Poses tough questions about the third way
Faux, Jeff
The idea of a third way for the left has a long history and many incarnations. In the past it most often meant a left-wing politics that was neither revolutionary communist nor social democrat...
...Making labor markets more "flexible" will raise productivity, which will automatically raise the living standards of working people who no longer need to bargain collectively...
...All of his major accomplishments to date— cuts in domestic spending to balance the budget, welfare reform, and free trade agreeTHE THIRD WAY...
...On the issue of crime, they called for more police on the beat, another proposal often pushed by "big government" Democrats...
...economy that keeps his approval ratings high...
...Indeed, capitalism is bringing us a vast new prosperous world economy, built by entrepreneurs in the high-tech and 72 n DISSENT / Spring 1999 finance industries...
...This imbalanced growth is at the core of the current global crisis...
...As a result of financial deregulation, the mobility of private capital has now outstripped the capacity of governments and international agencies to keep markets from self-destructing and to keep their people from suffering the brutal consequences...
...It is the time to show the people that they are not alone...
...House of Representatives...
...Canadian-style national health insurance, in which the government finances the system but does not operate it, is a third way...
...The Democratic Party had become identified with a social liberalism that had weakened its hold on the white working class, particularly in the American South...
...In 1996, the General Accounting Office reported that the nation needed another $112 billion to restore public school buildings— repair the roofs, drive the rats out of the basements, and wire the school rooms for computers...
...This shift in ideological fortunes has, over the last decade, energized the previously moribund conservative wings of the parties of social democracy to claim leadership with a new paradigm—the current buzzword for which is the "third way...
...Indeed, a strong well-functioning party is an obstacle to a leader dedicated to pragmatism...
...The result was to help convince the electorate that the conservatives had been correct all along...
...When the United States was transformed from a series of regional markets to a continental economy, it had to create a continental system of economic governance to balance the power of private capital...
...In 1992, the party had a fourteen-vote majority in the U.S...
...No Strategy for the Global Economy Another favorite claim of the third way's merchandisers is that they represent a new paradigm for the new global economy...
...On the eve of the 1992 presidential election, the Democratic Party had a hundred-member majority in the U.S...
...The response has been a rising hostility to globalization—from unemployed rioters in Jakarta, to striking autoworkers in Flint, Michigan, to angry unpaid miners and teachers in Moscow...
...Thus, the Democrats are left with a base of union members and African Americans motivated primarily by a fear of Republicans...
...And his personal moral failings, even at that time, were well known to voters...
...A similar story can be told of America's NAFTA partners—Canada and Mexico— where productivity has vastly outstripped wage growth...
...it is an articulation of the agenda of the multinational corporate community...
...During this period, producTHE THIRD WAY...
...At a recent public meeting on the third way in New York, Clinton told us that the purpose of the third way is to be "modern and progressive" and to "avoid false choices...
...Programmatically, the New Democrat comDISSENT / Spring 1999 69 THE THIRD WAY...
...But in the end, many of their specific policy proposals are little different from what liberals have long been proposing...
...Rebuilding government competence must be an important element in a reconstruction of social democracy in the coming years...
...Discontent with unemployment, not New Democrat social issues or superior credibility on military matters, elected Bill Clinton in 1992...
...In the past it most often meant a left-wing politics that was neither revolutionary communist nor social democrat reformist...
...Indeed, by some fundamental measures of economic performance, the American economy in the 1990s has actually performed less well than those of other advanced nations...
...5) The third way has narrowed the subject of American politics from the governance of society to the governance of the public sector...
...Thus, in January 1996, Bill Clinton declared that "the era of big government is over...
...Business Conference Board, a highly respected source of business statistics, shows that average productivity in France, Western Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium has now caught up to that of the United States...
...As the institutions of the democratic left have weakened, those of the right have grown stronger, shifting the center of politics further rightward...
...Clinton's historic opportunity was in the area of health care...
...In America, the local brand is New Democrat...
