The Case for Business in Developing Countries
《商业对发展中国家的意义》(The Case for Business in Developing Countries)
By Ann Bernstein
作者：安•伯恩斯坦(Ann Bernstein)
Viking £20, Penguin Global $34.95
维京出版社(Viking) 20英镑，企鹅全球(Penguin Global) 34.95美元
On December 14 last year, 26 Bangladeshis woke up and left as usual for their Dhaka garment factory. They never saw the afternoon. As staff broke for lunch a fire tore through the workplace, owned by a group that makes clothes for Gap, JC Penney and Phillips-Van Heusen. Survivors said exit routes were cut off by doors locked to prevent theft. Some of those who perished jumped to their deaths from the 10th floor.
去年12月14日，26名孟加拉人醒来后像往常一样，前往位于达卡的服装厂上班。然而，他们没能活到当天下午。员工吃午饭时，一场大火吞噬了整个车间。拥有这家工厂的企业为Gap、JC Penney和Phillips-Van Heusen制造服装。幸存者说，为了防止偷窃，逃生通道的门被锁上了，无法通行。一些工人慌不择路从10楼跳下，坠地丧生。
The tragedy forced western clothing brands to confront the dismal safety record of Bangladesh’s garment industry – and reinforced a familiar activists’ narrative of underpaid workers toiling in grim conditions to serve pampered western consumers.
这起悲剧迫使西方服装品牌直面孟加拉国服装产业悲惨的安全记录，也强化了维权人士为人熟知的描述——工人们拿着微薄的工资，在恶劣的环境下辛苦工作，服务于欲求过度的西方消费者。
In this combative book, Ann Bernstein does not deny that corporate negligence and wrongdoing has caused suffering and injustice. Her point is that the worst cases should not be allowed to define the whole story of business in the developing world.
在这本有些“好斗的”书中，安•伯恩斯坦(Ann Bernstein)并没有否认企业的疏忽和过失造成了苦难和不公。但她的观点是：不应当用那些最糟糕的案例，来定义商业界在发展中国家的总体状况。
“So-called sweatshops,” she writes, “are most definitely to be welcomed and encouraged.” They are an entry point into the modern economy for unskilled people for whom the alternative to a low-paid job is no job. “I cannot think of many countries that have taken off economically which did not start their industrial revolutions with anything but awful (by modern standards) conditions in its mines and factories or on its farms.”
“所谓的血汗工厂，”她写道，“肯定应当受到欢迎和鼓励。”对于那些缺乏技能、不接受低薪工作就只能失业的人来说，这些工厂是是融入现代经济的一个切入点。“在实现经济腾飞的国家中，我想不出有多少国家的产业革命，不是从（以现代标准来看）条件恶劣的矿山、工厂或农场起步的。”
This point, she says, has been obscured by an anti-business worldview in the west that is contaminating debate on how to improve the lives in the poorer countries of Africa, Latin America and Asia.
她表示，这一点被西方一种反商业世界观所遮蔽，而这种世界观正在侵染着如何提高非洲、拉美和亚洲贫穷国家生活质量的辩论。
Bernstein sets herself in opposition to Naomi Klein’s No Logo, the bestselling manifesto of anti-corporatism. She goes about this methodically, stacking up a series of detailed case studies to show how the humdrum activity of running a business does a lot of economic good.
伯恩斯坦的立场，与娜奥米•克莱恩(Naomi Klein)在反企业畅销书《No Logo》中的观点针锋相对。她的阐述有条不紊，罗列出一系列详细的案例研究，表明经营一家企业的单调活动是如何带来很多经济益处的。
This is not something you need to explain to poor people. Ask African slum-dwellers how to end poverty and you often get the pragmatic answer: “Give me a job”. Anger over unemployment has contributed to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
这一点用不着向穷人解释。如果询问一个非洲贫民窟居民该如何脱贫，你通常会得到一个务实的答案：“给我一份工作。”失业引发的愤怒，是埃及和突尼斯爆发抗议的原因之一。
Asia is central to the argument. For Bernstein, the development of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea – and now China, India and their neighbours – shows that aid alone is not enough to end widespread poverty. Only enterprise and economic growth does that.
