the use of knowledge in society 中文翻译

by Friedrich A. Hayek

American Economic Review. XXXV, No. 4. pp. 519-30. American Economic Association

copyright：

source：https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html

part I

What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough. If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic. That is, the answer to the question of what is the best use of the available means is implicit in our assumptions. The conditions which the solution of this optimum problem must satisfy have been fully worked out and can be stated best in mathematical form: put at their briefest, they are that the marginal rates of substitution between any two commodities or factors must be the same in all their different uses.

当我们想要构建一个合理的经济秩序时，是为了决什么问题呢？在几个熟悉的假设基础上，答案显而易见：如果我们拥有所有相关的信息，如果我们可以从任一种给定的偏好系统出发，并且，如果我们我们掌握了关于可用手段的全部知识，那么剩下的问题就纯粹是一个逻辑问题——我们的假设中隐含了这样一个问题——什么是现有手段的最佳利用方式？已经有人对这个最优化问题的解必须满足的条件进行了充分研究，这一条件用数学形式表示最为恰当。简单来说，这个条件就是：

任何两种商品或要素之间的边际替代效率在它们的所有用途中必须是相同的。

This, however, is emphatically not the economic problem which society faces. And the economic calculus which we have developed to solve this logical problem, though an important step toward the solution of the economic problem of society, does not yet provide an answer to it. The reason for this is that the “data” from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society “given” to a single mind which could work out the implications and can never be so given.

但是，这显然不是社会所面临的经济问题。我们为解决这个逻辑问题所发明的经济计算方法，虽然是解决社会面临的经济问题的重要一步，但目前并没有提供一个（令人信服的）答案。这是因为，经济计算所依据的来自全社会的数据过去根本不曾被提供给一个单一的组织，以使他们发现其中隐含的联系。并且，这种单一组织以后永远也没有办法获得这样的数据。

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

合理的经济秩序这一问题的特有属性是由以下事实决定的：我们必须利用的关于经济环境的知识从来不是以集中式的形式存在的，而是以不完整的、且常常相互矛盾的分散片段存在——这些分散片段为众多（参与经济活动的）个体所拥有。因此，我们社会的经济问题不仅仅是如何分配给定资源的问题（如果给定是指，把数据抛给某个组织，让它来解决需要解决的问题）。相反，它是一个如何确保最佳地利用所有社会成员都知道的资源的问题。这些资源的相对重要性只有这些需要使用它的个体知道。或者，简而言之，这是一个如何最大化利用这种没有哪个个体能够完全掌握的知识的问题。

This character of the fundamental problem has, I am afraid, been obscured rather than illuminated by many of the recent refinements of economic theory, particularly by many of the uses made of mathematics. Though the problem with which I want primarily to deal in this paper is the problem of a rational economic organization, I shall in its course be led again and again to point to its close connections with certain methodological questions. Many of the points I wish to make are indeed conclusions toward which diverse paths of reasoning have unexpectedly converged. But, as I now see these problems, this is no accident. It seems to me that many of the current disputes with regard to both economic theory and economic policy have their common origin in a misconception about the nature of the economic problem of society. This misconception in turn is due to an erroneous transfer to social phenomena of the habits of thought we have developed in dealing with the phenomena of nature.

我认为，近些年许多的经济理论的深化，特别是许多对数学工具的使用，反而使这一基本问题的这个特征（注：知识不由某个单个组织掌握，而是分散在整个社会中）变得更加晦涩模糊而不是阐述得更加清晰。尽管我在本文中主要想讨论的是合理的经济组织的问题，但在讨论过程中我将一再指出它与某些方法论问题的密切联系。我的许多观点其实是许多不同推理思路出乎意料地得出的共同结论。但，正如我对这些问题的看法一样，我认为这不是巧合。我认为，现在许多关于经济理论和经济政策的争论都有一个共同的根源——这些人都误解了我们社会的经济问题的本质。这种误解是由于我们把处理自然现象时养成的思维习惯错误地应用到了社会现象上。

part II

In ordinary language we describe by the word “planning” the complex of interrelated decisions about the allocation of our available resources. All economic activity is in this sense planning; and in any society in which many people collaborate, this planning, whoever does it, will in some measure have to be based on knowledge which, in the first instance, is not given to the planner but to somebody else, which somehow will have to be conveyed to the planner. The various ways in which the knowledge on which people base their plans is communicated to them is the crucial problem for any theory explaining the economic process, and the problem of what is the best way of utilizing knowledge initially dispersed among all the people is at least one of the main problems of economic policy—or of designing an efficient economic system.

日常用语中，我们用计划一词描述关于如何分配可用资源这一问题的一系列相互关联的复杂决策。从这个意义上说，所有的经济活动其实都是一种计划。在多方合作的社会中，无论是哪个组织来制定计划，这项计划都在一定程度上依赖于那些最初并不由计划制定者掌握的知识——这些知识最初由其他人掌握，然后通过某种方式传到了计划制定者那里。这种作为计划参考依据的知识通过怎样的方式传到计划制定者那里，是所有解释经济过程的理论中至关重要的问题。而寻找那些利用最初散落在所有个体中的知识的最佳方法，是经济政策中最主要的问题之一，也是设计高效经济系统必须解决的最主要问题之一。

The answer to this question is closely connected with that other question which arises here, that of who is to do the planning. It is about this question that all the dispute about “economic planning” centers. This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals. Planning in the specific sense in which the term is used in contemporary controversy necessarily means central planning—direction of the whole economic system according to one unified plan. Competition, on the other hand, means decentralized planning by many separate persons. The halfway house between the two, about which many people talk but which few like when they see it, is the delegation of planning to organized industries, or, in other words, monopoly.