...Again in 1996, Clinton campaigned largely as a Democratic populist and won that election as well on increased turnout of the traditional Democratic base of labor unions, minority groups, and working-class women, whom the New Democrats had assigned to history's dustbin...
...But this system had been crafted largely on the insistence of conservatives who did not want welfare going to families where there was a man in the house...
...In six years that edge dwindled to 359...
...The result was a proposal that was so complicated and confusing that it became an easy target for the private health insurance corporations to attack as a bureaucratic monster and was ultimately abandoned by Clinton's corporate allies...
...WHEN I USE a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less...
...experience is not definitive...
...They got the next election dead wrong...
...After the election of 1998, despite the pickup in seats, it was in the minority by twelve members...
...These vague sentiments could as easily have rolled off the tongues of George Bush and John Major...
...By any reasonable measure, the era's Democratic leaders—Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and even George McGovern, were far more fiscally responsible than Ronald Reagan and George Bush...
...The New Democrats, who came largely, although not exclusively, from the Southern conservative faction of the Democratic Party, argued that the party was dominated by extreme left-wing "liberal fundamentalists" who were out of touch with ordinary Americans...
...Aside from the rhetoric, the New Democrats' specific proposals about welfare were often those that liberals had been advocating for years: retraining, education, child care...
...On the worldwide spectrum of health care policies, the options range from socialized medicine, in which the government directly manages the health care system, to laissez-faire medicine, where the costs are directly borne by the individual...
...But to avoid being cast as an advocate of big government, he refused to stake out a clear position for an understandable government-regulated system, opting instead for a third way compromise with the business community...
...Nor is there much good to say about Clinton's record on criminal justice...
...In Bill Clinton's six-year presidency, we now have a real-world performance to help us make some judgments...
...labor markets are in fact slightly less flexible in 1998 than they were in 1992), but the old story of the unique position of the American dollar, which allows the United States to continue to borrow for consumption from the rest of the world...
...This posture had political appeal, but was hardly a third way...
...Tony Blair—who may be more ideologically nimble than even Bill Clinton—has begun to call for levels of international financial regulation that left-wing thinkers have been proposing for years...
...In 1992, Democrats controlled thirty governorships...
...It has lasted a bit longer than most business expansions, which have typically been aborted when U.S...
...economy during the six years of the Clinton presidency is offered as proof of the validity of these ideas...
...plaint about the "big government" focused on the presumed erosion of family values and work incentives that followed the expansion of welfare benefits in the early 1970s...
...Even at this writing, trapped in a tawdry sex scandal, it is the good state of the U.S...
...The result is a confused agenda that has shrunk the Democratic Party's base to those whose politics are driven by fear of Republicans...
...Workers' real wages and benefits in the U.S...
...labor market is not a new story of flexibility (U.S...
...military-industrial complex, reinforce pressures for more government spending in the most bloated and inefficient sector of the public budget...
...According to this theory, traditional working-class Democrats gradually moved up the ladder of social mobility and out into the suburbs, where they were more concerned with crime rates and keeping their distance from the poor than with class warfare or economic justice...
...Ignoring Inequality The experience of the Clinton years also reveals a fundamental contradiction in the New Democrats' thinking...
...76 n DISSENT / Spring 1999...
...In the end, on the question of how many fundamental "ways" there are in democratic politics, we must give the last word not to William Jefferson Clinton but to Thomas Jefferson...
...Indeed, the New Democrats seemed to be obsessed with the racially charged issues of welfare and crime in ways that scapegoated poor minorities...
...The political success of Bill Clinton and, more recently, Tony Blair, is said to be powerful evidence that this third way is in sync with fin-de-siecle economic and social realities...
...The Democratic president before that, John Kennedy, cut taxes, as did Harry Truman...
...New Democrats then shifted further to the right, supporting a proposal closer to that of the private insurance companies, which became the third way, with Clinton's compromise plan on the extreme left...
...Interestingly, the most popular national programs tend to be those run directly by the federal government: Social Security, Medicare, the National Park Service, veterans' programs...
