经济学人下载:英国陷入无政府状态

This week’s multiplying riots had some common features—looting, arson, attacks on the police—but they spanned different places, races, ages and sexes. Race was not the defining issue, as it was in many of the disturbances of the 1980s. One of the first to appear in court for looting was a 31-year-old teaching assistant: hardly an identikit hooligan. That left politicians free to project their own rationales on the carnage.

本周愈演愈烈的骚乱具有一些共性——抢劫、纵火、袭警——但它跨越了不同地区、种族、年龄和性别。同1980年代的历次骚乱一样，种族并未在这次骚乱中扮演关键角色。法庭上出现的第一个被控抢劫罪的人是一个31岁的助教：他几乎不是一个通常意义上的街头恶棍。这让政客们对这场残杀的原因莫衷一是。

For some on the left, the real villain was the government’s public-spending cuts. This view is given superficial support by the fact that the 1980s outbreaks happened during the “Thatcher cuts”. But it is still a lazy fantasy. It might be comforting to think of the riots as an extension of a familiar debate—and to argue that the underlying ills can be easily remedied with a little more state largesse—but there is little reason to do so. Unlike the riots in Britain in the 1980s, Los Angeles in 1992 or France in 2005, these were not overtly political or racial. And since the cuts have barely bitten yet, that explanation doesn’t wash.

对于左派的一些人来说，真正的祸根就是政府削减公共支出的举动。这一观点貌似得到1980年代“撒切尔紧缩（Thatcher cuts）”期间爆发骚乱这一事实的佐证，但这仍是不求甚解的想法。他们将骚乱看做一场常见的论战的延伸，并主张多给一些国家救济就能轻松祛除病根，这种看法可能令人感到欣慰，但其理由却基本上站不住脚。与1980年代发生在英国、1992年发生在洛杉矶或2005年发生在法国的骚乱不同，这场骚乱并不具有明显的政治性或种族性。既然财政削减几乎尚未造成不良后果，这个解释也就经不起推敲了。

But the right’s knee-jerk response—that this is criminality, pure and simple, and that to seek a deeper explanation is to excuse the culprits—is also wrong. There is clearly a cadre of young people in Britain who feel they have little or no stake in the country’s future or their own. The barriers that prevent most youngsters from running amok—an inherent sense of right and wrong; concern for their job and education prospects; shame—seem not to exist in the minds of the rioters. Britain needs to try to understand why that is so.

但右派的第一反应——这是十足的犯罪行为，查找更深层原因就是为罪犯开脱——也是错的。英国显然有很多年轻人对国家或自己的前途漠然置之。阻止大多数年轻人胡作非为的条条框框——固有的是非感、对工作和教育前景的挂虑、羞恶之心——似乎对这些暴徒形同虚设。英国需要设法搞清楚为什么会这样。

It is unlikely that the closure of, say, a local youth club has caused that alienation. Perhaps it has something to do with the changing nature of the economy and consequent shortage of low-skilled jobs, or the long crumbling of family structures and discipline. Technology, too, may have had a role, for BlackBerrys were widely used to summon mobs. Digital communications have tipped the balance of power away from the authorities towards the streets, as they did in the Arab spring; but in Britain, the effect has been terrifying rather than inspiring.

诸如关闭地方性青年俱乐部一类的事件不可能导致这种疏离。可能这与经济的多变性和由此带来的低技能工作的短缺，或由来已久的家庭结构和纪律的解体有关。技术也可能在其中扮演了角色，因为黑莓手机曾被广泛用于召集暴民。数字通讯打破了权力的平衡，当局的权利已让渡于街头政治，这在阿拉伯革命中可见一斑。但在英国，数字通讯的作用与其说鼓舞人心，不如说令人震惊。

If technology is a major factor, perhaps such scenes will be replicated in other countries. On the other hand, a peculiarly British set of conditions may be at work. Near-American levels of inequality may have combined with laxer European attitudes to criminal justice to create an incendiary mix of rage and boldness. Whatever the reasons, a moral malaise has gripped a minority of young Britons, a subgroup that is nevertheless big enough to terrorise and humiliate the country.

如果技术是主要因素，那么这种场景将会在其他国家重演。另一方面，英国的特殊国情可能发挥了作用，其不平等程度与美国接近，而在刑事司法上却采取了更为宽松的欧洲式态度，两个因素若合在一起很容易使人们因一点不公，就大发雷霆之怒，四处煽风点火，并采取鲁莽的行动。不论是何原因，有一件事是肯定的，即少数英国年轻人染患了道德痼疾，这个群体的数量虽少却足以让这个国家受到威胁和羞辱。