Looks at the third way from Italy
Salvati, Michele
I TALIANS HAVe been talking about the third way for thirty years, from our first center-left government in the early 1960s to the collapse of communism. But we spoke of a different kind from...
...Because it was difficult to envisage such radical change occurring by peaceful means and within the "bourgeois" legal order, everybody on the left assumed that 82 n DISSENT / Spring 1999 this eventually meant a revolution...
...Consequently there are serious difficulties in the actual policies advocated by the left...
...The enemy of the Whig left was the church, aristocracy, and landed classes, that is, the various supporters of the ancien regime...
...Socialists and liberals alike sought to tame it for very good reasons...
...The real underlying shift, however, was in the "world" dimension—the economic and social conditions of Europe in the mid-nineteenth century...
...Socialists everywhere, Marxist or not, were convinced that their own values implied if not revolutionary transformation, then profound reforms...
...For instance, socialist views on equality can be seen as an enlargement of liberal democratic values...
...Social democrats and communists looked at the same world through different ideological lenses...
...I have heard little from political leaders of the "Third Way International" (Blair, Clinton, and Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso) that strays far beyond the main historical traditions of the left...
...It is an often muddled melange of theoretical tools, ideological references, and actual practices that took form initially as the welfare state and demand management...
...But is there something more than this...
...In fact, such concerns show up instead in the program of social democratic parties—especially Nordic ones—that would never identify with today's "third ways...
...Fortunately, the left has grown to appreciate anew the liberal democratic tradition...
...Turning Points If we briefly survey epochal shifts in the history of the left we can establish something of a benchmark with which to assess today's new third way...
...Marshall called them, came with a long-term parallel theoretical shift due to Marxism...
...First of all, the traditional socialist vocabulary has taken a heavy blow because of the bankruptcy of the Soviet experiment...
...These people (and what remains of the old Socialist Party) are most distrustful of today's third way...
...THE REASON is twofold...
...But the split had been in the making before then...
...and (c) the theoretical tools deployed by the left to make sense of the world and to devise policies for changing it...
...And one did not have to be Marxist to demand dramatic limits on the power of private property in the organization of production and stricter public regulation of markets...
...Mundane if complex electoral considerations are also at play...
...Rather, it is the hyper-revisionist, contemporary program of European social democratic parties, each of which represents slightly different compromises between socialist and liberal principles...
...Importantly, the socialists insisted on a new division between friend and foe...
...This article is abridged from his talk to the international seminar on the welfare state cosponsored by Dissent and Reset magazines in Abano Terme, Italy, in October 1998...
...But what the left most needs is balanced judgment...
...All this compels the left to address what it stands for in advanced, postindustrial societies...
...On the other hand, social and economic changes give rise to new demands...
...I wish the same were so when it comes to gender and environmental issues and global systemic risks...
...Socialists everywhere now spoke of "capitalism" as a historically contingent mode of economic organization that could and would be changed...
...But this is rarely repeated with intensity in the electoral platforms and policies of third way leaders...
...Today's third-way debate takes different shapes in different countries...
...It may be more useful to distinguish the "lib-lab" (that is, the "LiberalLabour" or Keynes-Beveridge) phase of liberalsocialist compromise from today's, and then take a further step that might be called a "libliblab" mixture (rather than a third way...
...Second, and more important, capitalism has changed...
...Lib-lib-lab" is a superficial and perhaps a bit abusive term, but until "third-wayers" prove that they have come up with something quite new, it is as good as any other...
...This inevitably strained relations between the two strands of the left...
...With mass industrialization, THE THIRD WAY...
...There was a "right wing" of the PCI that increasingly saw the social democratic experience as a source of inspiration...
...It had been accepted as an article of faith that the "real" solution to the exploitation of the working class was the abolition of private property and markets, and their replacement by a collectivized economy...
...It was still a reformist way, but reforms were to be "structural," aiming at the core of capitalism...
...Should there be a new definition of friend and foe...
...As a toolbox (not as an ideology) Marxism can still produce precious insights on the working and nature of market economies...
...It recognized that the split between social democracy and communism had been a disaster and that the arch-revisionist Eduard Bernstein was largely right...