...It is the time to re-establish clear principles upon which honest compromises can be struck...
...instead it sought radical transformation through deep democratic commitments...
...In Japan, growth has been stagnant because of the deep financial crisis and the reluctance of the Japanese government to use public monies to restructure its banking system (in ironic contrast to the willingness of the "laissez-faire" U.S...
...The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all...
...But the experience strongly suggests that social democrats in America and elsewhere should look very closely at this particular new model before they buy it...
...Only after the election did he return to third way politics...
...it ignores the function of bargaining power in determining the division of proceeds of pro74 n DISSENT / Spring 1999 duction between capital and labor...
...Is the third way a coherent idea...
...As with many of their social reforms, their new economic paradigm is not in fact new...
...What is extraordinary about the current business cycle expansion is not the normal macroeconomic performance of the U.S...
...Bill Clinton, the DLC's preferred candidate, had dodged the draft during the Vietnam War and certainly was not a credible commander in chief...
...Another third-way sympathizer defined it as occupying the political space between "armed revolution and complete laissezfaire capitalism...
...And now that the next New Democrat president needs the re-energized labor movement and a unified party to win in 2000, the Democratic Leadership Council activists have moderated their pro-business, anti-union rhetoric and broadened their definition of the third way to include virtually every position a practicing Democrat can hold...
...The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words means so many different things...
...THE THIRD WAY...
...Or are the past ways of the left so stale that something dramatically new is needed...
...In fact, both previous Democratic presidents— Carter and Johnson—attempting to diffuse Republican charges that they were loose with the public purse, had made a personal fetish of micromanaging the government in order to save money...
...Clinton attempted to address this issue in the first two years of his presidency...
...Let's take three examples...
...The New Democrats were right to stress the importance of bringing modern methods of administration to government...
...He was instrumental in expanding the number of federal crimes to which the death penalty could be applied and making it harder to prevent the execution of innocent people...
...The social institutions that support the democratic left in America have also been weakened after six years of the third way...
...The Republican Congress resisted...
...Despite the conventional wisdom that Europe's problems are centered in its labor market rigidities, serious economists who have compared U.S...
...productivity...
...Third way Democrats blamed liberal fundamentalists for a policy of writing welfare checks only to single mothers...
...To assure that this prosperity continues, capital and labor markets, both domestic and international, should be further deregulated and freed from artificial constraints, such as those imposed by labor unions and environmental regulations that are largely obsolete...
...Since 1979 the productivity of the typical American worker has risen by 22 percent, while his or her real wages have fallen by 8 percent...
...Our agenda," says Bill Clinton "isn't liberal or conservative...
...in Britain, it is New Labour...
...Meanwhile, New Democrats, having no stomach for confrontation with the still-huge U.S...
...The third way's relentless complaints about "big government" have acted like an echo chamber to the right-wing denunciation of social democracy...
...2) Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the policy class, the elections of 1992, 1996, and 1998 were not run on a third way platform...
...That the third way leads to a dead end does not lessen the urgency for a credible and effective social democratic politics for a post– cold war era...
...As political analyst Ruy Teixeira of the Economic Policy Institute has shown, the driving phenomenon is the Democrats' loss of support among low- and middleincome non-college graduates, who are not convinced that the party's economic program can help them...
...And it certainly does not mean that the parties of the mainstream left do not have to adapt to a rapidly shifting political environment...
...Political compromise is built into electoral democracy, but principled compromise starts with the principles, not the compromise...
...When the final compromises on the budget were negotiated, the amount decided on was zero...
...administrations of Reagan and Bush to interfere in the market at the time of the U.S...
...The Real Question Because the third way is such an intellectually amorphous substance, it may be that the U.S...
...Between 1994 and 1996, Clinton's reliance on the votes of women and minorities and the financial support of Wall Street led to a softening of the New Democrats' social conservatism, and an embrace of the finance industry's view of the economy...
...It has been fascinating to watch the third way evolve over the course of Bill Clinton's presidency, in response to the requirements of electoral politics...
