Tradition

Third Way

Overview

The Third Way is a predominantly centrist political position that attempts to reconcile centre-right and centre-left politics by synthesising a combination of economically liberal and social democratic economic policies. It is a reconceptualisation of social democracy. It supports workfare instead of welfare, work training programs, educational opportunities, and other government programs that give citizens a 'hand-up' instead of a 'hand-out'. The Third Way seeks a compromise between a less interventionist economic system as supported by neoliberals and European Keynesian social democratic spending policy supported by social democrats and progressives.

The Third Way was born from a reevaluation of political policies within various centre to centre-left progressive movements in the 1980s in response to doubt regarding the economic viability of the state and the perceived overuse of economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularised by Keynesianism, but which at that time contrasted with the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right starting in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.

The Third Way has been promoted by social liberal and social-democratic parties. In the United States, a leading proponent of the Third Way was President Bill Clinton. In the United Kingdom, Third Way social-democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism and said: "My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice. ... Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly." Blair referred to it as a "social-ism" involving politics that recognised individuals as socially interdependent and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen and equal opportunity.

Third Way social-democratic interpreter Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the state socialist conception of socialism and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxist claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism as a mode of production. In 2009, Blair publicly declared support for a "new capitalism".

Policies supported by self-described Third Way supporters vary by region, political circumstances, and ideological leanings. Third Way advocates generally support public-private partnerships, a commitment to fiscal conservatism, combining equality of opportunity with personal responsibility, improving human and social capital, and protection of the environment. But even in pursuit of these ends, Third Way advocates differ in their policies, owing to conflicting priorities. Anthony Giddens, for example – believing that society should be more inclusive to the elderly – called for abolishing the retirement age so people could exit the workforce whenever they have saved enough; French president Emmanuel Macron did the exact opposite, raising the retirement age to balance the budget. The Bill Clinton administration, being highly influenced by the works of the controversial political scientist Charles Murray, was less friendly to the welfare state than most Democratic party members.

The Third Way has been criticised by mainstream democrats, as well as anarchists, communists, and in particular democratic socialists as a betrayal of left-wing values, with some political scientists and analysts characterising the Third Way as an effectively neoliberal movement. It has also been criticised by conservatives, nationalists, classical liberals, and libertarians who advocate for laissez-faire capitalism.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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In yet a third way is this principle of subordination misconceived. One of the contrasts between the earlier evolved feelings and the later evolved feelings, is that they refer respectively to the more immediate effects of actions and to the more remote effects; and speaking generally,…
Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics
States what Third Way is; opens on Third Way.
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And such an education will of itself tend to do away with the evils of the existing economic situation. In the degree in which men have an active concern in the ends that control their activity, their activity becomes free or voluntary and loses its externally enforced and servile quality, even though the physical aspect of behavior remain the same. In what is termed politics, democratic social organization makes…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
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The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
States what Third Way is; opens on Third Way.
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Philosophers who discussed Third Way

Jürgen Habermas

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Political philosophy.

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