How to Understand the Fundamental Theory of Government——One of the Controversial Thoughts of Tian Guoqiang and Lin Yifu

Editor's note:

Recently, the debates about whether Lin Yifu, Tian Guoqiang and Zhang Weiying are effective in industrial policy continue to ferment, and many well-known scholars in the Chinese economics community have been involved and involved. This debate is not only limited to industrial policies, but to the topic of limited government and promising government, market and government, China's economic transformation and theoretical innovation. In order to improve the quality of discussion and dialogue, CBN has opened up the topic of “Reforming the Deepwater Region – Controversy on China's Economic Transformation and Theoretical Innovation” in newspapers and online platforms. It has received enthusiastic attention from many scholars and is not a manuscript.

Recently, we have received a systematic long text of nearly 60,000 words and a total of 5 articles by Professor Zhu Fuqiang of Lingnan College of Sun Yat-sen University. They have sorted out the disputes between Tian Guoqiang and Lin Yifu about the government and the limited government, and made personal theoretical and practical understanding. Commented. As Professor Zhu Fuqiang himself said: He has long been ignorantly combing his own learning, thinking and enlightenment, only in the "learning for himself" to enhance his own cognition, and rarely participate in the current academic debate. I hope that I can leave a worthwhile text for future generations. Due to chance, the arguments of Lin Yifu and Zhang Weiying, Tian Guoqiang and others have aroused the resonance of some original thoughts. At the same time, they also felt their sincere academic attitude and the spirit of seeking truth, so they wrote these things.

Professor Zhu also believes that true scholars are often able to take the shackles of personal interests and assume moral responsibility for the development of human society, and strive to enlighten the public and promote social progress through knowledge exploration. This means that as a true learner, his academic orientation and value position depend not only on his personal interests, but on his knowledge structure and its corresponding social philosophy.

Professor Zhu Fuqiang

How to understand the basic theory of government

——One of my thoughts on the dispute between Tian Guoqiang and Lin Yifu

Zhu Fuqiang

I. Introduction

Economics is a theory of application. The study and research of economics is to understand, analyze and solve real problems, and thus serve social and economic policies. Among them, the basic requirement for learning economics is to be able to understand the functions of the market and the government and its scope of action, so that both can perform their respective duties, thus playing the most positive role in promoting the healthy development of the social economy.

In the author's view, the market mechanism and the government mechanism can not only form but also need to form a benign complementarity and mutual relationship, because they are the basic mechanism of resource allocation, but also face the problem of failure. However, the academic world has always had a very different view of the role image of the country and the government's functional commitment, and even derived different economic genres. Basically, the current debate between Lin Yifu and Zhang Weiying, Tian Guoqiang, and Wen Guanzhong is also a continuation of this long-term uncontested debate in the economics field.

It is undeniable that each debater's argument has its own logic and reason. However, from the perspective of speculative logic, many arguments are inevitably one-sided based on specific logic, so there are still many places worthy of further examination and Business. One of the important reasons is that most modern economists are from the mathematics major, paying great attention to the rigor of formal logic, and are good at constructing mathematical models based on various assumptions. But because of this, they are facing the life world and need to use it. When thinking about logic, the analysis and arguments that are developed tend to be less rigorous and even reveal obvious vulnerabilities.

Another important reason is that modern economics is greatly influenced by functionalist analytical thinking, so that popular cognition and perspective often focus on the appearance of things, but rarely penetrate into the inner essence and mechanism of things, and focus on the study of appearance. It is often preferred to use isolated cases and local data to derive or justify ideas, which often implies serious instrumentalism fallacies.

As far as the relationship between the market and the government is concerned, many economists are easily influenced by the ideology of specific analytical thinking, traditional wisdom and its connotation: evolutionary economists tend to over-respect the role of market mechanisms, constructivist economics. People will ignore the “confidence” implicit in government behavior, so that few people really pay attention to, explore and build a complementary relationship between the market and the government.

It is for these reasons that modern economists and scholars of different economic genres tend to tend to two extremes in terms of the basic functions, scope of action, and interrelationships between the two major mechanisms of government and market. Among them, influenced by traditional wisdom, the mainstream view of modern economics pays more attention to government failure rather than market failure, and thus advocates strict restrictions on government behavior, which is concentrated in Tian Guoqiang's discourse and assertion. In view of this, the author recently sorted out the dispute between Tian Guoqiang and Lin Yifu, which has caused widespread social concern, and embedded the author's consistent economic understanding.