...creasing insecurity of workers in the global economy, is convinced that it will not or cannot do it, and thus would rather have its money back in the form of tax cuts...
...JEFF FAUX is executive director of the Economic Policy Institute and author of The Party's Not Over: A New Vision for the Democrats...
...Clinton did not campaign on the third way, he governed from it...
...Today some forty-three million Americans are without health insurance coverage and another thirty million have coverage that is wholly inadequate...
...It is time to update its categories in recognition of the new and subtler ways in which class lines are drawn in advanced societies This is not the time to create a politics on the principle of compromise...
...The third-way presidency has not even lived up to its own faulty promises on this score...
...The question remains, as always: "Which is to be master...
...For example, from 1990 through 1997, American per capita gross domestic product actually grew more slowly than that of Germany and Japan and no faster than that of the United Kingdom, France, and Italy...
...Undermining the Base The erosion of the power of both political parties in American politics has been going on for some time, but under Clinton the process dramatically accelerated for the Democrats relative to the Republicans...
...It was the Democratic Party base, despised by the third way, that salvaged Clinton's presidency after the disaster of 1994...
...What is undeniable is that, either way, the change is small...
...If the end, rather than the means, is compromise, then one doesn't want to be burdened by a party's interpretation of the nation's purpose...
...It is a staple of conventional wisdom that the mainstream left has lost its compass, adrift with an outdated faith in New Deal bureaucracy and an inordinate concern for cultural freedom and for the plight of racial minorities, feminists, and other subgroups...
...In the following articles authors from both sides of the Atlantic think aloud about what the third way debate means for the left—and for their own countries...
...The new global economy, which the third way aggressively promotes, undercuts third way premises every day...
...On the other hand, by joining the right's attack on government, third-wayers have undermined public support for investments in the public sector and have reinforced the demoralization of the civil service—which ultimately makes government less efficient and effective...
...What follows is an analysis of three of the primary claims made for the third way: • First, that it provides a distinct analysis of the declining political fortunes of the democratic left • Second, that is it an effective formula for rebuilding social democratic political parties • Third, that it is a credible new strategy for addressing the issues of the post-cold war age On the evidence of the American experience thus far, the third way has failed to fulfill its claim to be a genuine alternative path for the democratic left...
...Before this shift, the real wages of non-supervisory workers rose in tandem with increases in U.S...
...The strong performance of the U.S...
...Clinton and Blair are right about the need for stronger global institutions to regulate the global economy...
...This time, however, the idea is taken by many to mean a compromise between social democracy and neoliberalism...
...The Democrats' share of the two-party vote for the House of Representatives fell from 54 percent of the vote in 1992 to less than 50 percent in 1998...
...No reasonable reading of recent American political history supports the premise that an extremist coalition of minorities and white liberals dominated the Democratic Party...
...public debt from $1 trillion to $5 trillion...
...and European growth patterns attribute most of the difference to macroeconomic, particularly monetary, policies...
...They insist that government can play the role of guarantor of opportunity in the free market, but they refuse to address (or even acknowledge) the correlation between the distribution of wealth and the distribution of political power in our society...
...As a share of the national economy, spending on retraining workers has fallen and is projected to continue to fall...
...It is no accident that the financial support for New Democrat organizations has come largely from business—particularly the financial sector...
...ments that protect investors, but not workers or the environment—promoted the business agenda...
...Thus, big government programs trumped both Monica Lewinsky and the tax cuts promised by the Republicans...
...There was one major exception: Bill Clinton and the New Democrats loudly favored extending the death penalty...
...This is not the time for the democratic left to concede that inequality and ecological destruction are necessary prices to pay for growth...
...Al From, who leads the conservative Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and is the third way's most prominent American salesperson, describes it as "the worldwide brand name for progressive politics for the Information Age...
...And the growth of public-sector unionism, which had cushioned the decline of union coverage in the private sector, has now stalled...
...Second, the charge that early-1980s Democrats were advocates of big government, as contrasted with small-government Republicans...