以上问题的答案与下面的这一问题密切相关：

由谁来制定计划？

所有关于经济计划的争议都集中在这个问题上。这不是关于是否需要计划的问题，而是关于应该由一个权威机构为整个经济系统制定计划，还是应该分别由多个组织制定计划。在现代社会饱受争议的特定情境下，计划意味着中心化的计划——根据一个统一的计划对经济系统进行指导。另一方面，竞争意味着由参与经济活动的相互独立的个体制定的去中心化的计划。两者之间的折中方案，是许多人谈论，但很少有人喜欢的方式：将计划的责任委托给组织良好的企业，即垄断。

Which of these systems is likely to be more efficient depends mainly on the question under which of them we can expect that fuller use will be made of the existing knowledge. And this, in turn, depends on whether we are more likely to succeed in putting at the disposal of a single central authority all the knowledge which ought to be used but which is initially dispersed among many different individuals, or in conveying to the individuals such additional knowledge as they need in order to enable them to fit their plans with those of others.

这些计划模式中，哪种更为高效呢？这取决于在哪种模式下我们能够更多地利用到分散于经济系统中的知识。

而后者又取决于下面两种情况中，我们采取哪一种更可能成功：

把所有最初散落在许多个体中的知识交由一个中心化权威组织使用；
把这些知识交由那些需要它们的个体，以使他们根据其他人的计划调整自己的计划。

part III

It will at once be evident that on this point the position will be different with respect to different kinds of knowledge; and the answer to our question will therefore largely turn on the relative importance of the different kinds of knowledge; those more likely to be at the disposal of particular individuals and those which we should with greater confidence expect to find in the possession of an authority made up of suitably chosen experts. If it is today so widely assumed that the latter will be in a better position, this is because one kind of knowledge, namely, scientific knowledge, occupies now so prominent a place in public imagination that we tend to forget that it is not the only kind that is relevant. It may be admitted that, as far as scientific knowledge is concerned, a body of suitably chosen experts may be in the best position to command all the best knowledge available—though this is of course merely shifting the difficulty to the problem of selecting the experts. What I wish to point out is that, even assuming that this problem can be readily solved, it is only a small part of the wider problem.

很明显，关于上文提到的计划模式的问题，持有不同种类的知识的人会有不同的立场。这个问题的答案主要取决于不同种类知识的相对重要程度——那些更有可能由个体占有的知识和那些我们希望由精心选择的专家构成的权威团体发现的知识。在现代，假如我们认为后者更有优势的话，那是因为一种称为科学知识的知识在公众想象中占据了极为的位置，以至于公众忘记了科学知识并不是唯一一种与经济模式密切相关的知识。我们不得不承认，就科学知识而言，由经过适当挑选的专家组成的机构最有可能掌握所有可用的最佳知识——尽管这种选项其实是将困难转移到专家选拔问题上。我希望指出的是，就算我们假设这个问题可以被轻而易举地解决，它也只是那个更广大问题的一小部分。

Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active coöperation. We need to remember only how much we have to learn in any occupation after we have completed our theoretical training, how big a part of our working life we spend learning particular jobs, and how valuable an asset in all walks of life is knowledge of people, of local conditions, and of special circumstances. To know of and put to use a machine not fully employed, or somebody’s skill which could be better utilized, or to be aware of a surplus stock which can be drawn upon during an interruption of supplies, is socially quite as useful as the knowledge of better alternative techniques. And the shipper who earns his living from using otherwise empty or half-filled journeys of tramp-steamers, or the estate agent whose whole knowledge is almost exclusively one of temporary opportunities, or the arbitrageur who gains from local differences of commodity prices, are all performing eminently useful functions based on special knowledge of circumstances of the fleeting moment not known to others.

今天，如果有人说，科学知识并不等于所有知识的总和，这种观点无疑会被当成异端邪说。但是，只要稍加思索我们就会看到，毫无疑问地，宇宙中存在一大类非常重要但是分散杂乱的知识——以关于知识的一般规则来看，这类知识并不能被称为科学知识——它们是，关于某时某地的具体情境的知识。正是在这一点上，每个人都比其他人更具有一些优势，因为他有一些可以从中获益的特有信息——但仅仅当依赖于这个信息的决策由他或他的合作伙伴做出时，他才有从中获益的可能。回忆一下，当我们完成理论训练之后（接受社会规定的教育之后），我们在未来职业中还需要学习多少新东西，我们在自己的工作中有多大一部分时间是在学习特定工作技能，以及对人的理解、对周围环境的理解和对特定情境的理解是我们成长多么宝贵的财富。了解并使用那些并未充分使用的机器，或者雇佣那些尚未更好发挥自己能力的员工，或者掌握在供应中断时随时可利用的剩余库存，从社会价值上来说，与掌握关于更好的替代技术的知识是同等重要的。以使用空的或者半满的轮船为生的托运人，全部知识几乎完全来自于短期机会的地产代理商，以及从商品价格地区差异中获利的套利者——他们都基于对其他人不知道的转瞬即逝的情况的特别了解，在履行非常有用的社会职能。