Second, from market failure to promising government

Lin Yifu’s new structural economics advocates for the government, while Tian Guoqiang holds a strong negative attitude. So how do you understand this difference in understanding between scholars? The author believes that this fundamentally involves different understandings of market failures. Generally speaking, as long as there is a market failure, it gives the government a certain positive role and function. The question is, how to define the boundaries and intensity of the role of modern government? To a large extent, this is related to the breadth and depth of market failures, and the breadth and depth of market failures themselves are dynamically changing over time and space. In general, market failures in the traditional sense are mainly directed at early market mechanisms and are narrowly defined. They mainly refer to economies of scale, monopoly, incomplete or asymmetric information, externalities, and the existence of public goods, resulting in the inability of the market to realize resources. Maximize configuration efficiency. Obviously, if the type and scope of such market failures are determined, then the role of the government in economic regulation is clearly defined. To a large extent, this is the boundary of limited government emphasized by Tian Guoqiang.

However, if we expand our horizons further, we can find that there are more widespread market failures in modern society. At least we can see such 10 types of market failures: (1) the incompleteness of the risk protection market, leading to people losing their sense of innovation and risk-taking due to risk aversion; (2) the indivisibility of resources, leading to the phenomenon of anti-common tragedy; The problem of multiple equilibriums leads to the inability to fully utilize resources and the unfair distribution of income; (4) the contradiction between social efficiency and fairness that cannot be solved by the market cannot solve the continuous expansion of the income gap; (5) personal value and social value The conflict between them leads to the expansion of the market's degenerate effect; (6) the incomplete rationality or irrationality of the market subject, which leads to the inefficient use of public resources; (7) the market cannot guarantee that the social order will continue to expand without involution (8) The market cannot guarantee the supply of growing social demand, which leads to the unbalanced social imbalance between private products and public goods; (9) the conspicuousness caused by excessive competition Consumption, leading to distortion of real demand; (10) information hiding caused by strategic behavior and ambush mechanism, leading to social endogenous Transaction costs continue to expand.

Obviously, the existence of these generalized market failures has given the government greater functional commitment, which has greatly expanded the government's active and promising role, and accordingly, it has led to the "promising government" proposed by Lin Yifu. In an article commenting on Zhang Weiying's point of view, the author has already analyzed the incompleteness, negative externalities, positive externalities of technological progress and the existence of economies of scale and the suboptimal and third-optimal theory and productivity theory closely related to industrial policies. I have elaborated on it, and the field of concept commitment and action for the government is not limited to industrial policy, but also has a broader theoretical foundation as a support. Therefore, this article chooses its mains.

Third, the market subject characteristics theory

The traditional narrow market failure theory focuses on the defects of market objects (mechanisms), such as the complete information required for rational behavior and perfect competition. Based on this perspective, neoclassical economics and other believe that the defects of these market objects can be improved and repaired with social development and market construction, so that market failures will gradually ease and even disappear, and the government's economic function will gradually decline. And even retreat to the smallest government that plays the role of "night watchman."

The problem is that with the expansion and advancement of the market economy, the factors that cause market failure have increasingly turned to the other side - the market entity, which has led to market failures not only persisting, but also expanding and aggravating. The reason is that market objects can often be gradually built and improved in the development, but the characteristics of market entities are much more stable, it is difficult to change in the short term, but may be strengthened with the implementation of the market economy.

Hayek pointed out very early on that the interpretation of social order must ultimately be based on the social theory that explains the nature of human nature and the social world. Correspondingly, when we understand and understand market order and social order, we must begin to examine the human characteristics of market players and their behavioral interactions when understanding the inherent defects of market activities and government behavior. Generally speaking, the behavioral investigation of the market subject mainly includes two aspects: (1) the individual's rational traits, which are concentrated in the degree of rationality, and the interaction based on bounded rationality creates the prisoner's dilemma, the tragedy of the commons and the collective action dilemma. (2) The dissimilarity between individuals, which is concentrated in the distribution of resources, and the inequality of power and status has caused the injustice of market exchange and income distribution.

