败选区的席位；1835年，经选举产生的地方议会取代了内部产生的自治市议会，并对司法制度进行了改革，减少了英国国教的特权；开支下降，减轻了腐败。

  可这依旧未能重建国家合法性，而且在废除谷物法对地主集团的保护、赋予成年男性普选权以使工人阶级控制国家的压力下，30年代的公共抗议活动不减反增。

  在这个背景下，新一代的统治精英登场了。作者指出，与老托利党人不同，皮尔的保守党政府认为，保持政治秩序和保护财产的最好策略，是制定能够公平对待各类财产以及有产者与无产者的政策，通过限制国家开支，尽可能使国家不参与经济利益之争，就可以保护政治精英不受挑战，并把国家塑造为不同利益群体之间的公平仲裁者。政治家应当克服个人贪婪和利己主义，应该拒绝利用国家通过打压一个利益群体以支持另一利益群体的诱惑，无论这个利益群体是寻求保护的商业组织，还是谋求税赋减免的社会团体。

  这一观念意味着国会在财政制度中的角色发生了转变，在18世纪，国会是解决对抗性控诉的论坛，但在维多利亚时期，国会变为公共支出的审计员。

  新一代人开始重建国家合法性与信任感，第一步还是减少开支，除了通过刺激经济增长以减少政府税收占国民收入的比重和削减国债规模外，政府还采取了一些约束政府支出水平的限制措施，很多措施在汉诺威时期就已存在，现在被重新提起，并且要求更严格了。

  结果虽然导致公共开支削减过大，国民福利下降，城市基础设施、大众教育、济贫支出严重不足。但好处是政府开始重建话语体系，重建拿战后被严重破坏的对公共行动的信心和对国家的信任。在此基础上，英国政府构建了一个详细且技术性的会记准则，以实现国家中立和公共责任，缩减开支，保卫自由，并在大众民主的时代约束为讨好选民，许下种种不切实际诺言的政治家，做到同时限制国家和选民，使他们富有责任感且厉行节俭。

  这一准则早在1830年以前托利党就开始规划，但到格莱斯顿时才成为一个详细定义的制度。

  首先是坚决反对税收担保，禁止指定将某种税收用于特定用途。18世纪采用税收担保是建立人们对税收制度的信任，使之相信政府有还本付息的能力。然而现在人们意识到这会导致政府职能的膨胀，使每种服务和功能都受到一个具有特定目的收入源的保障。

  1857年，公共收入专门委员会建议“整体预算”制，主张税收应是统一的，应当视为一个完整的资金池，与征税目的相分离。《1866年国库和审计部门法案》正式任命一位总审计长，由其负责监督所有收入部门都将全部收入交给英格兰银行，这些收入在英格兰银行形成一个单一基金，而不再指定特定税源的税收用于特定目的。所有款项都从这一共同基金中支取，用于支付各个部门的支出，任何盈余都要上交国家债务委员会。国家从各种渠道获取的收入都集中到国库，而不是再分散为多个附属子基金，下院通过投票决定对某一特殊目的的“资金供给”。这使得国会可以直接控制支出，防止支出部门为了部门利益拼命多花钱，能清楚地掌握政府开支的总体情况。

  其次是禁止相互调剂资金，即不可以把某一项目的结余资金调剂用于另一个预算项目，这会导致量入为出，使支出水平不断攀升。而这依赖于建立统一简化采用复式记账法的账户体系，让财政部门重建拿战时失去的对支部部门的控制，不再任由各个部门自行管理具体开支，使账户中的钱款从征收到最终用途都可以被追踪，对公众和纳税人来说，可以很清楚地知道钱从哪里来，以及花到哪里去了。

  接下来就有必要让国会每年对每项特定支出进行投票，支出计划不应该跨年度，而国会需要时刻警戒行政部门的扩张野心。但为了排除利益集团的影响，税收法律应尽可能一般化而不是特殊化，税务机关没有执行上的自由裁量权，如果政府想要鼓励某些活动，应该通过外在的补助方式进行，并且这种补助要受到国会详细审查，预算也由财政大臣单独制定，在预算被提交给国会的前一刻，财政大臣才将预算作为既成事实向内阁进行说明。