It is a curious fact that this sort of knowledge should today be generally regarded with a kind of contempt and that anyone who by such knowledge gains an advantage over somebody better equipped with theoretical or technical knowledge is thought to have acted almost disreputably. To gain an advantage from better knowledge of facilities of communication or transport is sometimes regarded as almost dishonest, although it is quite as important that society make use of the best opportunities in this respect as in using the latest scientific discoveries. This prejudice has in a considerable measure affected the attitude toward commerce in general compared with that toward production. Even economists who regard themselves as definitely immune to the crude materialist fallacies of the past constantly commit the same mistake where activities directed toward the acquisition of such practical knowledge are concerned—apparently because in their scheme of things all such knowledge is supposed to be “given.” The common idea now seems to be that all such knowledge should as a matter of course be readily at the command of everybody, and the reproach of irrationality leveled against the existing economic order is frequently based on the fact that it is not so available. This view disregards the fact that the method by which such knowledge can be made as widely available as possible is precisely the problem to which we have to find an answer.

一个奇怪的事实是，掌握这种知识的行为在今天普遍被大众鄙视，并且任何通过利用这种知识获得比掌握更好的理论或技术知识的人更好的优势的行为，都被认为是一种不光彩的行为。从掌握的关于通信和运输设施方面的优势信息中获益有时被认为是不诚实的行为，尽管事实上利用最佳的机会与利用最新的科学发现对于社会发展同样重要。这一偏见在很大程度上影响了公众对商业活动与生产活动的普遍态度。即使是那些自认为不会受到过去粗糙的唯物主义谬论影响的经济学家，在面对与获取这种实用知识相关的活动时，也经常会犯同样的错误。显然在这些经济学家对于知识的理解中，这类实用知识被认为是非原创的（给予的，拿来的）。目前普遍的看法是，所有这类实际知识理所当然应该为每个人掌握，并且对现有经济秩序的非理性指摘往往是基于这样视角——这样的实际知识往往并不是为每个人所掌握的（他们认为这是不合理的）。这种观点忽略了这样一个事实：寻找让这些知识尽可能广泛传播的方法，正是我们需要寻找的答案。

part IV

If it is fashionable today to minimize the importance of the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place, this is closely connected with the smaller importance which is now attached to change as such. Indeed, there are few points on which the assumptions made (usually only implicitly) by the “planners” differ from those of their opponents as much as with regard to the significance and frequency of changes which will make substantial alterations of production plans necessary. Of course, if detailed economic plans could be laid down for fairly long periods in advance and then closely adhered to, so that no further economic decisions of importance would be required, the task of drawing up a comprehensive plan governing all economic activity would be much less formidable.

如今，最小化这种关于某时某地具体情境知识的重要性似乎成了一种风尚，这与当下对交换过程不够重视密切相关。关于这种能够引起生产计划改变的交换的重要性和频率，计划制定者和他们的对手（对手是谁呢）的估计几乎没有太大差别。当然，如果可以制定足够长时间的详细的经济计划，并且能够比较严格地遵守计划，那样就不再需要什么特别重要的经济决策了。这样，提出一个综合全面的计划，控制所有经济活动就不再是艰巨的任务了。

It is, perhaps, worth stressing that economic problems arise always and only in consequence of change. So long as things continue as before, or at least as they were expected to, there arise no new problems requiring a decision, no need to form a new plan. The belief that changes, or at least day-to-day adjustments, have become less important in modern times implies the contention that economic problems also have become less important. This belief in the decreasing importance of change is, for that reason, usually held by the same people who argue that the importance of economic considerations has been driven into the background by the growing importance of technological knowledge.

或许，有必要强调一点，经济问题总是并且也只是产生于交换过程。如果事物是像过去那样发展到未来（联想牛顿第一定律），我们就只需要让它保持原状就好，根本不会产生新问题，也就不需要新的决策和计划。这种认为交换行为或者日常调整不再重要的信条，隐含着经济问题的重要性逐渐下降的观点。因此，持“交换过程重要性不断降低”持这种观点的人，同样也会认为经济问题的重要性已被日益重要的技术知识所淡化。

Is it true that, with the elaborate apparatus of modern production, economic decisions are required only at long intervals, as when a new factory is to be erected or a new process to be introduced? Is it true that, once a plant has been built, the rest is all more or less mechanical, determined by the character of the plant, and leaving little to be changed in adapting to the ever-changing circumstances of the moment?

是否，随着各种复杂精细的现代生产设备的出现，我们只需要长期经济决策就可以了吗？比例新建立一座工厂或者新引入一套操作流程。是否，当工厂建好之后，剩下的就只是一些为适应当前环境而进行的机械化的决策了吗？

The fairly widespread belief in the affirmative is not, as far as I can ascertain, borne out by the practical experience of the businessman. In a competitive industry at any rate—and such an industry alone can serve as a test—the task of keeping cost from rising requires constant struggle, absorbing a great part of the energy of the manager. How easy it is for an inefficient manager to dissipate the differentials on which profitability rests, and that it is possible, with the same technical facilities, to produce with a great variety of costs, are among the commonplaces of business experience which do not seem to be equally familiar in the study of the economist. The very strength of the desire, constantly voiced by producers and engineers, to be allowed to proceed untrammeled by considerations of money costs, is eloquent testimony to the extent to which these factors enter into their daily work.