First, in terms of the rational nature of market players. Neoclassical economics and the Austrian school advocated the "invisible hand" predetermined coordination mechanism, the welfare economic theorem, the spontaneous order expansion principle and the Coase neutral theorem in the competitive market, all of which set the subject of complete rationality; The so-called complete rationality is nothing but a fiction. Any individual in real life is only bounded rational or myopic rational. In fact, in addition to constructing (long-term) market-effective models based on constructive rationalism, modern mainstream economics is basically based on the short-sighted rationality of behavioral utilitarianism in the static analysis of real-world behavior, especially the economic man. The essence of the analytical paradigm is fundamentally limited rationality based on the utilitarian judgment of one-time behavior; accordingly, the behavioral interaction derived from this tends to lead to a market-based Nash equilibrium with internal solidity, and even to the general situation of the prisoner's dilemma. Sexual conclusions, including competition loss, resource depletion, environmental damage, financial bubbles, etc. are all manifestations of the prisoner's dilemma. The principle of incentive incompatibility proposed by Nobel Prize winner in 2016, Holmstrom is also one of them.

Obviously, the prisoner's dilemma not only reflects the conflict between individual rationality and collective rationality, but also reveals the deep "rational self-esteem" implicit in the rational behavior that modern mainstream economics is proud of, so that the Indian economist Matthias Lusen often refers to "economic man" as "rational idiot." In fact, the finiteness of individual rationality not only manifests itself in considering recent interests but neglects long-term interests, but also in considering individual or partial interests and neglecting collective or overall interests. Therefore, individual rational actions tend to lead to collective irrationality.

This means that the Pareto principle of maximizing personal efficiency is used to assess the failure of public policy. Bromley wrote: "The issue of public policy or collective action is precisely because the aggregated results of atomic personal maximization behavior are inconsistent with the results of social ownership. If this has been discovered Is it not surprising that the method of producing unacceptable results is regarded as the true law of collective action to correct existing problems?” For this reason, the assessment of social efficiency requires the search for new standards, which in turn leads to The relevant functions of the government bear.

Second, in terms of the heterogeneity between market entities. Neoclassical economics and the free market view, the market fair distribution view, the Coase neutrality theorem, and the first theorem of welfare economics advocated by the Austrian school all set homogenous behavioral subjects, or at most taste preferences and behavioral purposes. Interpersonal differences in personal knowledge and vigilance; however, the actors in the real market are fundamentally heterogeneous and mainly manifest in the inequality of status and power, thus making it impossible to bring consumers in the real world. And the enterprise and so on are reduced to the same atomic body.

Correspondingly, as long as we return to the real world of heterogeneous market players, the market creed of neoclassical economics will inevitably face challenges and challenges, such as: (1) heterogeneous market entities face different choices due to various factors. "There is absolutely no equal freedom, and there will be no substantive fair exchange. (2) Merchants tend to care only about the goods that the rich who can bring the most benefits, but those who contribute to the public. Producers who are indifferent or have greater power in the market economy tend to induce people's consumption through various means rather than stimulating supply according to consumer demand, thus failing to maximize social utility.

To a large extent, what is advocated and promoted in the textbook of neoclassical economics is only a logical market. It does not exist in the real world. The results of the real market mechanism are also different from the so-called effective market. Hershey Buddha emphasized: "Mainstream economics has always emphasized the important but one-sided point, that is, self-interest can bring goodwill, so that almost all of its dark side is forgotten." This also means that new Classical economics and the marketization of the Austrian school have obvious simplification tendencies. They oppose the role of the government and the market in economic affairs, and do not try to communicate the complementarity between them. This is the modern economics should And will inevitably focus on important topics.

Fourth, the market decline effect theory

Traditional market failures focus on efficiency, but market failures have another important manifestation: the neglect and loss of social values. For example, based on the Pareto improvement principle of free exchange, advocates of economic imperialism such as Posner and Becker proposed a series of policy propositions: the legalization of sexual transactions and even rape rights, the establishment of baby trading and the market for human organs trading, and even Allow drug sales and slave trade, and so on. The problem is that although these transactions seem to be efficient in terms of analytical thinking in economics, at the sociocultural and ethical level, these “effective” market outcomes violate the interests of others or society, and thus long-term It has always been an act that is denounced by social morality and prohibited by law.