  最后为了避免财政大臣将可能出现的结余留到大选时，通过减税的方式讨好选民，一个新的财政公约规定，任何结余都不得结转用于下一年。为了减轻国债负担，自1829以来，所有结余都被转移到了偿债基金，以保持国家信用，确保战争时期年度税收不足时，公众会借钱给国家。同时政治家一方面严格限制新增借款，另一方面努力偿还既有债务。在这个过程中，国债从英国自由的威胁者，逐渐转变成国家安全的守护者。在麦考莱的笔下，国债变成了繁荣的源泉和英国自由的保障，是商业社会中守信与节制的体现，因为政府会谨慎公正地处理借款，这得到了19世纪下半叶人们的认可。

  作者指出，通过这些方法，利维坦被束缚了起来，专业的会计程序和下院的年度投票表决，逐渐发展成重要的宪政原则，这对英国的自由和国家认同是必不可少的。格莱斯顿时期，年度预算成为一件颇具戏剧风格，或者说颇具宗教仪式感的事情。格莱斯顿认为，国家财政是英国自由的基础，并且依赖于国会对所有公共支出进行详细的审查。行政审查、国会程序和洞悉英国限制支出诱惑的历史，作为格莱斯顿财政宪法的说辞影响至今。

  通过逐步重建的对政府的信任与认同，皮尔政府在1842年重新引入的所得税，开始长期存在，并于格莱斯顿时期被人们接受。这大大改善了税收结构与底层人民的处境，由于经济的繁荣，所得税的负担又保持在比较低的水平。

  这使得政府在日后能够课征遗产税，甚至推行了累进制的所得税，在财政上获得了巨大的自由空间，于是在进入第一次世界大战时，英国财政制度支撑一场世界性冲突巨大资金需求的能力强于其他任何参战国家，英国政府建立在对国债持续偿还上的良好信誉，使其在紧急状况时一如既往地得到来自全世界的大量借款，提高税收的代价也低于其他国家。

  可以说，在谷物法废除后，政府逐渐建立国家在各种利益集团之中中立的形象，越来越透明的会计技术、支出的持续下降和国家债务的减少使人们相信政府是公正廉洁的。30、40年代的政治动荡，于19世纪50年代之后逐渐消弭，攻击政府腐败、臃肿被视作过时迂腐的观点，激进主义的风潮涣然冰释，被体制收编，不再有刚性的激烈对抗。

  然而令主张小政府的格莱斯顿意想不到的是，也正是因为他的这份成功，使人们日益接受利用这个高效廉洁的政府机器为人们谋利的观点，并在19世纪90年代起付诸实践，历经两次世界大战，曾经以小政府为傲的英国，率先建立起“从摇篮到坟墓”的福利国家，这不得不令人感慨历史的戏剧性。

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• 大英建坊录

  作者：芳草 发布时间：2023-02-11 23:39:08

  ps:看了80多页，感觉有很多梗冒出来，即兴写了这些，以后如果还有就还会写

  "对于国债，正如它的名称一样，如果整个国家（一部分人给，一部分人取)的目标是要求停止支付它，那么就可以正大光明地的再支付一发辛的利息了。如果国家的繁荣要求不应该支付国债，那么国债持有人就会立刻被遗忘。这是一个多么荒诞的观点，一个国家的兴旺居然被个人绑架了"——威廉姆·科贝特。

  在经典的安格鲁——萨克森式自作聪明的讽刺性幽默的政治笑话里，建政粗人的两眼金光总是可以如两脚羊们看见赤地上长出祝余一般被梦幻的投射（尽管，某种程度上这比恰观音饼干还要悲惨）到那根本不存在的山海食谱上：那些烟民们自愿用自己的健康，奉献了宝贵的收税，支撑起带英的公共福利事业。显而易见的是，之所以可以成为一个经典的建政笑话，就在于很少有人这么想，笑话的诞生就在于形式的荒诞和实际一琢磨好像真是这么回事的惊奇统一之中。这是一种结果的幽默，而讽刺性的喜剧话题正是一种俄狄浦斯悲剧的预言结构，不论你怎么做，命运的齿轮还是会碾过螳螂的身体留下只能辨认模糊血肉的虫子汁水。毋庸置疑，这种一琢磨真是如此的琢磨一定不能受到实在的推敲，不然标刻在烟盒上充满着致命意识形态诱惑的"吸烟有害健康"就会更具一种黑色幽默的色彩，如同不能显露在光明之下的暗黑英雄一般，如果是那样，那么烟民们真的应该弹冠相庆：看着吧，好日子还在后头呢！上帝赐予我们一个黑色的奖牌来奖励我们对于维多利亚们的忠诚。