就我所知，以上被广泛接受的观点并未得到商人群体的实际经验证实。无论如何，在一个存在竞争的行业里（这样的行业本身可以作为一个测试的例子），保持成本稳定就需要长期的挣扎努力，它会占用大量的管理资源。一个效率低下的经理如何消除利润所依赖的差异性，用相同的设备，如何能生产出具有不同成本的产品，是商业经验中最为常见的现象，但这些在经济学研究中却极少出现。生产商和工程师们一直强烈地希望能不考虑成本的束缚而进行工作，这种强烈愿望充分证明了这些因素在他们的日常工作中的影响程度。

One reason why economists are increasingly apt to forget about the constant small changes which make up the whole economic picture is probably their growing preoccupation with statistical aggregates, which show a very much greater stability than the movements of the detail. The comparative stability of the aggregates cannot, however, be accounted for—as the statisticians occasionally seem to be inclined to do—by the “law of large numbers” or the mutual compensation of random changes. The number of elements with which we have to deal is not large enough for such accidental forces to produce stability. The continuous flow of goods and services is maintained by constant deliberate adjustments, by new dispositions made every day in the light of circumstances not known the day before, by B stepping in at once when A fails to deliver. Even the large and highly mechanized plant keeps going largely because of an environment upon which it can draw for all sorts of unexpected needs; tiles for its roof, stationery for its forms, and all the thousand and one kinds of equipment in which it cannot be self-contained and which the plans for the operation of the plant require to be readily available in the market.

经济学家越来越倾向于忽略最终形成整个经济环境的持续的微小的改变的一个原因是，他们对统计意义下的经济总体的关注度日益增长。而后者相比那些微观经济现象的变动，更具有稳定性（宏观统计结果忽略了微观波动的细节）。但是，统计学家们倾向采用的大数定律和随机变化的中和抵消模型，并不能解释经济总体的相对稳定。因为我们所应对的经济单元数量没有大到可以使经济总体表现出稳定性的数量（这里感觉有矛盾，宏观表现是稳定的，不就说明了统计意义下的稳定吗）。商品和服务的连续流动是通过不断的、有意识的调整来维持的，每天都会根据前一天未知的情况做出新的安排，当A未能交付时，B会立即介入。

即使是大型且高度机械化的工厂，也主要是因为它可以从市场上获取材料来满足它自身各种意想不到的需求，才能持续运行。无论是修补其屋顶的瓷砖，用于其业务需要的工具，还是它不能自给自足、但生产计划需要的所有一千零一种设备，这些材料都需要能在市场上随时获得。

This is, perhaps, also the point where I should briefly mention the fact that the sort of knowledge with which I have been concerned is knowledge of the kind which by its nature cannot enter into statistics and therefore cannot be conveyed to any central authority in statistical form. The statistics which such a central authority would have to use would have to be arrived at precisely by abstracting from minor differences between the things, by lumping together, as resources of one kind, items which differ as regards location, quality, and other particulars, in a way which may be very significant for the specific decision. It follows from this that central planning based on statistical information by its nature cannot take direct account of these circumstances of time and place and that the central planner will have to find some way or other in which the decisions depending on them can be left to the “man on the spot.”

或许，现在是我简要说明我一直思考的那种知识的时候了——那是一种无法通过统计方法获得的知识，所以也就无法以统计表格的形式呈现给权威机构。而这种权威机构依赖的统计数据必须经过抽象，排除掉事物之间的次要差异。这种统计数据忽略掉的质量、位置和其他属性，可能对于部分微观领域的经济活动具有特别的重要意义。所以，在统计数据基础上的集中型计划从根本上是无法考虑到这些微观经济领域的特殊情况的。因此，集中型计划的制定者们需要以某种方式让微观经济领域的实际参与者们可以自行决策。

part V

If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them. We cannot expect that this problem will be solved by first communicating all this knowledge to a central board which, after integrating all knowledge, issues its orders. We must solve it by some form of decentralization. But this answers only part of our problem. We need decentralization because only thus can we insure that the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place will be promptly used. But the “man on the spot” cannot decide solely on the basis of his limited but intimate knowledge of the facts of his immediate surroundings. There still remains the problem of communicating to him such further information as he needs to fit his decisions into the whole pattern of changes of the larger economic system.

如果我们认同社会的经济问题主要是快速适应特定时间和地点的社会环境的变化，那么最终的决定似乎必须留给熟悉这些环境的人，他们直接了解相关变化，并且有随时可用的资源来应对这些变化。我们无法期待这一问题可以通过首先把所有相关的知识传达给一个中心化权威机构，而后由它来发布指令来解决。我们必须通过某种去中心化的方式来解决这一问题。但是这一回答只是部分地解决了问题。我们需要去中心化的问题解决方案，只是因为这样可以保证特定时间和空间的特有知识可以被迅速利用起来。尽管身处其中的个体确实可以掌握自己周围的知识，但仅凭这些有限的局部知识，不足以让他做出正确的决定。如何把个体需要的额外知识传递给他，以使他做出更契合整个经济系统的决策，仍然是未解决的问题。

How much knowledge does he need to do so successfully? Which of the events which happen beyond the horizon of his immediate knowledge are of relevance to his immediate decision, and how much of them need he know?