This means that efficient market outcomes from economics are difficult to accept in society at the sociocultural and ethical level. How to explain it? This reflects another type of market failure that has long been neglected: certain transactions appear to be efficient in terms of market operations, but they have a very negative consequences for social development; accordingly, if the transaction is allowed to be implemented, It will inevitably lead to the degeneration and disintegration of social ethics, which in turn will cause the whole society to fall into disorder and anomie. Obviously, this brings new thinking: Is it the social rational value to examine and reflect on the analytical conclusions of modern economics? Or use modern economic analysis to examine and reshape modern social values ​​and legal ethics? Commons emphasizes that social “reasonable value” is an important criterion for examining the acceptability of market outcomes and the effectiveness of market operations. If market exchanges promote things that do not meet social needs and social values, then such markets are not Reasonable and effective.

Generally speaking, even in accordance with the efficiency principle of modern mainstream economics, the design and implementation of the market contributes to the improvement of the total utility of society, but as long as it will cause harm to social development, this is also the obvious "market failure." However, modern mainstream economics does not pay attention to the failure phenomenon in the market operation, but only pays attention to the lack of efficiency in the market “operation”. Instead, it reshapes the law and morality with the effective market analysis of economics. In the analysis of imperialism. To a large extent, based on narrow market efficiency, a “mainstream economist” named Wang Fuzhong claimed to defend the trafficker. He not only believed that the trafficker was doing a normal business, but he was called a medical intermediary. It is believed that the whole society should thank the trafficker because his behavior shows the scarcity of the expert number (that is, the real price), thus optimizing the resource allocation.

At the same time, the neglect and loss of social value largely reflects the degenerate effect contained in the market, including the sacrifice of fairness, vulgar homogenization, and practical kitsch. The reason is that in order to obtain the maximum benefit in the commercialist society, businessmen must cater to the tastes and preferences of most people, thus breeding a strong tendency to be practical, kitsch and mediocrity. For example, in the current Chinese society, Sister Furong, Liu Yanyan and Fengjie can become guests of various TV programs. The “vulgar” programs including sexual cues, personal attacks and materialistic orientation are constantly being launched, with the aim of attracting the attention of the audience as much as possible. .

In the book "Entertainment to Death", American scholar Bozeman pointed out that the culture of postmodern society is an era of entertainment. TV and computer are replacing printing presses. The rigor, ideological and profoundness of culture is giving way to entertainment and Simple pleasure. Similarly, due to the penetration of commercialism, modern higher education has gradually deviated from the purpose of social development, and gradually became a means of personal profit, and even degenerated into an instrumental skill training; accordingly, modern academics are increasingly vulgarized. Practical, practical and utilitarian, short, flat and fast empirical papers have been highly praised and encouraged.

In fact, through the observation of the early American society, Tocqueville found that the academic atmosphere under the democratic system presents three distinctive features: (1) the practical application of academic orientation, such as emphasis on practice and light theory, light on general concepts Specific concepts; (2) The mediocrity of academic spirit, lack of ambition, lack of revolutionary and innovative spirit; (3) totalitarianization of academic control, such as the herd of faith, the majority of tyranny in academics.

Similarly, Marcuse’s investigation of American society after World War II also pointed out that developed industrial society has created abundant material conditions, thereby successfully accommodating and resolving all possible negative forces in society, and social culture is adapted to society. Need to be increasingly commercialized, secularized, materialized, standardized, popular; further, mediocre entertainment and boring pastimes have swallowed people's hearts, it tells people in the form of culture, the existing society is the best and most reasonable By agreeing with this society and accepting its concept, you can get happiness and happiness, so that people's sense of freedom and criticism are unknowingly being continually being "false demand", constantly updating goods, and affirming the reality of maintaining reality. Culture is suffocating and eliminated. As a result, modern developed industrial societies have made people a one-dimensional person, a person who lacks criticism and reflection, indifferent to the future of themselves and others, and uncritically accepted the reality around them. Obviously, the degenerate effect of the market in today's society also prompts us to further think about the role that the government should assume and to broaden the government functions given in the textbooks of neoclassical economics.