...Today the possibility of a third way is being discussed by center-left governments across Europe and by Bill Clinton in the White House...
...Senate...
...Two years later, Clinton and the Democrats picked up five House seats in the 1998 off-year election with a campaign based on defending big government's Social Security program, advocating that the federal government pay for a hundred thousand local school teachers, and pressing for stricter federal regulation of health maintenance organizations...
...Each of these has its own story...
...But we must put it in perspective: by historical standards, the rate of growth in production, jobs, and investment is about average, slightly better than some business cycles, slightly worse than others...
...Blair added that it was "an alliance between progress and justice," and that it "seeks to take the essential values of the center and the center-left and applies them to a world of fundamental social and economic change...
...It is both, and it is different...
...In Europe, growth has been restricted because of the difficulties and uncertainties of monetary union and the reunification of Germany...
...But now that relationship has disappeared...
...tivity growth has also been higher among all other G-7 nations except Canada...
...This does not mean that some second- or third-generation third way might not succeed in other places under other 68 n DISSENT/Spring 1999 circumstances...
...Despite his pledge to America's trade unions during the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton failed to deliver the votes for a desperately needed reform of labor law, which makes the United States the most difficult place to organize workers in the advanced world...
...This is not to say that criticism of the programs of the New Deal and Great Society was not warranted or that bureaucratic bloat is not a problem...
...In the American experience, the third way has not succeeded in making government a vehicle for "an alliance between progress and justice...
...Which is to say: the third way has become so wide that it is more like a political parking lot than a highway to anywhere in particular...
...THEY WERE not entirely wrong...
...This is not the time for the democratic left to abandon its analysis of class...
...Honest scholars may differ on whether there was a small net gain or a small net loss...
...This episode reveals how third way politics keeps shifting the political discussion to the right...
...In a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette in 1823, Jefferson concluded that there were just two fundamental choices: In truth, the parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature...
...Until we build global institutions and policies that serve the interests of the world's workers as well as the world's investors, further deregulation of finance and trade will lead to even more economic instability— and political chaos...
...The result was a dramatic lowering of expectations of government...
...Indeed, their strategy was to concede the imagery, fostered by conservatives for decades, of the Democratic Party as a nest of left-wing extremists...
...Economic issues, they argued, were secondary...
...The Third Way as a Historical Analysis In its American origins, the third way was articulated not as a grand political philosophy but as a tactical response to the Democratic Party's loss of the presidential elections of 1980 and 1984...
...EDS...
...To evaluate the third way requires a look at its real-world performance thus far...
...Thus, the issue of poverty has become the issue of managing the welfare program...
...The weakening of party is implicit in the New Democrat paradigm...
...In this context, the glib third way notion that the answer to the downward pressure of globalization on workers' wages is simply better training or education to make workers even more productive is simple-minded...
...monetary authorities reacted to price inflation stemming from war or external energy-supply shocks...
...Clinton and Blair are two of the most articulate politicians of the age, and they are surrounded by clever speechwriters and advisers...
...IT HAS LONG been the case that the middle class disdains big government in the abstract but supports most of its particulars...
...There has also been a general weakening of the power of progressive nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—the "third sector" that third way advocates often posit as an alternative to government...
...economy but the abnormally poor performance of the European Union and Japanese economies over the last six years...
...But this expansion occurred not under the Democratic Great Society but during Richard Nixon's administration, in part as a reaction to the politically threatening self-help and community development programs championed by the New Left in the 1960s...
...In terms of American politics, the lesson of the Clinton presidency is that full employment beats conservative family values—just the opposite of the New Democrats' claim...
...Ironically, the charge of fiscal irresponsibility was made by the New Democrats during a decade when Republicans were exploding the U.S...
...In the Clinton debate, however, national health insurance was defined as the extreme left position and his plan as the third way...
...Yet in the following November he won his election largely by attacking Republicans for wanting to dismantle Medicare, federal aid to education, federal protection of the environment, and for opposing a raise in the minimum wage...