  因此，古老的表象和本质的辩证魔法又一次发挥作用：愚蠢的髮属高卢蛮子总学不会艺术的调节技能，上帝的钱袋子一声响，送来了路易十六的人头落地。而斯拉夫，好吧，斯拉夫还是那个斯拉夫，在最落后的野蛮里收取着酒精毒药的税务暴政彻底腐化着广袤帝国的心脏。比起治理大帝国迈向基辅罗斯精神的伟大复苏，还是包税商们的钱更实在。因而，在欧洲巴尔干的野蛮内面里，带英的财政辩证如此耀眼：纳税人们相信，他们假装主动缴税，政府就会假装主动建设。但是反过来看，只要油水出来了，一切就完结了。祖宗的意思是好的，你先执行看看嘛。因而问题总不是，人们如何相信自己参与的纳税活动如何获得一个可以与之匹配的政府建设行为，刀笔胥吏们转化为温文尔雅的资产阶级科层官员并非是苦了五千年的阉羊们上吊投井的行为真的取得了成功，而是千万年的苦难为那光辉时刻都纵身一跃开辟道路。因而，规训与惩罚，从景观到权力的控制，并非是一个有关柏拉图——福科式的灵魂与肉体的神话，毋宁说一种真正的福科式的隐退的权力领域总是幽灵般的出现在一次次资本主义必须保卫社会的真实实践之中：所谓"无政府"的饥荒比有计划的镇压有效，反魏特夫的洪水帝国才是现实的发生逻辑。

  人们相信利维坦吗？或者说相信与否都已经是利维坦自身建立与人民关系的一种手段而已。税务的收缴，因而在一个真正的经典资本主义国家这里，首先不是一个古老的官僚的横征暴敛的政治大义问题，而是一个经济领域的无意识多元决定现象。如果人人都生活在地狱，那么告诉他们生活在地狱有什么用？ 因而利维坦，不是一个策略，而是一个现象，是一个资本主义的寄生虫。

  当人们按照千百年来固有的活动，缴纳手中的赋税，当表象的机器真的开动，作为本质的国家活动就真的获得了它的能量。而反过来，如果国家机器还依赖于千百年来的惯性，那么一个真正的财政活动就无法建立起来，国家机器的利维坦就仍然是主观层面不断侵扰民众的怪物。一个真正的资本主义神话，开始于利维坦的信任成为了国王的身体一般空洞的存在，开始于它完全成为国家经济活动的纸面符号的时刻。不论你信不信，利维坦就在那里，之前只有相信它，它才存在，现在它存在，你才能想象。因而，把钱交出来吧，国家会建设的！这句话成为了双方都不需要的空话，民众不信任它，国家不需要它，它属于一个必须被保护的资本主义社会，是一个无人称的存在。

  这个社会是属于所有资本主义世界子民的定位符。必须保卫社会，是所有人的共识。而有关于税务的术语，就是围绕着社会的零零总总被组织起来的。

  一个格莱斯顿式的政治官僚，一个正当的术语就是处于：这一活动的行政成本是多少，威信力在哪，谁是生产者，谁是寄生者，纳税能力的边界在哪里，道德和社会伦理，一种通过税务来进行的某种暗示的文化导向是什么？他们的核心都是，保卫社会。一种清教式的政府形象，对于统一透明的国会审查和资金基金的一致储备是大英帝国在这位政治精英手下所完成的转变。这一标准的自由主义形象，有关于维多利亚时代的神秘幻想，绝非是某种天下降下的观念，英国在18世纪所依仗的通过国债来发动战争机器，通过地方保税制度已经随着拿破仑战争的结束，对于宏大的意识形态表象的狂热的消散，地方政府的债务夸大和税基的减少而几乎崩溃。政府的裁员，减薪，以及甚至以新还旧的方式都无法解决英国国债的债务问题。因而，格莱斯顿的清教政府所起到的并非是某种自由主义的幻梦，而是一个消失的中介，它为英国的精英政治留下了空间。

  因而置身事外的海外小岛诉说着来着路权，海权文明对峙的邪恶狞笑，经验主义的妥协又一次战胜了浪漫主义的理性。来自明确西方现代资本主义的科学制度取代了带有东方蒙昧主义色彩的"间架税"们，专业机构的评估员们与大厂主之间纸牌屋的谈判吃墨取代了神圣大唐帝国五坊使用大网表达对于无知相亲们出门无绿码的隔离请求。而这显然是来自于工业文明，海权文明对于粗俗路上走兽的降维打击。