V. Promoting the theory of distributional justice

The above introduces the dissimilarity of market entities, especially the inequality of power and status, which inevitably leads to the irrationality of market income distribution. Generally speaking, in the real world, the relationship between supply and demand in market transactions is basically reflected in the contest between powers. The distribution structure of the remaining trades must also be determined by the power of the parties; therefore, the result of distribution is always beneficial to the larger party. Strong people tend to have a larger share of income. In turn, a larger share of revenue further strengthens the power of the strong, so that it has a greater advantage in future transactions, and gain a greater share of revenue ... so cyclical, which has produced a market economy The Matthew effect: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, eventually leading to the polarization of social income distribution.

Of course, some economists may think that the income gap in the market economy will shrink after a certain limit based on the inverted U-type income distribution law discovered by Kuznets. The income gap is defended and opposed to human intervention to narrow this income gap. For example, Zhang Weiying believes that “the more open the market and the less government intervention, the smaller the income gap.” But in fact, this does not seriously distinguish the difference between the influencing factors of the U-shaped income curve: (1) the income gap curve The expansion of the middle section is mainly due to the Matthew effect of the spontaneous market. This Matthew effect will eventually lead to the polarization of social income distribution; (2) the narrowing of the latter section of the income gap is mainly due to the transfer effect of social intervention. This kind of social intervention mainly promotes the joint strength of the weak and direct legislation to guarantee the basic demands of the disadvantaged. That is to say, income distribution itself is the result of the game of social power, and with the concentration of property rights, its owners will have more and more powerful power in the negotiations, and thus will get more and more favorable income share, which is A self-reinforcing process.

In particular, the distribution of power in a society is an extremely unbalanced society. The market of supply and demand determined entirely by power must have strong predatory nature and inevitably lack of care for justice and fairness. To this end, a good society is embodied in the existence of a series of laws that restrict the use of property rights attached to specific functional roles so that they do not expand due to cumulative effects. This is also the economic intervention policy of the people's livelihood. The theoretical basis. At the same time, it is through the introduction of counter-strength and the “constraints” on property rights that have strengthened the strength and status of the disadvantaged in the negotiations, and finally the trend of widening the income distribution gap has eased and even shrank.

In fact, in a benign development society, people often have a basic consensus on social justice. This means that the income of the individual should be commensurate with the contribution of labor. Only in this way can we truly reflect the rights of everyone and make everyone Welfare has grown in proportion to national wealth. Among them, in the mature and perfect market, it should safeguard the rights of each market entity and promote the balanced development between social rights and national wealth; only then can the market be regarded as mature rather than original. In order to be considered cooperative rather than predatory, we can promote the continued expansion of social order. As far as the government of reasonableness and legitimacy is concerned, it should be the protector of the weak group. It should ensure that there is no power to rule and exploit other groups in society. Only in this way can the government take up the function of maintaining social stability and can coordinate The function of social interests can guarantee the smooth progress of social coordination and cooperation. Similarly, as a humanist who pays attention to social reality, the Economist should also focus on the deep research of justice, because the realization of distributive justice not only contributes to the improvement of social efficiency, but also the distribution of justice itself is worthy of social value. . Obviously, in the real market, both the initial possession of resources and the process of wealth transfer are controlled by a few powerful people, and the resulting income distribution has significant irrationality. Moreover, the initial distribution of income is unreasonable. Sex is not only manifested in the fact that wage income does not reflect its labor contribution, but also the principle of income based on labor contribution also ignores the natural inequality of human individuals.

Therefore, from the perspective of the principle of justice, this requires compensation for the irrationality of the initial distribution of income through income redistribution: (1) compensation for those who are harmed, thereby achieving compensation justice; (2) for those who are naturally vulnerable The subject of status provides assistance to achieve corrective justice. Obviously, this gives the government a positive role in the field of income distribution. Unfortunately, the modern mainstream economics of the marginal revolution opposes classical economics to link income distribution with the rule system from the power game, but unites production theory and income theory based on the principle of marginal productivity, and then contributes to market income and production. Equivalent; accordingly, it treats the initial distribution of income as just, and thus claims that the private property is sacred and inviolable, and the taxation based on income redistribution is considered a violation of basic justice. It is precisely under the advocacy of modern mainstream economics that the government has abandoned the function of correcting and compensating justice and income redistribution, and the market mechanism has been over-respected. The market-oriented reform of Chinese society also unilaterally emphasizes the distribution of income by freedom. The market mechanism determines that any benefits derived from its power are legalized.