...All this is a bit schematic, but it points to the key question we must now pose: What is the relation between social democracy and today's "third way...
...Anthony Giddens's book Beyond Left and Right clearly puts the epicenter DISSENT / Spring 1999 n 81 THE THIRD WAY...
...in fact it is difficult to imagine a major change in one that does not affect at least one of the others...
...Actually, Italian communists were long suspicious of the radical overtones of the "old" third-way debate, because it was mainly fueled by left-wing socialists and gauchistes of various brands...
...In this sense, today's social democracy was already a kind of "third way," coming out of a blend of liberalism and socialism...
...Has there been a radical socio-economic change comparable to the industrial revolution...
...Dimensions of Change To determine if there has been such a profound break in our times, we need to look at three entwined matters: (a) the value system of the left...
...This works to the right's benefit...
...As a consequence he became an outcast in the German and continental labor movements...
...Some third way theorists do pay attention to the sort of environmental and feminist concerns that were often marginal for liberal and social democratic programs...
...This makes sharp changes away from traditional social democratic policies costly and painful...
...Everywhere, even in countries in which Marxism did not become the predominant theoretical model in the left, a clear change in emphasis and concepts occurred...
...The obvious conclusion is that new strategies are indeed needed...
...The old policies cannot respond to them...
...More relevant for today is the other earlier turning point in the history of the left...
...This represented a massive social change that disrupted previous social conditions...
...Are there new social groups and forces at work that social democracy neglects...
...84 n DISSENT / Spring 1999...
...Differences in social and economic conditions may help to explain the prevalence of this or that wing within the socialist movement of a given country, but not the radical split between the two wings...
...This entailed a slower change in the late nineteenth century: the gradual displacement of bourgeois radical parties by labor and socialist ones as the main parliamentary representatives of the left...
...Without it the value system and theoretical instruments of the left as a whole would not have changed so dramatically and the Whig left would not have been pushed aside by a socialist left...
...The same is so when it comes to changes in demography, labor markets, and welfare provision...
...It is easy to underestimate and it is easy to overestimate the nature, size, and novelty of the changes we have been witnessing...
...The main civil and political demands of democratic liberals—like the rights of free association or universal suffrage—were taken up by socialists...
...Accepting the market economy—and even appreciating its positive contribution to innovation, growth, and liberty—should not blind us from the fact that capitalism is still a pretty rough beast...
...We must ask if it makes sense to draw a sharp line between successful left-wing politics of the past and those that are suitable for today's advanced, postindustrial societies...
...Still, the failures of the old socialist traditions (both Marxist and nonMarxist) should be fully recognized...
...The social democratic-communist split had more to do with value systems...
...In addition, the Blair version— and perhaps others—of the third way can be seen as a modern "Whiggism...
...An important shift in the nature of the left must follow from a change in its values, a dramatic change in the "world," or a basic change in its means of understanding the world and political action...
...Still, as in the past, the value and theoretical domains are deeply involved...
...By the 1920s many liberal parties had been both weakened and pushed toward the center of the spectrum...
...Indeed, why even speak of a new "third way...
...The Keynes-Beveridge strategy worked well until the 1970s but no longer...
...In contrast to social democratic reforms, these aimed to be "destabilizing" reforms, disruptive of key capitalist equilibria, and seeking to set in motion a process of almost revolutionary change...
...My answer is a qualified yes...
...In most European countries they solidified only after the Second World War, just when "social rights" were being put on the agenda by social democrats...
...So the left is searching for a new strategy, albeit within the framework of the socialist-liberal compromise...
...those who want to defend its socialist aspects insist on speaking of social democracy...
...The break it effected in worldview between the bourgeois and the socialist left cannot be underestimated...
...But nonrevolutionary conclusions could come only after a complete reshaping of the left's intellectual framework, and Eduard Bernstein alone, deeply influenced by British labor (and Whig) traditions, made a sustained attempt to do this...
...b) the world in which those values are pursued (I'll call this the "world dimension...
...The Need for Balance Like "third-way" theorists, I believe that there have been profound changes that fundamentally affect the situation of the left...
...They continued to be enemies for socialists, but capitalists were now added and made central...