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• 《洛杉矶书评》对玛丽亚·斯捷潘诺娃的专访原稿-Mad Russia Hurt Me into Poetry: An Interview with Maria Stepanova

  作者：熬夜看稿五百斤 发布时间：2020-07-31 11:52:33

  《洛杉矶书评》对玛丽亚·斯捷潘诺娃的专访原稿

  “Maria Stepanova was already an important and innovative poet by the time of Vladimir Putin’s accession, but the times called for a tougher, more public role. Unfortunately, her recognition in the West has lagged behind the high profile she has in Russia.”

  “玛丽亚·斯捷潘诺娃早在普京时代前就已经是一位相当重要，充满创造力的诗人，然而时代却呼唤更强硬更公众化的角色。非常不幸，西方对其的认可远远落后于其负盛名的俄罗斯。”

  Mad Russia Hurt Me into Poetry: An Interview with Maria Stepanova

  MARIA STEPANOVA IS AMONG the most visible figures in post-Soviet culture — not only as a major poet, but also as a journalist, a publisher, and a powerful voice for press freedom. She is the founder of Colta, the only independent crowd-funded source of information in Russia. The high-traffic online publication has been called a Russian Huffington Post in format and style, and has also been compared to The New York Review of Books for the scope and depth of its long essays. The Muscovite is the author of a dozen poetry collections and two volumes of essays, and is a recipient of several Russian and international literary awards, including the prestigious Andrei Bely Prize and Joseph Brodsky Fellowship. She was recently a fellow with Vienna’s highly regarded Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Her current project is In Memory of Memory, a book-length study in the field of cultural history.

  Stepanova has helped revive the ballad form in Russian poetry, and has also given new life to the skaz technique of telling a story through the scrambled speech of an unreliable narrator, using manic wordplay and what one critic called “a carnival of images.” Stepanova relishes this kind of speech “not just for how it represents a social language but for its sonic texture,” wrote scholar and translator Catherine Ciepiela in an introduction to her poems. “She is a masterful formal poet, who subverts meter and rhyme by working them to absurdity. For her the logic of form trumps all other logics, so much so that she will re-accent or truncate words to fit rigorously observed schemes.” According to another of her translators, Sasha Dugdale, myth and memory play an important part in poems: “She shares with her beloved W. G. Sebald a sense of the haunting of history, the marks it leaves on the fabric of landscape.”

  Maria Stepanova was already an important and innovative poet by the time of Vladimir Putin’s accession, but the times called for a tougher, more public role. Unfortunately, her recognition in the West has lagged behind the high profile she has in Russia. In this interview, she talks about both roles, and the way politics and poetry come together in her work.

  ¤

  CYNTHIA HAVEN: You’re a poet, but also a journalist and the publisher of a major crowd-funded news outlet in Russia, Colta. Yet Joseph Brodsky said, “The only things which poetry and politics have in common are the letters P and O.” Presumably, you disagree.

  MARIA STEPANOVA: There is a third word with the same letters: postmemory. Contemporary Russia is a realm of postmemory. I think it is a territory where poetry and politics still can meet each other on equal terms.

  Equal? Politics is a much more crude beast, surely. Look at our current elections. Look at elections everywhere.

  Well, we know crude and not-so-crude animals coexist in nature — and sometimes even manage to get along.

  So talk about this unusual coexistence, Russian-style.

  Russian reality is wildly political, but what is meant by “politics” is also wildly different — and not only because the Russian political world is one of repression. Remember that the ways and means of talking politics or even doing politics have long been different in Russia — not for a decade or two, but for centuries. Political thinking was impossible in the open, so it had to disguise itself. In order to form your views, or even to take direct instructions on what to do, you had to read some novel, or even a poem.

  People built their political views on Nikolay Chernyshevsky [author of the programmatic utopian novel What Is To Be Done?] or Dostoyevsky, and thus expected a certain level of political engagement from authors, even from poets. This has a flip side: a reader may treat reality more lightly, as if it were a work of fiction. That’s why it was so easy to revise and rewrite official history — in Stalin’s time or right now, under Putin. You are always looking for an example — for something to imitate — but there is nothing final about it.