6. Promoting social equilibrium theory

Discussing the functions that the government should undertake is not a priori and fixed, but related to the demands of a specific time and space. In fact, since the beginning of the 20th century, even after the implementation of the liberal market policy of neoclassical economics in the 1980s, the public sector and public spending in Western countries have shown a rapid growth trend, including the government’s private sector. Regulation and expansion of public ownership in the public sector. Moreover, the most concentrated economic rights are not brought about by legally regulated methods or public ownership, but by the relative increase in income and expenditure of the public sector (ie, the government).

In fact, the large-scale public sector has become a feature of the modern developed economy: the proportion of the public sector in GDP in developed countries has reached 40-50% on average, especially in the welfare countries of Northern Europe, where the public sector accounts for 60% of GDP. %. So why is there a long-term increase in public spending? There are several theories proposed by the economics community to explain this phenomenon:

(1) Wagner's “Government Activity Expansion Law” tends to explain from the perspective of social and economic development requiring the government to perform more and more functions. As the government functions expand, fiscal expenditures continue to increase;

(2) Picocock and Wiseman's public choice theory tends to explain the increase in public income as a result of economic development and social unrest, and leads to a corresponding increase in public spending;

(3) The development theories of Musgrave and Rostow tend to explain from the perspective that the public expenditure structure needs to be changed at different stages of economic development;

(4) Baumol's "Baumore disease" tends to explain from the perspective that the low labor productivity of the public sector will inevitably lead to its large scale;

(5) Parkinson's Parkinson's Law tends to look for reasons from the shortcomings of organizational principles in hierarchical organizations: once the incompetent executive heads occupy leadership positions, complex institutions and excessive redundant staff are inevitable, and administrative staff will Constantly expanding, but organizational efficiency is getting lower and lower;

(6) Huang Youguang's pursuit of welfare said that it tends to explore the growth of advertising products from the perspective of well-being and happiness. Private consumption is mainly private competition. From the perspective of the whole society, it does not improve happiness. Only private consumption is transferred into public expenditure, especially In the aspects of environmental protection, basic research, education, etc., we can improve people's happiness and quality of life without reducing the happiness of private individuals.

Galbraith called the social equilibrium between the private products and the supply of government products and services in the "Fengyu Society". It emphasizes that any well-functioning or well-managed society should make public services Keep up with private production. The basic idea is that the increase in the use of a product inevitably creates demand for other products. Accordingly, as the society becomes more affluent, the increase in private consumer goods will correspondingly increase the demand for public goods. For example, as more cars are consumed, there must be more car insurance and more space to use the car. Moreover, with the advancement of human society, the proportion of social needs to human needs is increasing. For example, the increase in automobile consumption requires the increase of streets, highways, traffic control, parking space, and the need for roads and schools in affluent societies. , public works such as museums and low-cost housing.

However, for a long time, the social equilibrium has not received the attention it deserves, and it has not been able to maintain the minimum relationship between public services and private production and commodity consumption. On the contrary, the wealth of the private sector has not only formed an alarming contrast with the poverty of the public sector. And the richness of private products has become an important cause of the public service supply crisis, which is the coexistence of private wealth and public poverty. In particular, the more prevalent the market fundamentalism, the more obvious the imbalance between private products and public goods: on the one hand, luxurious luxury villa gardens, expensive luxury private jets and dazzling gold and silver satin, another On the other hand, it is a ruined road, a stinking river, and a dirty public transport. So why are public goals that are increasingly important to human welfare ignored by modern society? Galbraith believes that the main reasons are: (1) In the modern monopoly economic system, the traditional total competitiveness has been replaced by powerful organizational forces, such as huge producers, national retail companies and powerful unions; they manipulated The market, manipulating consumers, and thus manipulating the economy; (2) people's concern for economic growth in real life is more than the concern for life itself, the attention to "things" exceeds the attention of people, and thus an economic system The goal is often not to supply goods to meet the needs of the people. For this reason, it is necessary to re-establish economics' attention to public goals and re-understand and establish the government's due functions.

