【英语财经】分析：马克思主义对市场的馈赠？ Marxists’ gifts to the markets

Business leaders and stock market investors tend not, as a rule, to be staunch supporters of hardline communism. But are there beneficial legacies of Marxism that the financial community should, perhaps, be thankful for?

It turns out that there may well be, with post-communist states outstripping comparable peers in areas such as education and power provision.

Most leftfield of all, the west’s former cold war nemeses turn out to be surprisingly good places to do business, outstripping a host of long-term capitalist countries in this regard.

There is, quite literally, a price to pay, however: post-communist states are unusually prone to corruption, with some animals, seemingly, more equal than others.

These, at least, are the findings of Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, a Moscow-based investment bank.

Mr Robertson, a long-time observer of post-communist eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, was intrigued on a recent trip to Vietnam: still officially a Socialist Republic ruled by a Communist party that cleaves to the hammer and sickle, and yet the country with the most pro-free market populace in the world, according to the Washington-based Pew Research Centre.

“Vietnam was the most successful frontier market in attracting foreign direct investment in 2014, while its financial markets remain un-transparent and rule-bound,” he says.

Some of Mr Robertson’s conclusions are largely anecdotal, informed by his experiences on the ground.

Vietnam, for example, has far higher secondary school enrolment levels than other frontier market countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which never came under the Soviet yoke, according to data from Unesco, the UN’s education arm.

“We suspect this is a legacy of communism, which has tended to deliver broad education even at low per capita GDP,” says Mr Robertson.

“Even Ethiopia’s communist government claimed to have increased primary school enrolment from 1m to 2.5m between 1975 and 1986, while Soviet education helped deliver a disproportionate number of scientific Nobel Prizes to Russia.”

When it comes to the rollout of nationwide power networks, still a major problem in much of sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, he notes that Lenin proclaimed in 1920 that “communism is Soviet government plus the electrification of the whole country”. Without the latter, the Soviet Union would remain a “small peasant economy”.

Mr Robertson confesses to being surprised that Vietnam more than tripled its electricity supply between 2004 and 2014, bringing supply up to the level that Turkey reached in 2004.

Given that Turkey, with a population 85 per cent of Vietnam’s but with eight times the latter’s GDP per head, is the world’s 18th largest economy, he argues it is “remarkable that Vietnam [the 56th largest economy] already has the electricity supply of a G20 economy just a decade ago”.

“Vietnam has better human capital and infrastructure capital than many frontier [market] peers,” he adds.

His other findings are more data driven. When it comes to friendliness towards nasty, brutish capitalist countries, formerly communist states appear to excel, and even nominally still communist ones such as Vietnam are not too shabby.

Based on the Ease of Doing Business rankings compiled by the World Bank, former anti-capitalist emerging market states such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary score highly.

Even Russia, despite its meddlesome government, is better than long-time western allies such as Colombia, Turkey, Greece and South Africa, as the first chart shows.

Admittedly China is further down the list, but is still ahead of the likes of the Philippines, Brazil and India.

Among frontier markets, the divergence is starker still, with ex-communist Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kazakhstan and Serbia all being more business-friendly than every other country in the MSCI frontier market index bar Mauritius.

Vietnam is less impressive, but still better on this measure than countries such as Kuwait, Kenya, Argentina, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

Even below the MSCI frontier market threshold there are ex-commies cuddling up to capitalists: Georgia was ranked the ninth best country in the world to do business in during 2014, while Mr Robertson lauds the progress even Belarus, often described as Europe’s last dictatorship, has made in “taking the axe to regulation”.

He believes that post-communist countries’ ability to produce decent education, power supply and a business-friendly environment all stem from the same source: an established bureaucracy that historically controlled everything.

“This structure was effective enough to rollout universal education and infrastructure projects,” he says.

“When you get a new generation of technocrats [who want a more pro-business environment] the bureaucracy is developed enough to follow the orders quite efficiently and put in place the new policies.”

There may be a dark side to this historic legacy, however, in the form of widespread corruption.

“The bureaucrats also learnt that they had tremendous power, untrammelled by either market or democratic forces,” Mr Robertson argues.

“Rent-seeking behaviour is very easy when you have a monopoly on power. The granting of favours, for personal or financial gain, became a key part of the system.

“Indeed, communism proved so inefficient as an economic system, that it might be argued that it was only because of bureaucrats bending rules that anything got done at all.”

The evidence would appear to back this up. Globally, there is a strong correlation between a country’s ranking in the ease of doing business survey and its ranking for corruption, as determined by Transparency International, a Berlin-based non-governmental organisation. Business-friendly countries are less corrupt.

Yet, out of 29 ex-communist countries, 25 of them score worse for corruption than for their business environment, as the second chart shows.

The likes of Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam and Armenia are particularly far from the trendline, while even the quartet of former communist states that are less corrupt than expected — Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tajikistan and Angola — and are only marginally so.

In contrast, India and Brazil, two non historically communist states with poor business environments, are markedly less corrupt than would be expected.

Mr Robertson refers back to the old Soviet joke: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”

“Perhaps the state was, and still is, seen as an entity that it is justified to steal from,” he concludes.