...Labor's deteriorated condition led to an unprecedented internal revolt against the national leadership of the AFL-CIO in 1995...
...The idea of "reinventing" public institutions is important for progressive politics...
...In his 1997 budget, President Clinton suggested an interest-subsidy program of $5 billion for this purpose...
...As a critique of the program of the mainstream left in American politics, the New Democrats offered little that was new or progressive...
...The global marketplace has no such balance...
...But the point was greatly exaggerated...
...Postwar presidents—both Democrat and Republican— did benefit from an unindexed income tax structure that automatically linked revenues with inflation, but one has to go back nearly sixty years, to Franklin Roosevelt's financing of World War II, to find a Democratic president who could be described as deliberately pursuing a "tax and spend" economic policy...
...By giving support to the lowering of people's expectations of government, New Democrats have undercut the power of government to fulfill even the modest responsibilities they assign to it...
...Supported by Wall Street, they have also been at the forefront of a campaign to privatize the Social Security system, destroying the most successful social program of the century, which is both symbol and substance of progressive democratic values...
...Moreover, polls show that over the last two decades, the American electorate has become more liberal on social issues, such as race and gender relations and acceptance of homosexuality...
...In his first six years, Clinton presided over some scattered, small improvements, as well as some deterioration, in public programs...
...The issue of health care has become the issue of the Medicare and Medicaid budgets...
...The bulk of the college-educated, upper-income suburban vote, so prized by the third way, still goes to the GOP...
...As a result, New Democrats have made it difficult for progressives to rally political support for public investments now that the budget is in surplus...
...Recent international trade agreements— such as NAFTA and the establishment of the World Trade Organization—impose Americanstyle protection of corporate interests while undermining the capacity of national governDISSENT / Spring 1999 • 73 THE THIRD WAY...
...Moreover, recent estimates by the U.S...
...Bill Clinton, after urging Americans to embrace the unfettered global marketplace for six years, is suddenly calling for global "New Deal" solutions to brace up sinking financial markets...
...In the aggregate, in 1992, there were 1,537 more Democrats than Republicans in the fifty state legislatures...
...His CONTRIBUTION to social progress has been at best mixed...
...Lowering Expectations The insufficient resources devoted to training and education reveal the extent to which the third way represents a one-sided compromise with corporate conservatism rather than a new dimension for progressive politics...
...Globalization made a major contribution to the undercutting of union power and the shrinking of the portion of the labor force that was organized...
...economy that was open to the world markets doubled...
...But this initiative had no programmatic content and little came of it...
...This system included a central bank to promote growth, securities laws to bring confidence to financial markets, and federal rules to prevent states from using sweatshop labor to compete for investment...
...When they retreated, Clinton dropped the effort, leaving the impression that a public solution to America's growing health care problem was not feasible—even though it was never voted on in the Congress and polls still show that most Americans favor some kind of public health-insurance program...
...Doubtless, we will soon be told that new and enlarged international bureaucracies represent a third way to smaller government...
...Liberals wanted big government to secure a more equal distribution of income and wealth and to regulate the excesses of the market...
...At a recent conference, one of the co-authors of the original New Democrat manifesto that denounced liberal fundamentalism called for a discussion among Democrats to fill in the meaning of the third way, which he acknowledged was still somewhat of a "marketing concept...
...Recently, the franchise has been extended, and at one time or another has been applied, or misapplied, to virtually every new leader in the Western world, including Chretien of Canada, Prodi of Italy, Jospin of France, Salinas and Zedillo of Mexico, Schroder of Germany, Cardoso of Brazil, Menem of Argentina—even Boris Yeltsin...
...Yet their definitions of the third way leave the observer without a clue as to what it means...
...The very ambiguity of the phrase gives politicians and ambitious policy advisers the advantage of flexibility...
...The champions of the third way insist that it is the former, a new synthesis lying somewhere beyond, rather than between, left and right...
...It is the time to judge economic growth according to how broadly shared are its benefits— with both today's and future generations...
