The Third Way

Although I often allow myself to be identified as "left wing," I find this use of political terminology pigeonholes me in a way that I don't like. I find I agree with those people who are "left wing" more than "right wing" most of the time, but sometimes I am not sure which "wing" really applies to me. Here I want to present a different way of thinking about politics.

The Third Way represents a new social, economic, and political way of thinking. Normally, politics in conventional parlance is assumed to follow a "Left/Right" axis. It's assumed partisans on either side lean toward either socialism or capitalism, as if these two economic systems exhausted all possible forms of political economy. My goal here is to complicate, rather than simplify. Politics doesn't merely follow a linear axis, and there are more options than two.

Political Economy: The Third Choice

"Third Way" economics is based primarily on the simple idea of economic democracy: extending democratic control to the economic sphere. While capitalism and socialism seem to be poles apart, they are really quite similar in some distressing ways. Both capitalism and socialism rely on unsustainable growth for their goals. Although capitalism allows labor unions, and socialism supposedly represents labor through labor parties, in neither case is there direct (syndicalist) labor control of production. Both capitalism and socialism often wreak havoc on civil society, where associations between people exist neither for profit nor power. Both systems rely on centralization of control of production - either in government bureaucracies or in monopolistic multinationals. The Third Way represents a way out of these trends.

From Axis to Spectrum

Social Freedom (horizontal axis) --> Economic Freedom (vertical axis)	Least	Less		More	Most
Most	Absolutism	<--	Social Darwinists	-->	Anarchism
More	/\	Conservatism	3Way	Libertarianism	/\
	Reactionaries	3Way	"Centrism"	3Way	Revolutionaries
Less	\/	Authoritarianism	3Way	Liberalism	\/
Least	Fascism	<--	Totalitarians	-->	Communism

What's being shown in this table is fairly simple. As we increase economic freedom in society, people can engage in less regulated economic transactions, but this tends to increase competition and the formation of hierarchical economic elites. Social Darwinists tend to approve of this fact because they see this as survival of the fittest, whether it's the king and feudal barons, or CEOs and robber barons, at the top. As we decrease economic freedom in society, there tends to be more equality and fairness, but individual initiative and creative entrepeneurialism also tend to disappear. Totalitarians tend not to mind this fact because they want the government to have total control of the economy.

As we increase social freedom in society, people can exercise more liberties and freedoms, and their rights become more respected, but a sense of social or communal obligation sometimes disappears. Revolutionaries tend to want to overthrow any kind of social order, so they don't mind this. As we decrease social freedom in society, there are less problems of lawlessness and disorder, but people begin to feel their individual lives are too closely monitored and controlled. Reactionaries don't mind this because they always look backwards to eras of "law and order."

The Third Way position hovers all around the margins of the center of this diagram, basically. It rejects both economic hierachies (which tend to result from too much economic freedom) and political hierarchies (which tend to result from too little social freedom.) Still, it doesn't really represent what some people might call "Centrism" either. Centrists seek constant equilibrium among all forces, and this might neither be attainable nor desirable.

The current exemplar of 'centrism' in the U.S. is Ross Perot, who basically rejects dogmatic views of either less or more taxing or spending, in favor of balancing the budget. Rather than arguing for less or more government, Perot seems to argue for "best" (most at equilibria? most managerially efficient?) government. He doesn't in any way come close to the Third Way vision, because he seems to be arguing for fixing the existing socioeconomic order.

Another way of looking at the Third Way vision - the three slogans of the French revolution were liberty, fraternity, and equality. Various systems today tend to emphasize the tradeoffs of liberty vs. equality - the individual against the totality. Third Way brings the "fraternity" back into the equation. The paramount interest is neither the individual nor the State; it's communities, nongovernmental nonprofit organizations, social groups, cultural institutions, decentered networks of people.

Against the Grain

1. Current socioeconomic systems emphasize centralization of economic and political power; the Third Way emphasizes decentralization.
2. Current systems emphasize undercontrolled growth and expansion (of either the economy or the State); the Third Way emphasizes sustainability and "human scale" ("small is beautiful.")
3. Current systems treat ecology as an external; Third Way brings ecology into the center of political economy.
4. Current socioeconomic systems tend to treat people as forces of production; in a Third Way system, human dignity is based on more than efficiency or productivity.
5. Current socioeconomic systems tend to create uniformity and homogenization; Third Way systems tend to promote diversity.
6. Current socioeconomic systems assume workers need to be told what to do in order to function; Third Way assumes that workers need control of their own processes of decisionmaking within the factory.
7. Unlike other systems, the Third Way would not attempt to eradicate socioeconomic classes, or exacerbate their inequalities, but it would seek to promote their relative equity.
8. The Third Way assumes that the primary forces governing people are neither material 'rational' self-interest nor class loyalty. People have a need to associate, to be different, and to be recognized for their worth, among other things.
9. The Third Way would allow local community control over both "market forces" and government mandates. Neither deregulation nor privatization - decentralization.
10. The Third Way looks beyond measures of production to measures of quality of life, which sometimes are actually reduced by economic growth.

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