一般而言，商业领袖和股市投资者往往不会是强硬派共产主义的坚定拥趸。但是，马克思主义是否留下了一些应该让金融机构感恩的有益遗产呢？

答案也许是肯定的——鉴于前共产党统治国家在教育和供电方面超越可比的其他国家。

其中最左的国家——冷战时期西方的一些死对头——到头来出人意料地具备不错的营商环境，在这方面超越了一批长期的资本主义国家。

然而，也确实存在代价：前共产党统治国家往往容易出现腐败，一些人似乎比其他人更平等。

至少，这些都是总部位于莫斯科的晋新资本(Renaissance Capital)的全球首席经济学家查尔斯?罗伯逊(Charles Robertson)的发现。

罗伯逊长期观察东欧和撒哈拉以南非洲的前共产党统治国家。最近一次前往越南勾起了他的好奇心：位于华盛顿的皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)称，这个表面上仍由共产党统治、坚持锤子和镰刀信仰的社会主义共和国，却拥有世界上最具自由市场意识的民众。

“2014年，越南是吸引外商直接投资(FDI)最成功的前沿市场，尽管其金融市场仍然不透明、而且受到官僚规则的束缚，”他称。

罗伯逊的一些结论基本上是坊间性质的，受到他在实地考察期间所见所闻的启发。

例如，联合国教科文组织(Unesco)的数据显示，越南的高中入学率水平远高于尼日利亚、肯尼亚、巴基斯坦和孟加拉国等其他前沿市场国家，而后面这几个国家从未进入苏联阵营。



“我们猜想这是共产党统治的遗产，即使是在人均国内生产总值(GDP)很低的情况下也倾向于提供全民教育，”罗伯逊称。

“就连埃塞俄比亚的共产党政府也曾经声称，在1975年至1986年期间把小学入学人数从100万提高到250万，而苏联的教育还帮助俄罗斯在科学方面获得了超出比例的诺贝尔奖。”

在全国电网覆盖问题上（这在撒哈拉以南非洲大部分地区和其他地方仍然是一大问题），他提到列宁曾在1920年称，“共产主义就是苏维埃政权加全国电气化”。若没有电气化，苏联将继续是“小农经济”。

罗伯逊承认对越南的成就感到惊讶：该国在2004年至2014年期间增加供电量逾两倍，达到土耳其在2004年的水平。

土耳其是世界第18大经济体，其人口为越南的85%，但人均GDP是越南的8倍，正因如此，他认为“越南（世界第56大经济体）的供电量已经达到了一个20国集团经济体10年前的水平，这是一项显著成就”。

他补充称，“越南的人力资本和基础设施资本好过很多前沿市场国家。”

他的其它发现在更大程度上基于数据。在友好对待可憎、野蛮的资本主义国家方面，前共产党统治国家似乎表现出色，即使像越南这样名义上仍由共产党统治的国家做得也不算太糟糕。

根据世界银行(World Bank)编制的“营商环境”(Ease of doing business)排名，波兰、捷克和匈牙利等当年与资本主义势不两立的新兴市场得分较高。

如图表1所示，即使是政府爱插手的俄罗斯，也比哥伦比亚、土耳其、希腊和南非等西方长期盟友排名更高。

应该承认的是，中国在这份榜单上排名较低，但是仍然高于菲律宾、巴西和印度等国家。



在前沿市场中，这种分化甚至更加明显，爱沙尼亚、立陶宛、斯洛文尼亚、罗马尼亚、保加利亚、克罗地亚、哈萨克斯坦和塞尔维亚等前共产党统治国家的营商环境，均优于MSCI明晟前沿市场指数(MSCI Frontier Markets Index)中除毛里求斯以外的其他所有国家。

越南的排名没那么令人印象深刻，但是在营商环境方面仍然好于科威特、肯尼亚、阿根廷、尼日利亚和孟加拉国等国家。

即使是一些没能达到MSCI明晟前沿市场门槛的前共产党统治国家，也对资本家敞开了大门：2014年，格鲁吉亚营商环境在全球位列第九。罗伯逊还称赞了常常被形容为欧洲最后一个独裁国家的白俄罗斯，对白俄罗斯在“精简监管”方面的进展表示赞赏。

他认为，前共产党统治国家提供优质教育、电力以及较好营商环境的能力来自于同一点：传统上掌控一切的成熟的官僚制度。

“这种组织结构可以有效推行全民教育和基础设施项目，”他称。

“当你有了想要更好的营商环境的新一代技术官僚时，官僚体制已经足够发达，能够高效率地执行指令，落实新政策。”

然而，这种历史遗产可能也有阴暗的一面，那就是腐败猖獗。

罗伯逊认为，“这些官僚也意识到自己拥有巨大实权，而且不受市场或民主力量的制约。”

“当你垄断权力时，寻租行为非常容易出现。无论是出于经济利益还是个人的什么好处，输送利益成为这种体制的关键部分。

“的确，共产主义的那一套在作为经济体系时被证明如此效率低下，以至于人们可以辩称，正是由于官僚们不遵守规则，才做成了一些事。”

证据似乎支持这个命题。正如总部位于柏林的非政府组织“透明国际”(Transparency International)所发现的，全球而言，一个国家的营商环境排名与腐败排名存在很强的关联度。营商环境较好的国家，腐败问题较轻。

不过，如图表2所示，在29个前共产党统治国家中，有25个在腐败问题上的得分低于其营商环境得分。

俄罗斯、白俄罗斯、吉尔吉斯斯坦、越南和亚美尼亚等国家的落差特别大，与此同时，只有四个前共产党统治国家——爱沙尼亚、莫桑比克、塔吉克斯坦和安哥拉——的腐败程度略微低于预期。

与此形成反差的是，印度和巴西这两个从未由共产党统治的国家营商环境较差，但腐败程度远低于预期。

罗伯逊重提苏联时代的一个笑话：“他们假装付我们薪水，我们假装工作。”

他总结称，“或许国家过去和现在都被视为是捞取好处的正当对象。”

译者/马柯斯