"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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evaluating the Third Way
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November 14, 2006
In a paper entitled Dancing with Wolves: The untenable tenets of the Third Way Professor Hugh Emy from Monash University discusses the Third Way and economic neoliberal policy. He states his position clearly:
....the Third Way must be seen as a transitional response to the complete dominance of neo-liberal ideas and policies. It is, perhaps, a way of resurrecting, of keeping alive, a belief in non-market, social values which hard or dogmatic economic liberalism threatens to extinguish. But, ultimately, the Third Way is based on the illusion that is possible to strike a sustainable balance between free market and non-market approaches to social organisation. Third Way thinking may - and ideally, should - lead back to social democracy but cannot provide a satisfactory substitute for it.
He adds that what one thinks of the Third Way will depend on what one makes of the forces at work in economic globalisation, or the expansion of global capitalism: whether one see them as progressive or threatening. It will depend also on whether or how far one sympathises with the main historical objective of social democratic parties, which is to civilise capitalism by addressing the inequities it creates in power and income, and by trying to control the impact of free markets in society. Emy holds that that '(global) capitalism, for all its productive energy, is ultimately an unstable and self-destructive system which, left to its own devices, erodes and destroys the social, institutional and environmental life-support systems on which it rests.'
Emy says that the Third Way:
emerged as the left-of-centre's strategy for carrying on the modernisation processes begun by the neo-liberals on terms which acknowledged the case for free markets and fiscal rectitude, the constraints imposed by globalisation, as well as trying to place a greater value on social cohesion. Third Way advocates may have wanted a balance between free markets and social values, but realities - the strength of the dominant paradigm, the impact of accelerating globalisation and the continuing need to shore up the productive base - were always likely to tip the balance towards the former. (Just as the re-structuring process in Australia in the 1980s was driven increasingly by rapidly changing global economic pressures.)
He adds that in Britain rather than America, the Third Way centered on the belief that it was possible to balance neo-liberalism and communitarian values, wealth creation via free markets with social cohesion. By the end of the decade, it was fairly clear in Britain and America that the balance had tilted decisively towards neo-liberalism, just as had occurred in Australia. Clinton and Blair, and Keating, found it harder and harder to deliver on social policy despite increasing evidence of social stresses.
Emy says that though the Third Way attempts to strike a balance between free markets and society, it is unlikely that it can deliver on this balance because the neo-liberal mode of governance actively resists policies and spending which conflict with its own emphasis on growth, continuous modernisation and active support for globalisation as a beneficial process. The market rules.
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Atleast there was some acknowledgement within the British Labour party in the 1990’s of the fact that there is no guarantee that markets left to their own devices will produce socially optimal results.
With German/French/Japanese welfare capitalism slowly being eroded by neo-liberal economic reforms, I wonder how these countries will deal with the problems of social dislocation – devising a 4th way?
In the 1990’s, we saw what occurred in Russia and Argentina when the IMF (led by the US and UK) pushed neo-liberal economic reforms too hard and too fast.