威廉·萨姆纳与美国镀金时代的竞争话语

在镀金时代,美国社会经历了由农业为主导的静态社会向充满活力的工商业社会转变。在这种背景下,美国社会中传统的竞争话语发生转变,“适者生存”被资本家频繁使用。引起这种变化的一个重要原因是美国的一些知识精英把英国哲学家赫伯特·斯宾塞的社会达尔文主义与美国社会传统中的价值观念结合起来进行重新阐述,造成自由放任式竞争的盛行。这种竞争不但没有实现市场经济公平竞争和资源优化利用的目标,反而引起了企业间的恶性竞争,造成了经济资源的浪费和低效率生产。

William G. Sumner and the Voice of Competition at the American Gilded Age

In the Gilded age, the US experienced a transformation from the static agricultural society to dynamic business society. In this context, the traditional Voice of competition was altered. "Survival of the fittest" was frequently used by Capitalists. An important reason of this change was that some intellectual elites combined the social Darwinism from British philosopher Herbert Spencer and traditional values of American society, causing an overflow of competition of extreme laissez faire. But this competition idea didn''t lead to fair competition and most optimum distribution of resources in the market.Instead, it caused vicious competition between enterprises, causing the waste of economic resources and lower production efficiency.