第3页

导言的第3页
我开始理解，现代国家机器的基本特征就是简单化，国家的简单化就像是张简略的地图。它们并未成功地表达它们所描述的真实社会活动，它们目的也不在此；它们只表达了官方观察员所感兴趣的片断。此外，它们还不仅仅是地图。如果说它们是地图，当它们与国家权力结合在一起时，就可以重新塑造它们所描述的事实。

英文对照：
These state simplifications, the basic givens of modern statecraft,were, I began to realize, rather like abridged maps. They did not successfully
represent the actual activity of the society they depicted, nor
were they intended to; they represented only that slice of it that interested
the official observer. They were, moreover, not just maps. Rather,
they were maps that, when allied with state power, would enable much
of the reality they depicted to be remade.
我考虑到，用失败来形容这些发展的灾难是远远不够的。俄罗斯的集体化，坦桑尼亚、莫桑比克和埃塞俄比亚的强制村庄化都是20世纪人类巨大的悲剧，无论是生命的丧失或生活无可逆转地被打乱。如果不特指这些特别引人注目的事件，而是就一般情况而言，在第三世界的发展过程中已经充满了大型农业项目和新城市（比如巴西利亚和昌迪加尔）失败的残骸，他们对当地居民产生了很大影响。种族之间、宗教派别之间和不同语言使用区之间的暴力冲突破坏了人们的生活。要理解为什么有这么多人的生活受到了这些暴力的影响并不难，但我们却很难把握为什么那么多试图改善人类状态的项目却只带来了悲剧式的结果。在这部著作中，我的目的在于解释这些20世纪乌托邦式的大型社会工程失败的背后所隐含的逻辑。

英文对照：
But "fiasco" is too lighthearted a word for the disasters I have in
mind. The Great Leap Forward in China, collectivization in Russia,
and compulsory villagization in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ethiopia
are among the great human tragedies of the twentieth century, in
terms of both lives lost and lives irretrievably disrupted. At a less dramatic
but far more common level, the history of Third World development
is littered with the debris of huge agricultural schemes and new
cities (think of Brasilia or Chandigarh) that have failed their residents.It is not so difficult, alas, to understand why so many human lives have
been destroyed by mobilized violence between ethnic groups, religious
sects, or linguistic communities. But it is harder to grasp why so many
well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so
tragically awry. I aim, in what follows, to provide a convincing account
of the logic behind the failure of some of the great utopian social engineering
schemes of the twentieth century.
细心的读者会发现，这一段中文版和|谐了“大跃进”这种会严重伤害中国人民感情的字眼。