...First, the charge that the previous leaders of the Democratic Party had been fiscally irresponsible politicians addicted to "tax and spend" policies...
...He deserves some credit for attempting to engage Americans on the issue of race relations—which was decidedly not on the New Democrat agenda— by holding public seminars on the meaning of affirmative action...
...It has succeeded in lowering the public's expectations of government's capacity to deliver either progress or justice...
...Today the third way's attacks on big-government "interference" in the marketplace are being mocked by growing demands by multinational businesses—from Tokyo to New York—that big government save them from the consequences of the market...
...economy are still, after six years of economic expansion, 3 percent below where they were in 1989, the peak of the last business cycle...
...The erosion of the environmentalist, consumer, and community-organizing movements has been in part a result of domestic budget cutting and lowered expectations on the left, and in part a result of the expansion of conservative NGOs supported by corporations and right-wing political groups...
...The overwhelming issue during the campaign, in the words of Clinton's campaign manager, was "the economy, stupid...
...Lyndon Johnson's biggest spending was on the Vietnam War—a war the New Democrats pointedly do not criticize—and history now blames him for not raising taxes to pay for it...
...Such self-definitions are not much help...
...The public, which still believes that government should address the inTHE THIRD WAY...
...On the basis of that experience we can conclude the following: (1) The third way has not been a new principle that can lead us to a dimension of the political cosmos that is beyond left and right...
...But the performance of the Clinton presidency provides the best empirical measure to date of the third way's relevance to our political condition...
...or merely a deftly crafted slogan designed to make the capitulation to a conservative agenda intellectually and morally respectable...
...Without institutions with egalitarian values— progressive government bureaucracies, labor unions, social democratic parties—that can challenge the unequal distribution of market incomes, productivity improvements will not be widely shared...
...His one concession to the right that year was signing a draconian welfare-reform bill, suggesting that the era of big government was over only for the poor...
...Ironically, the major voices for nurturing a sense of personal responsibility among the poor had come from African-American politicians, the most prominent of whom was Jesse Jackson, a prime target of the New Democrat attack...
...But third way Democrats were hardly the first to make the point...
...Social democracy is said no longer to apply to the problems of developed societies...
...But for those on the mainstream left looking for a sustainable political path to the future, the central question is whether the third way represents a new dimension for social democratic politics in the post-cold war era DISSENT / Spring 1999 n 67 THE THIRD WAY...
...Conservatives wanted a big government role in defense, the opening up of foreign markets, and the regulation of social behavior...
...This theme (again, borrowed from conservative rhetoric) has often served as a code word for race...
...A recent survey of public opinion found that 75 percent of Americans believe that the federal government should give high priority to ensuring that all Americans have access to affordable health care, but only 15 percent believe that the government is actually giving it a high priority...
...banking crisis in the 1980s...
...Very few of Clinton's 1992 training proposals have in fact materialized...
...The message to the average American facing the brutal competition of the new global economy was: "You are on your own...
...ments to enforce American-style labor, banking, and environmental standards...
...As one conservative columnist approvingly put it, Clinton's strategy was to "take an essentially conservative program and repackage it for liberals...
...4) Third-way advocates have made a contribution by reminding the social democrats of the importance of an efficient as well as a compassionate public sector...
...For example, over the last two decades, the share of the U.S...
...According to Tony Blair, the third way "is not simply a compromise between left and right...
...Again, this was largely an echo of conservative rhetoric...
...However, the task of such a politics is not to accommodate but to challenge humanity's descent into a world that equates prices with values...
...This is not a time for the democratic left to abandon its commitment to communitarian solutions...
...Where government plays a role, it should be at the most decentralized level possible...
...As a result, national prosperity was broadly shared and the economy became more productive...
...For proof, note that the long shadows of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher still shade the politics of their respective nations...
...70 n DISSENT / Spring 1999 Instead, Clinton ran as a traditional Democratic populist...
...To win elections, insisted the New Democrats, the party had to give greater priority to conservative social issues and less to questions of economic security...