  This search for an example, for a predecessor, is pervasive. When Russian politicians try to achieve something, they look for validation from the past — to Ivan the Terrible, to Lenin, to Brezhnev, or whatever. The same with Russian poets, who still rely heavily on different traditions. You can choose the one you like. You can look back to Pushkin or Brodsky, but also to, well, T. S. Eliot or Lyn Hejinian. It doesn’t really matter. The important thing is, we behave as if we are ascending the staircase but looking back. One always needs to feel the bannister under one’s hand. That is, we need something solid and from the past, which makes the present feel more real for us.

  Do you find that poetry, for you, is a space of freedom, even though it’s affected by your political predicament?

  I feel that the poetry is a powerful tool of inner resistance, because what’s important, what really counts, is how much you let the outer forces deform you. Poetry keeps you in shape. More important than outward protests is inner freedom, the ability to stay yourself. That is usually the first thing you lose. You can imitate the motions and doings of free people but be utterly unfree inside. You become an expert in deforming your inner reality, to bring it into accord with what the state wants from you — and this could be done in a number of subtle, unnoticed ways. This kind of damage weighs on us the most.

  I like what you said at Stanford, that poetry is, by definition, a form of resistance, because the first thing it resists is death.

  Absolutely. After all, it is one of the few known forms of secular immortality — and one of the best: your name may well be forgotten, but a line or two still have a life of their own, as it happened to lines of classic poetry. They come to life anew every time people fill them with their own voice or meaning.

  In fact, any activity that involves creating something from nothing — or almost nothing — is a way of taming death, of replacing it with new forms of life. When you are making a pie out of disparate substances — grains of sugar, spoons of loose flour that are suddenly transformed into something alive and breathing — it’s a living miracle. But this is even more evident when it comes to poetry, where the operative space is pure nothing, a limited number of vowels and consonants, which doesn’t need anything to stay alive besides the human mind; poetry doesn’t even need ink and paper, because it can be memorized. We are more lucky than musicians or artists, who need working tools, and budgets, and audience halls — poetry is a lighter substance. You know it was essential in the concentration camps and gulags — if you knew a good amount of verse by heart, they couldn’t take it away from you. Maybe I’m overly optimistic, but I think that poetry is better equipped to withstand political oppression. If you want to make movies or build opera houses, you have to bargain with the state, to make deals, and inevitably to lose.

  And yet you are a publisher and journalist, too. How do you balance the two worlds you inhabit?

  Strange as it may seem, it was never a serious matter for me. I never felt that these two levels were connected, or even coexisted. Maybe this also has something to do with what I was referring to — the schizoid way of addressing the present. It’s quite common in Russia: you can be thinking “this” and “that” at the same time, as if two notions were commenting on each other. This is very typical of the Soviet or post-Soviet space, with its sharp cleavage between the official way of behavior and the way you behave at home, between the official history and the hidden familial history, or what we call the “minor history (malaya istoriia).”

  And come to think of it, maybe I also divide my official face from my inner life. When I was a teenager, a student, I saw how the people who belonged to the previous generation were traumatized by the crash of the Soviet system of literary education and literary work. The Soviet Writers’ Union had been able to give writers enough to live on after publishing a book or a collection of poems in some literary magazine — for the official writers, of course, not to the authors of samizdat. You could live for three years after publishing a book, but it had to be a bad book, because it was the result of an inner compromise. Nevertheless, lots of people had the feeling that they could stay themselves and still, somehow, occupy some cozy step on the enormous staircase of the official Soviet literary establishment. When the system crashed, people were disappointed and disorientated. By 1992 or 1993, it became evident that the utopia wasn’t working anymore, especially for poets. It became evident that a book of poetry would never have a press run of more than 2,000 copies. It would never bring you money or even fame. I saw people crushed, melted, changed because of that. They had relied on a system that had suddenly vanished into thin air. They were still willing to make compromises, but there was no longer anyone to make a compromise with.

  And where did you fit into that architecture? You weren’t tempted to put a foot on that staircase?

  I was quite young and opinionated, so my attitude was rather harsh. I didn’t want to have anything in common with them. I refused to rely on poetry to make a living, to attain a position in the world. I would find some other professional occupation and would be as free as I could be in terms of poetry. It was the easiest way for me to stay independent. I split my world into halves.