个体需要多少额外的知识才能成功做出契合整个经济系统的决策？哪些他无法感知到的事件与他当下的决策相关？这其中又有多少是他需要知道的呢？

There is hardly anything that happens anywhere in the world that might not have an effect on the decision he ought to make. But he need not know of these events as such, nor of all their effects. It does not matter for him why at the particular moment more screws of one size than of another are wanted, why paper bags are more readily available than canvas bags, or why skilled labor, or particular machine tools, have for the moment become more difficult to obtain. All that is significant for him is how much more or less difficult to procure they have become compared with other things with which he is also concerned, or how much more or less urgently wanted are the alternative things he produces or uses. It is always a question of the relative importance of the particular things with which he is concerned, and the causes which alter their relative importance are of no interest to him beyond the effect on those concrete things of his own environment.

世界上任何地方发生的任何事情，几乎都能从某种程度上对他将要做出的决定产生影响。但他并不需要知道所有这些事情（他也不可能知道），也不需要知道所有这些事情对他会有怎样的影响。在某个时间点上，为什么一种型号的螺丝比另一种更抢手，为什么纸袋比帆布袋更容易买到，为什么更难雇佣到熟练劳动力，为什么更难买到某种特定的机床……这些问题他对他而言可以说是无关紧要的。他真正需要关心的，是如何定量估算出自己需要的多种商品中，某一种比另一种更难获得多少倍，或者他生产或消费的商品的紧俏程度。对他而言，只要始终关注他所关心的事物的相对重要性（我能想到的，价格是这种重要性的最直接体现）就够了，而当引起这些事物相对重要性变化的因素无法产生他能真实感受到的影响时，这些因素对他来说是无意义的。

It is in this connection that what I have called the “economic calculus” proper helps us, at least by analogy, to see how this problem can be solved, and in fact is being solved, by the price system. Even the single controlling mind, in possession of all the data for some small, self-contained economic system, would not—every time some small adjustment in the allocation of resources had to be made—go explicitly through all the relations between ends and means which might possibly be affected. It is indeed the great contribution of the pure logic of choice that it has demonstrated conclusively that even such a single mind could solve this kind of problem only by constructing and constantly using rates of equivalence (or “values,” or “marginal rates of substitution”), i.e., by attaching to each kind of scarce resource a numerical index which cannot be derived from any property possessed by that particular thing, but which reflects, or in which is condensed, its significance in view of the whole means-end structure. In any small change he will have to consider only these quantitative indices (or “values”) in which all the relevant information is concentrated; and, by adjusting the quantities one by one, he can appropriately rearrange his dispositions without having to solve the whole puzzle ab initio or without needing at any stage to survey it at once in all its ramifications.

我称之为经济计算的方法，能够通过引入价格系统的方式，帮助我们解决这种衡量事物相对重要性的问题，并且事实上它也已经解决了这一问题。就算拥有了一个小型的、自给自足的经济系统中所有的数据，那个所谓的权威的控制者也不会愿意在每次资源分配需要进行微调时通过研究所有可能受影响的终端节点和资源流动方式之间的关联，再制定出新的分配调整方案。仅凭纯粹的逻辑思考就可以证明，即使是这样一个绝顶聪明的权威的控制者，也只能通过构建并不断使用等价率（或价值或边际替代率）来解决此类问题，即通过为每种稀缺资源附加一个数字指标，这个指标不能从该特定事物所拥有的任何属性中得出，但它反映了这一资源在整个社会需求中的价值水平。当经济环境发生改变时，他只需要关注这个凝聚了所有这一物品相关信息的数字指标。并且通过调整一个个的指标，他可以重新配置和使用自己的资源，而不需要从头开始解决这个复杂的因果关联问题，也不需要对某个特定时间点上的经济环境的各种影响进行详尽分析。

Fundamentally, in a system in which the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to coördinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coördinate the parts of his plan. It is worth contemplating for a moment a very simple and commonplace instance of the action of the price system to see what precisely it accomplishes. Assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say, tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated. It does not matter for our purpose—and it is very significant that it does not matter—which of these two causes has made tin more scarce. All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere and that, in consequence, they must economize tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favor of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin, and their substitutes, and so on; and all his without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity—or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.—brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process.

在一个信息（the knowledge of the relevant facts，我认为翻译为信息更好）分散于众多个体的系统中，就像一个人会根据他对事物的主观判断去调整自己的计划，价格可以以相同的方式协调参与经济系统的众多个体的行为。这里通过一个简单且常见的例子说明价格系统的重要作用。假设世界的某个地方产生了一种对金属锡的巨大需求（例如发现了一个需要金属锡作为原料的巨大商机），或者金属锡的一个原料供应地消失了。至于是哪种原因导致金属锡变得稀缺，并不重要（“金属锡稀缺的原因不重要”这一点恰恰很重要）。这些金属锡原本的使用者只需要知道，把锡用于另一种用途能够获利更多，所以他们必须节约使用锡。他们大多数根本不需要了解对于金属锡更迫切的需求在哪里，或者为了支持哪些其他需求他们应该节约供应。如果有人恰好知道了这个新需求，并把自己的资源投入这个新需求，那他的资源原本投入的地方将会产生空缺。如果有人又恰好发现了这个次生的需求，并再从其他地方抽调出锡投入这个新产生的空缺，……这种影响将会迅速传播到整个经济系统，它不仅会影响所有锡的使用者，还会影响锡的替代品，以及替代品的替代品。在这个过程中的大多数人却根本不了解这些变化的根本原因（这句话中的and all his 感觉是可以去掉的，去掉之后更好理解）。所有人像一个市场一样去行动，这并不是因为他们都对金属锡的整个需求市场做过调研，而是因为每个人的有限的视野叠加起来足以覆盖整个需求市场，所以通过一些中介节点，相关信息就传递给了所有人。每个商品都会有一个价格（或者说，局部价格通过运输成本的因素联系起来），这样的情况产生了与掌控所有信息的组织在调研整个市场之后相同的结果。而这所有的信息，事实上是散布于所有参与到这一经济过程的众多个体中的。

part VI

We must look at the price system as such a mechanism for communicating information if we want to understand its real function—a function which, of course, it fulfils less perfectly as prices grow more rigid. (Even when quoted prices have become quite rigid, however, the forces which would operate through changes in price still operate to a considerable extent through changes in the other terms of the contract.) The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement.