Seven, complex liberal theory

The current controversy about the boundaries of government functions derived from the debate on adhering to and opposing neoliberalism in the field of economics also stems from the cognitive differences in the connotation of liberalism. In fact, the current society tends to have a simplistic labeling orientation, such as whether a scholar is not a liberal or a liberal. This labeling distinction clearly ignores the following points: (1) The term “liberalism” itself has undergone a long-term evolution, and has been given different connotations at different times, such as freedom without domination, freedom without interference, and self-discipline. Freedom, etc.; (2) The connotation of liberalism presents an increasingly complex trend, such as the evolution from classical liberalism to reform liberalism to modern liberalism; (3) the rise of the 1970s The "neoclassical" liberalism that formed the global trend of thought in the 1990s began to return to classical liberalism, which in turn presented primitive and simplistic features.

The specific explanation is as follows: "Liberalism" originated from the opposition to the domination of hierarchical identity in feudal society during the Enlightenment. To completely get rid of the domination of this identity system, it must have the protection of basic property, thus early liberalism. Emphasizing that “private property is sacred and inviolable”; however, as the law of property rights concentration caused by the market Matthew effect reappears, the danger of money power concentrated in the hands of a few people is also growing, so in the 1870s Sismondi and John. Muller, Thomas Green, Hobhouse and others began to reflect on and question the market effectiveness of laissez-faire, and instead advocated that the government use legislative means to protect workers' basic social rights and basic social welfare. This is the new color improvement. Liberalism "New Liberalism"; Then, in the 1970s, due to the economic difficulties caused by Keynesian interventionist policies and the disintegration of the planned economy such as the Soviet Union, the neoclassical economics such as Hayek and Austrian scholars and Friedman People call the popular modified New Liberalism pseudo-liberalism and create a new The word Libertarianism inherits the connotation of classical liberalism. At this point, Liberalism is referred to as the reform liberalism in favor of social welfare, while Libertarianism is understood as the pursuit of laissez-faire liberalism. However, Hayek, Friedman, etc. are reluctant to hand over Liberalism to other genres, and Liberalism is often used to call their own ideas. Later, neoclassical economists created the new vocabulary "Neo-liberalism". It is distinguished from "New Liberalism" with improved color and is called true liberalism. Generally speaking, the "new" of "neo-" has more meaning of "copying, copying the previous things", and "new" is more different from the past "innovation, change"; therefore, The author prefers to refer to "Neo-liberalism" as "emerging liberalism" or "neoclassical liberalism."

Obviously, it is precisely because different groups define and use the term "liberalism" based on different positions and purposes, which leads to the obvious uncertainty of the connotation and characteristics of liberalism; in particular, the domination of affirmative rationalism ，占主流地位的新古典经济学倾向于将自由放任市场经济中一切（或绝大多数）现象都视为合理的，同时将质疑和反对者都称为自由主义的敌人。其实，真正的知识分子必然是自由主义者，因为它不能容忍自身思想受到约束和统治;但同时，任何具有强烈现实主义和人本主义精神的知识分子，也都必然会致力于挖掘自由放任的市场经济所内含的问题。

从“自由”根本含义上讲，它是指社会个体不受他人的干涉和支配，这包括政治上的压迫和经济上的剥削;而之所以会形成政治上的压迫和经济上的剥削，就在于政治经济地位的不平等，在于政治经济权力集中在某些人手中。因此，自由主义就有两方面的内容：（1）政治上要不受支配，政治权利在人与人之间的分配就应该没有差异，都有同等的选择权、被选择权以及受教育的权利;（2）经济上要不受干涉，经济权利上就不应该存在过度的不平等，需要采取一定的社会措施来防止所有权的集中。同时，从自由主义演化史也可以看到，随着财产权利的不断积累和集中，人们认识到不能简单地神话“私有财产神圣不可侵犯”这一信条，更不能静态和抽象地看待个人自由。因此，对纯粹市场提出批判并不意味着反自由主义，相反，正是这种批判促使了自由主义本身的发展。