...The issue of distribution of income and wealth and power in America has become the issue of the distributional impact of government spending...
...Today it is in the minority by ten votes...
...j on CREATION, of course, has been greater in the United States over the past business cycle, largely as a result of a looser monetary policy and an expansion of private consumer debt that drove the personal savings in September 1998 to negative numbers for the first time since 1933...
...DISSENT / Spring 1999 n 75 THE THIRD WAY...
...We have certainly had a robust economy since 1992...
...Does it represent a decisive move away from left-wing values...
...Our approach is neither laissez-faire nor one of state interference...
...As a result, the unionized share of the labor force has continued to decline—to 14.1 percent in 1997...
...The secret of the buoyant U.S...
...In reality, what divides Democrats and Republicans has not been the size of government, but government's priorities...
...Jimmy Carter, the previous Democratic president, reduced taxes in mid-term...
...New Democrats believe that government should get out of the way of the free market and stop trying to guarantee "outcomes...
...DISSENT / Spring 1999 n 71 THE THIRD WAY...
...Neither has Washington been willing to make adequate long-term investments in education...
...3) Neither has policy based on the political values of the democratic left been advanced...
...They exist in all countries, whether called by those names, or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals...
...Hyperbole notwithstanding, the notion of the third way promises social democrats instant liberation from the political baggage of the past and, therefore, electoral success in the future...
...Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Bill Clinton's climb in the polls—a gift of the self-destructive Republican handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal—has reinforced the punditry's conviction that Clinton's centrist politics define the only sensible path for Democrats to follow into the twenty-first century...
...Third, the notion that Democrats have stood against the values of personal responsibility...
...Its job is to provide "opportunities" for disadvantaged individuals to get education and training (and to accumulate capital through the privatization of Social Security...
...With the exception of George McGovern's antiwar candidacy in 1972, all the Democratic presidential campaigns of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were run on centrist platforms...
...But the evidence does not support that claim...
...It is primarily a rationalization for political compromise between left and right, in which the left moves closer to the right...
...In 1998, Wall Street interests dominate American politics more than they did in 1992...
...As for "tax and spend," the actual record is otherwise...
...Moving the Center to the Right In a 1989 document, The Politics of Evasion, which became a manifesto of their movement, New Democrats called on the Democratic Party to nominate a "centrist" candidate who would be "credible as commander in chief" and reflect the "social values and moral sentiments of the American people...
...THERE IS a widespread impression, encouraged by the business press and the American policy elite, that the United States has reached some new plateau of dynamic economic development as a result of painful but necessary restructuring...
...The assertion of the New Democrats is that the world's economic problems stem from too much government interference in the market economy, which if left alone is self-regulating and stable...
...There has been not one major progressive step forward under Clinton, much less two...
...To do that, it must work not to lower but to raise the expectations of the people...
...today they control seventeen...
...In effect, his presidency has broken the "two steps forward, one step back" ideological rhythm of American politics, in which a Democratic president establishes a new set of social policies that his Republican successor modifies but cannot completely rescind...
...The share of the federal budget going to social investment has declined, the health care system has deteriorated, and the social safety net has been further shredded...
...Blair's wish list includes extraordinary new powers for the International Monetary Fund, new global bureaucracies to enforce financial regulation, and even a global central bank...
...Hillary Clinton made the pragmatic observation that "We have to take the world as we find it and do what we can to improve upon it...
...The 1990s have been blessed by the absence of either...
...The liberal fundamentalists were defined as a coalition of minority groups, labor unions, feminists, and white elites who were unsympathetic to middle-class interests and values...
...From the perspective of the left, an evaluation of the third way depends not so much on Clinton's personal success or failure, but on the degree to which he has (1) moved ahead an agenda based on progressive values and (2) strengthened the Democratic Party, whose active core is on the left, and other progressive social institutions...
...The New Democrats ignored this centrist history, and instead borrowed from Republicans' caricatures of the Democratic Party...
Vol. 46 • April 1999 • No. 2