如果我们想要理解价格系统的真正功能，我们就需要把它看作一种信息传播的机制——当然随着价格变得僵化，它的功能会变得不那么完美。即便报价变得相当僵化，通过价格变化发挥作用的力量仍然可以通过合同其它条款的变化发挥相当大的作用（不知所云）。这个系统的重大意义在于所谓的知识经济学，即个体只需要掌握少量信息就足以做出正确的判断。通过一种简略的符号形式，价格系统使得最重要的信息在经济系统内传播，并且只传播给那些真正在意这些信息的人。把价格系统描述为一种记录变化的机器或一种通信系统不仅仅是一个隐喻，因为它能够让个体生产者只需要关注价格变化来调整自己的行为，而不需要关注影响价格变化的原因，就像工程师们只需要关注仪表盘上的几根指针的变化就可以调控自己面前的庞大机器。

Of course, these adjustments are probably never “perfect” in the sense in which the economist conceives of them in his equilibrium analysis. But I fear that our theoretical habits of approaching the problem with the assumption of more or less perfect knowledge on the part of almost everyone has made us somewhat blind to the true function of the price mechanism and led us to apply rather misleading standards in judging its efficiency. The marvel is that in a case like that of a scarcity of one raw material, without an order being issued, without more than perhaps a handful of people knowing the cause, tens of thousands of people whose identity could not be ascertained by months of investigation, are made to use the material or its products more sparingly; i.e., they move in the right direction. This is enough of a marvel even if, in a constantly changing world, not all will hit it off so perfectly that their profit rates will always be maintained at the same constant or “normal” level.

当然，基于价格系统的调整当然不会像经济学家们的均衡分析理论那样完美。但是我认为，以所有个体都拥有所有信息的完美假设开始研究问题的理论分析习惯，导致我们对价格机制的真正功能视而不见，也因此让我们在评价这个系统的效率时采用了具有误导性的标准。当一种原材料稀缺时，即使没有发布命令，即使只有少数人知道原因，成千上万的人，他们的身份可能需要数月的调查才能确定，却能够更节约地使用该材料或其产品；也就是说，他们都采取了正确的行动，这无疑是一个奇迹。尽管在一个不断变化的世界，并不是所有的个体都能及时调整行动、适应环境，以保证他们的利润率维持稳定（或处于所谓的正常水平），这也足以令人惊叹了。

I have deliberately used the word “marvel” to shock the reader out of the complacency with which we often take the working of this mechanism for granted. I am convinced that if it were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aim, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind. Its misfortune is the double one that it is not the product of human design and that the people guided by it usually do not know why they are made to do what they do. But those who clamor for “conscious direction”—and who cannot believe that anything which has evolved without design (and even without our understanding it) should solve problems which we should not be able to solve consciously—should remember this: The problem is precisely how to extend the span of our utilization of resources beyond the span of the control of any one mind; and therefore, how to dispense with the need of conscious control, and how to provide inducements which will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.

我故意使用奇迹一词，以提醒读者，不要对我们认为理所当然的这一机制自鸣得意。我深信，如果价格系统是出自人类头脑精心设计的结果，如果由价格系统引导决策的人们认识到他们的行为具有比他们直接目的更深远的影响，这一机制会被吹捧为人类思维的最伟大胜利。但实际上，不仅这一设计不是出自人类之手，而且受它引导的个体通常不知道他们为什么要这么做。有一些人强烈支持有意识的决策（或称为设计论者），他们无法相信任何在没有设计（甚至我们没有理解）的情况下演化的东西能够解决我们通过精心设计仍无法解决的问题。这些人应该记住：这个问题的本质其实是如何不受任何单个个体的控制而最大限度地利用资源，即，如何免受精心设计者的控制、并且能够提供一种激励手段，使得在不需明确告知个体应该如何去做的情况下，让他们按照这个系统所希望的方式去行动。

The problem which we meet here is by no means peculiar to economics but arises in connection with nearly all truly social phenomena, with language and with most of our cultural inheritance, and constitutes really the central theoretical problem of all social science. As Alfred Whitehead has said in another connection, “It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” This is of profound significance in the social field. We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up.