  And that’s how it worked. I started in the mid-1990s as a copywriter in a French advertising agency, and then I switched to TV. Journalism happened rather late in my life. I cannot say it doesn’t affect my poetry, because it does. Of course it does. The things I deal with as a journalist get mixed up with the problems that make me tick as a poet. That space I was hoping to make — you know, the enclosed garden — is not secluded enough. It’s not enclosed now — the doors are wide open, and the beasts of the current moment are free to enter. Because I’m changing, too. You have to open the doorways to let the world in — to make the words come in, in fact. Because if poetry is a means of changing language, and changing the language is a means of changing the world around you, you must make sure that you’re ready to receive new words — words you find foreign or even ugly.

  That awareness is evident in your poetry, which features different voices, different registers, and discordant uses of language. Is that how today’s Russia affects your poetry?

  I think so, yes — “mad Russia hurt me into poetry.” You could say that the poet — that is, the author as a working entity — always has a kind of narrative mask or an optical system to serve a special purpose in the moment. The need to invent and reinvent the self never stops: you cannot do it just once, and every single thing that happens demands a complete change. The “you” who deals with new phenomena — birth, death, shopping, an idle conversation at the bus stop — is a new entity that hardly recognizes the previous ones. You know that all the cells of the human body are constantly replacing each other, and in seven years not a single cell of your old body is left. All that holds our personalities together is mere willpower — and our selves are as replaceable as brain cells. The human mind is a flowing thing, it is a process, and it happens somehow that the only solid and constant thing we can cling to is the inner zoo of the soul. I mean the persons and stories from the past that have no relationship to our own stories. Antigone or Plato or Brutus, invented or real, are actors in the theater of the mind. They do not change; they are strong enough for us to test them with our projections and interpretations. You could call the destructive element in yourself Medea or Clytemnestra — but it is you who is switching from one identity to another. In a mental theater, a single person plays all the parts.

  And that’s how you see the poetic process?

  I guess it is a fair description. A play is being performed, or maybe improvised, and there is an actor for every part, and a certain idiosyncratic language for each of them. But it is all centered on some very urgent question that is formulated from the outside, something you’ve been dealing with all your life: you’re born with this question and the need to answer it again and again. W. H. Auden spoke of neurosis as a life-shaping experience that is to be blessed — we’d never become what we are without it. I’m totally sure that certain patterns are shared, extrapolated to the scale of the whole society, so that everyone you know is shaped, at least partly, by the same problem. I guess this could describe what’s going on in a number of post-Soviet states; one can only wonder if a country can undergo some kind of therapy, if it can do collective work on collective trauma. Especially in times that are rather allergic to any collective project.

  I definitely share my compatriots’, my generation’s full range of traumas and voids. A few years ago, in 2014, in the midst of the Ukrainian wars, I suddenly wrote a longish poem about Russia. It was titled “Spolia” — you know, the architectural term, the densely metaphoric way of building new things, using some bits and parts of previous constructions in the process. You see it everywhere in Rome or Istanbul — pieces of marble, columns, stelae are used as mere bricks in a new wall. Sometimes an old building is demolished in order to provide elements for the new one. This involuntary coexistence of old and new is a good description of what happens to language in “interesting times.”

  And my poem was the result of utter shock: language was changing all around me. Not only was it heavily peppered with hate speech, but it also became utterly hybrid. People were quoting Stalin’s speeches, or brilliantly and unconsciously imitated the style of Pravda’s columns from the 1930s or ’50s, never realizing that they hadn’t invented these words. You have a good example of this now in the United States. When Donald Trump speaks about enemies of the state, he doesn’t know whom he is quoting — or even if he is quoting. I was living in a red-hot climate, and I still needed to find some reasons to continue. I mean, you have to love the place you live in. If it becomes utterly unlovable, you need to leave — or to find some other grounds for love.

  In the poem I quoted some of the criticism I was getting from critics regarding my “impersonality.” After my latest book, a number of them claimed that my work was a trick of sorts, empty and unrelatable, because I didn’t have a distinct and constant lyrical voice. I use other people’s voices, so I’m sometimes seen as an imitator, like Woody Allen’s Zelig, never having a full-grown ego, never able to speak in the first person — of myself, of my own needs and fears.

  It rather reflects your views about your country, doesn’t it?

