最近在写的一篇文章要引用到Joseph Schumpeter的一段话，网上找不到中译文，只好自己动手，一动手才发现太要命了，德语作家的英文可真不是一般人能对付的（所以tcya和军各同学就不要抱怨哈耶克的文字了，德语作家大概都这德性），何况是我这种新手，勉强弄了出来，贴出来给大家看看，这段文字本身很有价值，同时也请各位帮我挑挑毛病（蓝色部分是我最没信心的）。

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Joseph A. Schumpeter on “Creative Destruction”
From Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1975) [orig. pub. 1942], pp. 82-85:

Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. And this evolutionary character of the capitalist process is not merely due to the fact that economic life goes on in a social and natural environment which changes and by its change alters the data of economic action; this fact is important and these changes (wars, revolutions and so on) often condition industrial change, but they are not its prime movers. Nor is this evolutionary character due to a quasi-automatic increase in population and capital or to the vagaries of monetary systems, of which exactly the same thing holds true. The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers, goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.

故此，资本主义在本质上是一种经济变迁的方式或模式，它不仅从来不是、也从来不可能是静止不变的。资本主义进程的这一进化特征，并非纯粹缘于经济生活乃展开于一个不断变化的社会与自然环境这一事实，和这些变化对经济行为之数量的改变；这一事实固然是重要的，这些变化（战争、革命等等）经常为产业变迁创造了条件，但它们并非它的主要推动力量。上述进化特征，亦非缘于人口与资本的半自动增长，或货币系统的变幻无常。推动和维持资本主义引擎的基本动力，来自资本主义企业家所创造的新型消费、新商品、新的生产与运输方法、新市场，以及新型产业组织。

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the contents of the laborer’s budget, say from 1760 to 1940, did not simply grow on unchanging lines but they underwent a process of qualitative change. Similarly, the history of the productive apparatus of a typical farm, from the beginnings of the rationalization of crop rotation, plowing and fattening to the mechanized thing of today–linking up with elevators and railroads–is a history of revolutions. So is the history of the productive apparatus of the iron and steel industry from the charcoal furnace to our own type of furnace, or the history of the apparatus of power production from the overshot water wheel to the modern power plant, or the history of transportation from the mailcoach to the airplane. The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation–if I may use that biological term–that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in. . . .

正如我们在上一章所看到的，劳动者的预算清单，比如从1760年到1940年间的，并非简单的沿一条不变的路线而增长，而是经历了质的改变。类似的，典型农场之生产设备的历史，从轮作制的合理化到今天的机械化——以吊车和铁路相连——是一个革命的历史。钢铁工业生产设备从木炭炉到现代高炉的历史，或能源生产从上射式水车到现代发电厂，或运输业从邮递马车到飞机，皆是如此。国内或国外新市场的打开，以及从作坊到工厂到诸如美国钢铁的康采恩这样的组织发展，同样展示了产业变异的过程——假如可以用生物学术语的话——它反复不断的导致经济结构的革命，不断摧毁旧的、创造新的。这一创造性毁灭的过程是资本主义的本质，它是资本主义得以组成且每个资本主义康采恩赖以存在的基础……

Every piece of business strategy acquires its true significance only against the background of that process and within the situation created by it. It must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood irrespective of it or, in fact, on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull. . . .

每个商业策略仅在其所面临的背景和它所创建的局面中才具有真正的意义，这只能从它在创造性毁灭的持续风暴中所扮演的角色中才能看出，无视这一风暴或假定一切太平，是无法理解其意义的。

The first thing to go is the traditional conception of the modus operandi of competition. Economists are at long last emerging from the stage in which price competition was all they saw. As soon as quality competition and sales effort are admitted into the sacred precincts of theory, the price variable is ousted from its dominant position. However, it is still competition within a rigid pattern of invariant conditions, methods of production and forms of industrial organization in particular, that practically monopolizes attention. But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance)–competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives. This kind of competition is as much more effective than the other as a bombardment is in comparison with forcing a door, and so much more important that it becomes a matter of comparative indifference whether competition in the ordinary sense functions more or less promptly; the powerful lever that in the long run expands output and brings down prices is in any case made of other stuff.

首先需要抛弃的是关于竞争手段的传统观念，经济学家们总算已开始从唯价格竞争是见的束缚中挣脱出来。一旦质量竞争和营销术被容许进入理论圣地，价格变量便从其统治宝座上被赶了下来。但是，竞争仍在一个由不变条件——特别是生产方式和产业组织形式——所组成刚性模式下继续，实际上这几乎占据了全部的注意。但资本主义的现实图景并非如教科书所描绘的那样，是一种数量竞争，相反，竞争来自新商品、新技术、新的供给来源、新型组织（比如大规模控制单元）——这些竞争所具有的决定性的成本和质量优势，所打击的并非现有厂商的利润和产量边际，而是它们的生存基础；此类竞争的效果之不同于其它，恰如轰炸之不同于推门而入，其重要性足以令常规竞争的效果大小变得无足轻重；在长期推动产量扩张并拉低价格的强大杠杆，总是由其它东西构成的。

It is hardly necessary to point out that competition of the kind we now have in mind acts not only when in being but also when it is merely an ever-present threat. It disciplines before it attacks. The businessman feels himself to be in a competitive situation even if he is alone in his field or if, though not alone, he holds a position such that investigating government experts fail to see any effective competition between him and any other firms in the same or a neighboring field and in consequence conclude that his talk, under examination, about his competitive sorrows is all make-believe. In many cases, though not in all, this will in the long run enforce behavior very similar to the perfectly competitive pattern.

恐怕已无须强调，我们正在谈论的这种竞争，不仅存在，更是一种无时不在的威胁。其打击紧随着其警戒。商人即便在他独行无敌的领域同样能体会到身处竞争之中，他所拥有的地位，令政府调查专家在他和相同或相邻领域看不到任何有效竞争，从而断定他在接受调查时倾诉的竞争压力都只是哄骗。在许多（即便不是全部）案例中，这（种竞争压力）对行为所产生的长期效果非常类似于完全竞争图景。

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