我们在这里遇到的问题，绝不仅仅是经济学领域特有的问题，它与所有真正的社会现象、语言和大部分文化遗产都有关联，并且构成了所有社会科学的核心理论问题。正如Alfred Whitehead所说：

那是一个在所有书本中提及、在所有显要人物的演讲中反复提到的错误的真理，即我们应该思考自己所做之事的习惯。而事实却恰恰相反。文明正是通过不断增加那些我们可以不经思索而去执行的重要行为而前进的【不解】。

这一论断在社会学领域具有非常深刻的影响。我们常常使用我们并不理解其含义的公式、符号和规则。在使用它们的过程中，我们实际是借助了并不属于我们自身的知识【站在巨人的肩膀】。在那些已经在自身领域证明成功的习惯和制度的基础上，我们发展了这些实践和制度，而前者则构成了我们建立起的文明的基础。

The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use (though he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it) after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it. Through it not only a division of labor but also a coördinated utilization of resources based on an equally divided knowledge has become possible. The people who like to deride any suggestion that this may be so usually distort the argument by insinuating that it asserts that by some miracle just that sort of system has spontaneously grown up which is best suited to modern civilization. It is the other way round: man has been able to develop that division of labor on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible. Had he not done so, he might still have developed some other, altogether different, type of civilization, something like the “state” of the termite ants, or some other altogether unimaginable type. All that we can say is that nobody has yet succeeded in designing an alternative system in which certain features of the existing one can be preserved which are dear even to those who most violently assail it—such as particularly the extent to which the individual can choose his pursuits and consequently freely use his own knowledge and skill.

价格系统只是其中一种人类偶然发现后学会使用，但并未理解它的内在机理的东西（尽管人类还远未学会发挥出它的最大价值）。经由价格系统，不仅实现了劳动分工，而且基于平等可获取的知识的资源协调利用也得以实现。那些嘲笑这种观点的人通常会曲解这个论点，暗示它声称一种最适合现代文明的系统是通过某种奇迹般的方式自发形成的。事实恰恰相反：人类之所以能够发展出现代文明赖以存在的劳动分工的方式，是因为我们偶然发现了一种使其成为可能的方法。假如人类没有发现这种方式，那我们可能会发展出某种完全不同类型的文明，例如白蚁的国家，或者某种完全无法想象的文明类型。迄今为止还没有人能成功设计出一种替代系统，使得现有（价格）系统的某些特征可以在其中保留下来，即使是对那些最猛烈抨击现有系统的人来说，这些特征也是极为宝贵的，例如个体能够选择自己的追求，并能够自由运用自己的知识和技能去实现它的追求。

part VII

It is in many ways fortunate that the dispute about the indispensability of the price system for any rational calculation in a complex society is now no longer conducted entirely between camps holding different political views. The thesis that without the price system we could not preserve a society based on such extensive division of labor as ours was greeted with a howl of derision when it was first advanced by von Mises twenty-five years ago. Today the difficulties which some still find in accepting it are no longer mainly political, and this makes for an atmosphere much more conducive to reasonable discussion. When we find Leon Trotsky arguing that “economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations”; when Professor Oscar Lange promises Professor von Mises a statue in the marble halls of the future Central Planning Board; and when Professor Abba P. Lerner rediscovers Adam Smith and emphasizes that the essential utility of the price system consists in inducing the individual, while seeking his own interest, to do what is in the general interest, the differences can indeed no longer be ascribed to political prejudice. The remaining dissent seems clearly to be due to purely intellectual, and more particularly methodological, differences.

对于复杂社会中的理性计算，价格系统是否必不可少的争论，现在不再完全是由持不同政治观点的阵营之间进行了。

如果没有价格系统，我们将无法维持基于广泛劳动分工的这样一个社会。

当冯·米塞斯（von Mises）二十五年前第一次在论文中提出他的上述观点时，招致了无数的嘲讽，到现在，那些无法接受这一观点的人，不再主要是因为政治立场的问题。这种情况创造了一种有助于理性辩论的氛围。当列昂·托洛茨基（Leon Trotsky）说，经济核算在没有市场关系的情况下是不可想象的；当奥斯卡·朗格（Oscar Lange ）向米塞斯教授承诺未来中央计划委员会的大理石大厅里有一尊他的雕像时；当阿巴·P·勒纳（Abba P. Lerner）重新发现了亚当·斯密，并强调价格系统对于促使个人在追求自身利益的同时，做出符合整体利益的行为方面的重要作用时，他们观点的不同不再是由于政治偏见的影响，而更多地是由于思想上、甚至是方法论上的不同。

A recent statement by Professor Joseph Schumpeter in his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy provides a clear illustration of one of the methodological differences which I have in mind. Its author is pre-eminent among those economists who approach economic phenomena in the light of a certain branch of positivism. To him these phenomena accordingly appear as objectively given quantities of commodities impinging directly upon each other, almost, it would seem, without any intervention of human minds. Only against this background can I account for the following (to me startling) pronouncement. Professor Schumpeter argues that the possibility of a rational calculation in the absence of markets for the factors of production follows for the theorist “from the elementary proposition that consumers in evaluating (‘demanding’) consumers’ goods ipso facto also evaluate the means of production which enter into the production of these goods.”*1

约瑟夫·熊彼特（Joseph Schumpeter）在他的书《资本主义、社会主义与民主》中的观点，是上述提到的不同方法论的一个例子。这本书的作者是以实证主义方法研究经济现象的杰出代表。在他看来，这些经济现象似乎是客观存在的商品之间的直接作用，几乎没有人类思维的介入。在这一背景下，我才能够解释下面的有些令人吃惊的声明：

熊彼得教授认为，在缺乏生产要素的市场中，进行理性计算的可能性，从理论上讲，“基于这样一个命题：消费者在评估（‘需求’）商品的同时，也在评估生产这些商品所需的生产资料。”

Taken literally, this statement is simply untrue. The consumers do nothing of the kind. What Professor Schumpeter’s “ipso facto” presumably means is that the valuation of the factors of production is implied in, or follows necessarily from, the valuation of consumers’ goods. But this, too, is not correct. Implication is a logical relationship which can be meaningfully asserted only of propositions simultaneously present to one and the same mind. It is evident, however, that the values of the factors of production do not depend solely on the valuation of the consumers’ goods but also on the conditions of supply of the various factors of production. Only to a mind to which all these facts were simultaneously known would the answer necessarily follow from the facts given to it. The practical problem, however, arises precisely because these facts are never so given to a single mind, and because, in consequence, it is necessary that in the solution of the problem knowledge should be used that is dispersed among many people.