  Well, that is exactly what I can say about Russia. It doesn’t really know what it is; self-definition is not our strong suit. It’s a huge, beautiful, and misused piece of land, inhabited by more ghosts than mortals, full of histories no one cares to remember, so they just keep repeating themselves — full of larger-than-life possibilities and a complete inability to avoid disaster. That was an image of the country I could identify with; in fact, for a while I ceased seeing any difference between myself and Russia, bizarre as it sounds. The Russian Symbolist poet Alexander Blok had called Russia his wife. I had a feeling that Russia was me — that our stigmas were the same.

  I was, in fact, identifying with the country. Not with the awful thing that was happening — the invasion of Donbass, the annexation of Crimea; there is no explanation or excuse for acts of evil, pure and simple, and these are among them. But to oppose the evil you have to learn the language of love. And to love Russia at that moment was a hard job. One had to become Russia, with its wastelands, faded glory, and the horrifying innocence of its everyday life — to speak with its voices and see with its multiple eyes. That’s what I was trying to do: to change my optical system, to dress my hate in a robe of light. You have to be a trickster to do that effectively. Well, my way of writing poetry is distinctive, in that it has to irritate — not only to affect or penetrate, but also to irritate.

  I’m still not sure that I’m answering the question, but maybe it’s the question itself that is important. That multilayered, multifaceted thing I’m trying to create aligns with what is going on in the Russian mind, in the Russian world. There is something very distinctive in the presence of the country, in the way it tends to describe itself, or to be described.

  Of course, we’ve just given a Nobel Prize to a woman who tried to do much of what you’re speaking about in prose, in journalism.

  You’re right, but Svetlana Alexievich writes nonfiction, or documentary fiction, and that’s another story. She is giving voice to real people; there are some true stories behind the books, a number of interviews, the feeling that you are dealing with documented reality. I am speaking with imaginary voices; they are real, but they don’t belong to me. (One Russian poet from the 18th century, Vasily Trediakovsky, used to say that poetic truth doesn’t inhere in what really happened, but in what could and must have happened.) I’m appropriating, or annexing, other people’s lives and voices, as if I were editing an anthology of unused opportunities. Sometimes it means I have to embrace the language of state officials, or criminals, or propaganda. The goal of the poetic, as well as of the political, is to make things visible, to force them into the light, even if they would prefer to stay in the darkness.

  By the way, Marina Tsvetaeva also used those jumbled voices, those different registers. You feel a certain affinity with her, yes?

  My parents conscientiously taught me reading at a very young age — around two-and-a-half, I guess. When I was six, I was reading everything I could lay my hands on, from Pushkin to The Three Musketeers, and lots of suspense novels, too. Then, on New Year’s Eve, someone gave my mother a two-volume edition of Marina Tsvetaeva. That was a rarity in Soviet times. It was an unbelievable gift, a kind of miracle — you couldn’t just go into the bookshop and buy Tsvetaeva or Mandelstam, you had to be a Party member to get it, or spend a fortune on the black market. I knew nothing about Tsvetaeva at the time. I was only seven. My mom read me lots of poetry, but this was something different. I opened the second volume, which had her prose. It was unlike anything I had read before.

  I still have a special affinity with Tsvetaeva. Not in terms of working with the language, because my ways of treating it are different, but in terms of how I see reality. Tsvetaeva lived under ethical standards, a moral pressure that was a constant presence in her life — some moral entity or deity that shaped her life, literally telling her what to do. Sometimes she surrendered to it, sometimes she resisted wildly.

  Nevertheless, she placed all her literary work in some kind of moral coordinate system. I find her example compelling. Because the question that’s essential for me is not the question of “how” or “what,” but rather of “who.” In the case of Tsvetaeva, we get that “who” in its fullest range, larger than life. You still can feel her presence — and that’s what counts.

  https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mad-russia-hurt-me-into-poetry-an-interview-with-maria-stepanova/

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• 大胆猜想，小心求证。

  作者：破墙麓以止 发布时间：2012-05-14 04:29:57

          还是在人人网上看到同学的推荐才知道这本书，看这本书时不知怎地让我想到对于《厚黑学》这本书的评价，确实是少有的不自欺欺人的书。也想到胡适之先生曾经说过的“大胆猜想，小心求证。”

      以前也常在想一个问题，人们认识世界是由他自己所了解的知识理论为基础而展开的，而对于自己所了解的知识理论是真是伪可能自己都会一无所知。人们所了解世界脚踩的基石是否是充实的，还是一个空壳，还是人如想要得到进一步真实的理论必须把基石摒弃？读完此书，也算是对我心中一直有的问题划上了一个句号。