...But we spoke of a different kind from today's: it was a third way between communism and social democracy or, more generally, between a radical or revolutionary program and the experience of social democratic governments in Western Europe...
...Ought the left to respond with radically new values, objectives, and political strategies...
...It is only after analyzing this new world in DISSENT / Spring 1999 n 83 THE THIRD WAY...
...If so, does this mark a profound, epoch-making shift, similar to the divide between the liberal democratic left of the post-French Revolution period and the distinctly socialist left that came after...
...The latter differed from the former by making new, radical demands about social and economic life and focusing on industrial workers instead of on bourgeois and petty-bourgeois strata...
...Ecology and feminism were subsequently integrated into its agenda...
...So if we compare today's social democracy with today's "third way," our benchmark is not Karl Kautsky or the 1959 Bad Godesberg program that reformed the German Social Democratic Party...
...Two turning points are fundamental: the transition in the nineteenth century from a liberal democratic (I'll call it the "Whig") left to a socialist one, and then in the twentieth century, the split between social democrats and the communists...
...Globalization and the technological revolution are very real, yet talk about them is often ideological or even nonsensical...
...and the right goes to elections calling for change as the left once did...
...Does all this talk about a third way in different national contexts actually point to an underlying common problem for the left...
...Obviously I distinguish sharply between these dimensions only for heuristic purposes...
...The first transition is most relevant because the kind of social and economic change (the "world," dimension) that prompted a strategic shift then bears comparison to today...
...Although the material conditions for a successful revolution varied considerably between Russia and Central and Western Europe, there were social democrats and communists (or revolutionary socialists) across the entire continent...
...This is too much...
...Such concerns with how the economy is organized—the "material" basis of rights—was a hallmark of all socialists...
...This should not lead to an embrace of monetarist or neoclassical views of the market...
...They led to an increasing focus on the social and economic ("material") conditions that have to underpin civil and political rights, that is, the provision of welfare, education, and job security for all citizens...
...In any event, a stress on such themes hardly suffices to make the third way something beyond a rearrangement of items already within the Whig and socialist traditions of the left...
...Sometimes they are culturally specific, national programs, and sometimes little more than electoral catchwords...
...The PCI, they note, has finally changed its name, adopted a social democratic platform, rejected communism, and joined the Socialist International...
...Such rights were far from secure at the turn of the twentieth century...
...On one hand, parties of the left have nurtured on their own behalf a thick web of interests and expectations...
...of the third way earthquake in the "world" dimension, in the new social and economic situation that the left has to face...
...The reaction against Marxism these days has gone a bit too far...
...Again, the left's thinking needs balance...
...It doesn't entail quite the same program in Britain and Italy, the United States and Brazil...
...Although our focus is turning points in the left, we should also note some continuities...
...Answering these questions is somewhat complicated in part because of the eclectic nature of present-day social democracy...
...The articulation of "social rights," as T.H...
...depth that we can ask whether a third way is meaningful...
...So there is actually a plurality of "new" third ways...
...In briefest form, those who want to strengthen the liberal aspects of the compromise usually talk about a third way...
...Plain social democratic policies could not be recognized as fully legitimate by the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which sought to distinguish riformista—a bad thing, weak and social democratic—from good, communist riformatore...
...This is why the ideological or "value" dimension is critical...
...How did these developments affect the left...
...When more socialist ideas emerged within social democratic movements, such as the Meidner plan in Sweden, they were rejected...
...We need to avoid opportunistic and unprincipled versions of "old" social democratic policies but also equally opportunistic and unprincipled versions of "new," third-way strategies...
...But now quite a few people are talking about a new third way—not an intermediate path between communism and social democracy, but a third way between social democracy and neoliberalism...
...millions of people were pushed out of agrarian work and artisan trades and then melded into an industrial proletariat whose circumstances were truly miserable...
...For "rightwing" socialists this was, of course, a more distant prospect...
...MICHELE SALVATI is a member of the Italian Parliament for the Party of the Democratic Left and is on leave from the State University of Milan, where he is professor of economics...
...Marxism was the main theoretical tool of the continental labor movement and the rift in the turbulent aftermath of World War I concerned the definition of both the short-term and final goals of the socialist parties...
Vol. 46 • April 1999 • No. 2