从字面理解，这个陈述是不正确的。消费者并没有做这些（评估生产商品所需的生产资料的）事情。熊彼得教授所谓的事实上，可能是指生产要素的评估蕴含在对商品的评估中，或者对商品的评估必然能够导致对生产要素的评估。但这一点也是不正确的。蕴含是一种逻辑关系，只有同时存在于同一个思维中的命题才能够进行有意义的推断。但是，显然生产要素的价值不仅仅取决于商品的价值，而且也取决于各种生产要素的供给情况。只有在一个同时了解所有这些事实的头脑中，答案才会必然地从给定的事实中得出。然而，实际问题的产生，就是因为这些事实无法同时由一个单一的头脑掌握。所以解决问题时就需要利用这些分散在众多个体中的知识。

The problem is thus in no way solved if we can show that all the facts, if they were known to a single mind (as we hypothetically assume them to be given to the observing economist), would uniquely determine the solution; instead we must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge. To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind in the same manner in which we assume it to be given to us as the explaining economists is to assume the problem away and to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world.

所以，就算我们能够把所有这些事实都交由某个单一的头脑，例如假设把它们都交给一个观察我们社会经济问题的经济学家，这个问题也无法解决。相反，我们必须展示出解决方案是如何通过只拥有部分知识的个体之间的互动产生的。假设所有知识都集中在一个单一的头脑中，就像我们作为解释经济现象的经济学家所假设的那样——这是掩耳盗铃的行为（假装问题不存在），并忽视了现实世界中真正重要和事物。

That an economist of Professor Schumpeter’s standing should thus have fallen into a trap which the ambiguity of the term “datum” sets to the unwary can hardly be explained as a simple error. It suggests rather that there is something fundamentally wrong with an approach which habitually disregards an essential part of the phenomena with which we have to deal: the unavoidable imperfection of man’s knowledge and the consequent need for a process by which knowledge is constantly communicated and acquired. Any approach, such as that of much of mathematical economics with its simultaneous equations, which in effect starts from the assumption that people’s knowledge corresponds with the objective facts of the situation, systematically leaves out what is our main task to explain. I am far from denying that in our system equilibrium analysis has a useful function to perform. But when it comes to the point where it misleads some of our leading thinkers into believing that the situation which it describes has direct relevance to the solution of practical problems, it is high time that we remember that it does not deal with the social process at all and that it is no more than a useful preliminary to the study of the main problem.

像熊彼得教授这样的经济学家的观点，会陷入由于数据的歧义导致的陷阱，这很难简单地解释为一个简单的错误。相反，它表明这种习惯性地忽视我们必须处理的现象的方法存在根本上的错误：人类知识不可避免的不完美，以及对不断交流和获取知识的需要。这类方法，例如通过构造联立方程式的大部分数学经济学的方法，实际上开始于人们的知识与客观事实相符的假设，却系统性地忽略了我们的主要任务。我绝不否认均衡分析在经济学研究中的价值，但当它误导人类中的杰出思想家，让他们相信它所描述的情况与解决实际问题直接相关时，我们就该记住，它根本没有涉及到社会过程，而只不过是研究主要问题前的一个初步探索。

1. J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York; Harper, 1942), p. 175. Professor Schumpeter is, I believe, also the original author of the myth that Pareto and Barone have “solved” the problem of socialist calculation. What they, and many others, did was merely to state the conditions which a rational allocation of resources would have to satisfy and to point out that these were essentially the same as the conditions of equilibrium of a competitive market. This is something altogether different from knowing how the allocation of resources satisfying these conditions can be found in practice. Pareto himself (from whom Barone has taken practically everything he has to say), far from claiming to have solved the practical problem, in fact explicitly denies that it can be solved without the help of the market. See his Manuel d’économie pure (2d ed., 1927), pp. 233-34. The relevant passage is quoted in an English translation at the beginning of my article on “Socialist Calculation: The Competitive ‘Solution,’ ” in Economica, New Series, Vol. VIII, No. 26 (May, 1940), p. 125.

J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York; Harper, 1942), p. 175. 我认为，帕累托和巴罗内解决了社会主义经济计算问题这一传闻的始作俑者是熊彼得教授。包括这两位在内的许多学者只是提出了资源能够合理分配需要满足的条件，并且指出它与竞争市场中的均衡状态本质上是相同的。这与知道如何分配资源以达到这些条件是完全不同的。帕累托本人并未声称他已经解决了这个难题，事实上他明确否认了这个问题可以在没有市场的经济系统中解决（巴罗内的观点几乎全部来自帕累托）。见帕累托的手稿《纯粹经济学》（来指代经济学领域中研究经济理论和原理的纯粹理论部分，d’économie pure* (2d ed., 1927), pp. 233-34）。我的一篇文章开头的引用了上述相关段落的英文翻译版本，见“Socialist Calculation: The Competitive ‘Solution,’ ” in Economica, New Series, Vol. VIII, No. 26 (May, 1940), p. 125.