亚洲身处争论的核心。在伯恩斯坦看来，新加坡、香港、台湾、韩国，乃至目前的中国、印度及其邻国的发展都表明，单凭援助并不能终结普遍存在的贫困问题。只有通过企业发展和经济增长才能做到。
Business creates jobs, provides salaries, spreads knowledge, pays taxes, and sells products that make lives better and more productive. But business repeatedly fails to advertise such contributions, Bernstein says. Why? Because it has let the terms of the debate be set by non-governmental organisations and western activists who have made profit-seeking synonymous with immorality, bullying business into acting guilty and seeking penitence. This is the origin of a corporate social responsibility movement that Bernstein loathes.
商业可以创造就业、提供薪水、传播知识、上缴税收，并出售能够提高生活品质和生产效率的产品。但伯恩斯坦指出，商业界一而再、再而三地未能宣传这些贡献。原因何在？因为商业界把设定辩论议题的权利拱手让给了非政府组织(NGO)和西方维权分子——他们把追逐利润等同于不道德，逼迫商业界认错并忏悔。这正是伯恩斯坦所憎恶的企业社会责任运动的根源。
Western companies feel under pressure to build schools and clinics in deprived regions that are then photographed for social responsibility brochures. With Shell in Nigeria, this makes sense. Its business in the Niger Delta is regularly sabotaged by opponents who allege that local communities get no benefit from oil extracted from their land. But local activists have also accused it of playing favourites in its distribution of projects.
西方企业迫于压力，在贫困地区修建了学校和诊所，再拍成照片、做成社会责任宣传册。壳牌(Shell)在尼日利亚这样做是合理的。该公司在尼日尔三角洲(Niger Delta)的业务，频繁遭到反对者的干扰破坏，后者声称当地社区并没有因为自己土地上的石油被开采而得到任何好处。但是，当地维权分子也指责壳牌公司在分配项目时有失公平。
In places, Bernstein over-reaches. Her argument that business spreads democracy and respect for human rights is undermined by cases of companies in cahoots with dictators. Yet that does not undermine her simpler point: that unaccountable activists with tenuous claims as advocates for the poor have got business acting as if Asia’s growth never happened.
在某些地方，伯恩斯坦的论述言过其实。她认为商业能够传播民主以及对人权的尊重，而企业与独裁者勾结的案例令这种说法大打折扣。但这并不妨碍她的基本论点：一些不负责任的维权分子鼓吹穷人利益的主张空洞无力，他们使商业界表现得十分委屈，仿佛亚洲的经济增长从未发生过一样。
For their part, executives must stop approaching development as a philanthropic sideshow. Instead, they should acknowledge it as an entrepreneurial challenge where they can make a real difference.
对于企业高管而言，他们不应再把发展视为慈善活动的作秀，而应该意识到发展是企业面临的一个挑战，他们可以在其中发挥切实的作用。
Bernstein also fails to acknowledge that the west is not calling the shots as it once did. Emerging giants such as Ambev, Petrochina and Infosys Technologies will define their own way of doing things. But they all still listen to the global conversation on development and this is why it is important for advocates such as Bernstein to make the case for business. The west’s imperial adventures, resource grabs and proxy wars harmed the developing world enough. It would be tragic if an imported mistrust of commerce denied more people the chance to benefit from its work.
同样，伯恩斯坦也没有认识到，西方已经无法再像昔日那样发号施令。美洲饮料(AmBev)、中石油(PetroChina)和印孚瑟斯(Infosys)等新兴巨头，都会决定自己的行事方式。不过他们仍在倾听关于发展问题的全球讨论，因此像伯恩斯坦这样为商界辩护的人十分重要。西方的帝国主义冒险、资源掠夺和代理人战争，已经给发展中国家造成了太大的伤害。如果一种“输入型”的对商业的猜疑，使更多人丧失了通过商业获益的机会，这将是一个悲剧。
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