      《几何原理》的问世对于人类的认识发展起到了相当重要的作用，从正面来说，它为很多学科建立了一整套的逻辑体系提供了有力的借鉴，即基于几个公认的假设，再由这几个假设进行推理论证就可以建立庞大的学科理论体系框架。但从反面来看，这也很大程度上挟制了人类的认识。任何人，只要认同其学科所提出的假设，则都会败倒在由此假设而建立的理论体系之下，牛顿力学理论正是很好的明例。

      然而历史的发展告诉我们，只有敢于批判前人的理论，否定前人的理论，历史和科学才能得以发展和继承。接受了此书中的认识论的观点，理论只是认识世界，感知世界的工具，顿感理论头上带的光环消失掉了，以前脚上的基石没有了。原来我们也可以凌空猜出理论，也不必担心此理论是否会无懈可击和不可辨驳。这确实是对人类的认识论是一个很大程度上的解放。

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• VOL.14逐案评论【泄底注意】

  作者：楠哥BRONAN 发布时间：2020-08-13 02:38:52

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• 会说话的孩子有人爱

  作者：F小姐 发布时间：2014-08-13 15:15:38

  不知道你因为不会说话得罪过多少人？

  反正我是不少的。

  哪里是什么爱安静的人，明明是因为不会说话老得罪人，只好不开口。

  于是，脾气变得闷闷的。

  于是，只好躲在家里看各种综艺节目。

  于是，你不得不认识那个说话诙谐、又风趣又幽默，又很有学识的蔡康永。

  甚至已经不记得《康熙来了》播了多少年了，同志蔡康永永远那样神采飞扬。不管是完美搭档小S，还是磕巴主持Selina或者明显没有其妹会说话的大S。蔡康永永远处于一种不败之位。

  从《有一天啊，宝宝》开始，康永哥的书，仍然走文字简单易懂的路子。读他的书，如同他在你耳边讲话。一句一句，带着康永的特色娓娓道来。

  《说话之道》1、2，都属于内容实用性强的工具书！带着他小小的调皮，却不掉书袋子。这实在是件难能可贵的事情。读他的书，就是他明明没有在卖弄学识，你却觉得他很有知识很有文化！

  看过《说话之道》1的应该都会记得那句“站在对方的立场，说对方最想听的话。交流不是只为了满足自己，而是要从倾听为他人着想。”里面的40篇说话之道，篇篇都是干货！康永说，他出第二本书的原因是因为又体会到一些事，所以把它接着写下去，就像是给人练拳的木人桩，增加一些配件和角度，让大家感悟更深一些。所以《说话之道》2，延续的是1的写作方式，依然是40条关于说话的建议，只是2里面不再是长篇故事集了，用了更多的对话和小故事来举例说明了怎么好好说话、说好话的技巧。

  康永哥认为“把话说好是我们的责任：没有别人能替我们把话说好，而把话说好，收获最大的，当然也是我们自己。”——这便是我的题目“会说话的孩子有人爱”的由来。人总是喜欢听好话的。不要以为“直来直往”的说话方式是有个性！那是招人厌！有句话叫“能让人高兴为什么要让人哭”，会不会聊天真是十分重要。

  康永哥说“请从说话方面开始照镜子”。未必有人看的外表，我们很重视，而必定有人听的说话，我们却不加修饰、很少检点，这很奇怪！

  康永哥说“想不出要聊什麼，就聊这个：聊天气、时事、工作，非常容易卡住，聊吃的却永远都有出路！”这点不得不赞，民以食为天，一说吃的，100%能得到符合！除非你在爱狗人士面前说你最爱吃狗肉。

  康永哥说“想不出理由时，怎么办：当你迫不得已，必须做出一件不受认同的事......你可以说一个「讲了=没讲」的理由。”反正就是，必须有理由，一听就是假的都可以。因为人们明明也是无能为力的，但是因为这个讲了=没讲的“理由”，大家就会假装相信你。

  ••••••

  康永哥的很多话，你一听就不自觉想点赞。当然在这本实用书里比较少。如果想看更多的金句，可移步《蔡康永的爱情短信》。

  会哭的孩子有糖吃，会说话的孩子有人爱！

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• 不贰过的我党

  作者：董磊 发布时间：2023-12-09 23:22:50

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