事实上，现代自由的一个重要内涵就是保障和扩大个人的基本社会权利，这不仅要堤防社会权力集中带来的危险，也会堤防金钱权力集中带来的危险;相应地，我们不能简单地将市场和政府对立起来，而是要寻求两者之间的互补性，寻求两者之间的平衡。将自由与平等正义结合起来，将市场经济与社会公平和人文关怀结合起来，这就是复杂自由主义的基本理念。相应地，复杂自由主义注重堤防两类权力集中的危害：经济领域在坚持市场经济的主体地位的同时，又主张通过不断完善市场机制来缓和市场机制对弱势者的不公和伤害，政治领域则主张建立和完善结合用手投票和用脚投票的呼吁-退出机制以防止寡头政治或庸俗民主所引发的政府失灵。

八、资源配置机制理论

从市场化失灵来引出政府功能的承担，这主要是从必要性角度上而言。政府能否承担这种功能，还需要进一步探究政府作用的本身机制。按照现代企业一般理论，所有的资源配置方式都可以归结为两种基本类型：价格机制和组织机制。其中，价格机制是通过市场来运行的，而组织机制在微观上则主要体现为企业内部的命令系统。也即，基于企业组织的资源配置方式具有不同于基于市场的资源配置方式的特点：在企业组织中，发生资源配置的主体之间存在地位和等级的不同，进而产生了命令和服从关系，这也就产生了生产的计划。

因此，企业经济往往也被看成是一个小的统制经济，或计划经济。也即，非个人的计划起源于企业内部，计划机制往往也可以被视为企业机制，而国家计划配置方式只不过是企业配置方式在国民经济上的拓延。因此，如果说企业管理协调是在微观经济层次上对市场协调方式的替代，那么，政府的管理协调就可看成在宏观经济层次上取代市场协调的方式。这可从两方面加以理解：（1）正如企业组织的管理协调引入了企业管理人员一样，国家组织的宏观协调则引入了政府行政官员;（2）正如企业组织中也存在大量的隐性协调的活动，如企业文化建设、职工培训等一样，在一个国家组织中也存在大量的隐性协调需要政府来施行。

正因如此，我们认为，国家计划实际上是属于两种基本资源配置方式之一的组织配置方式，政府显性协调本质上也是宏观的组织管理协调方式;相应地，计划和市场这两种基本资源配置方式本质上并没有优劣之分，区别只是在于各自与环境的相容程度：不同方式与什么环境相适应以及发生作用的“限度”如何。 由此，当前中国社会经济体制改革也不应该受到先验意识形态的左右，不需要为“市场化而市场化”，而应该正确认识国家的根本性质和政府的作用领域。

一般来说，政府的根本作用在于促进市场主体之间的行为协调，从而提高劳动有效性和增进社会合作。政府的这种协调功能表现在直接和间接两个方面：其中，直接的协调作用主要是指政府以产权代理者或控制者的身份对经济直接进行计划、管理和经营等活动;间接的协调作用则主要是指以裁判者的身份通过间接的方式——如设定游戏规则、提高国民整体认知水平、培育社会的合作精神等——为市场经济活动提供辅助性支持以提高社会协调性的活动。

当然，政府的经济干预也会产生政府失灵。不过，政府失灵的产生原因不同于市场失灵：市场机制的失灵主要在于孤立个体在自发互动上的协调性之不足，政府机制的失灵则主要体现为集中的权力在使用上的制约性不足。相应地，市场机制的失灵是集中于市场交换和个体行为的经济学家所应该关注的，其基本思维在于如何提高行为的协调性以促进社会合作和分工深化;政府机制的失灵则是集中于政治组织和群体行为的社会政治学家所重点关注的，其基本思维在于如何建立起一套有效的监督机制来保证政府及其代理人做它该做的事。

不幸的是，现代学术的学科关注却似乎颠倒过来：经济学家努力为自生自发的秩序进行辩护，政治学家则如何完善对政府及其代理人的监督机制上似乎也无大作为。结果，中国社会就盛行两种极端观点：（1）针对市场失灵问题，不是寻求市场的完善之道而是试图取消了事，这是改革开放前的计划经济实践所展示的;（2）针对政府失灵问题，也不是寻求政府监督体系的完善而是取消政府相关职能，这正是现代经济学界的流行观点。有鉴于此，良善社会就应该努力避免这两种极端倾向，而这也正是新时期下的有为政府建设所追求的。