Lost property: What the Third Way lacks

Journal of Political Ideologies

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 145-163

  Pierson, Chris ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY; SOCIALISM;

EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE; WORLD;

EID: 20544435674     PISSN: 13569317     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13569310500097265     Document Type: Article

References (112)

1. In the now compendious literature on the Third Way, see, amongst others, T. Blair, Socialism: Fabian Tract 565 (London: Fabian Society, 1994);
2. T. Blair, Let us Face the Future - the 1945 anniversary lecture: Fabian pamphlet 571 (London: Fabian Society, 1995);
3. T. Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1996);
4. T. Blair, The Third Way: New Politics for a New Century (London: Fabian Society, 1998);
5. T. Blair and G. Schroeder, Europe: The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte (1999): http://www.xs4all.nl/-adampost/Archive/arc000006.html accessed 01.10.04;
6. A. Giddens, Beyond Left and Right (Cambridge: Polity, 1994);
7. A. Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1998);
8. A. Giddens, The Third Way and Its Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 2000);
9. A. Giddens, (ed.) The Global Third Way Debate (Cambridge: Polity, 2001);
10. A. Giddens, Where Now for New Labour? (Cambridge: Polity, 2002);
11. A. Giddens, (ed.), The Progressive Manifesto (Cambridge: Polity, 2003);
12. within the extensive critical literature, see especially, S. Buckler and D. Dolowitz, 'New Labour's Ideology: A Reply to Michael Freeden', Political Quarterly, (2000) pp. 102-109;
13. J. Callaghan, 'Social Democracy in Transition', Parliamentary Affairs, 56 (1) (2003)pp. 125-40;
14. A. Callinicos, Against the Third Way (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).
15. S. Buckler and D. Dolowitz, 'Can Fair Be Efficient?', New Political Economy, 9(1) (2004) 23-38;
16. A. Finlayson, 'Third Way Theory', Political Quarterly, (1999) pp. 271-9;
17. T. Fitzpatrick, After the New Social Democracy Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003);
18. M. Freeden, 'The Ideology of New Labour', Political Quarterly, 70 (1) (1999) pp. 42-51;
19. C. Hay, The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999);
20. R. Levitas, The Inclusive Society? (London: Macmillan, 1998);
21. N. Mouzelis, 'Reflexive modernization and the third way: the impasses of Giddens' social-democratic politics', The Sociological Review, 49 (3) (2001), pp. 436-56;
22. R. Plant, The Third Way. (London: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Working Papers 5/98, 1998) http://www.feslondon.dial.pipex.com/pubs98/plant.htm Accessed 01.10.04;
23. E. Shaw, 'Britain: Left Abandoned? New Labour in Power', Parliamentary Affairs, 56 (1) (2003) pp. 6-23;
24. S. White, 'The Ambiguities of the Third Way' in S. White (ed.), New Labour: The Progressive Future? (London: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 3-17;
25. A. Vincent, 'New Ideologies for Old?', Political Quarterly, 9 (1) (1998) pp. 48-58.
26. On attitudes to social justice within the British left between 1911 and 1931, see B. Jackson, 'Equality of Nothing? Social Justice on the British Left, c. 1911-31', Journal of Political Ideologies, 8 (1) (02003), pp. 83-110.
27. The question of what is to count as property is very far from straightforward. (For a useful introduction, see S. Munzer, A Theory of Property, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). At the very least, we should say that property is a relation not a thing. It has been applied to objects as diverse as DNA codes, personal reputations and future social security entitlements. Although we come across a range of uses in this paper, it has a particular concern with a range of forms of the ownership of investment capital. My account of Third Way approaches draws heavily upon the sources identified in Ref. 1.
28. Giddens, op.cit., Ref. 1 (2000), p. 35.
29. J. Kay, 'The Embedded Market' in A. Giddens, (Ed.), The Progressive Manifesto (Cambridge: Polity, 2003) pp. 35-53.
30. Kay, op. cit., Ref. 5, p.40
31. On the systematic neglect of questions of property, see S. White, 'Welfare Philosophy and the Third Way', in J. Lewis and R. Surender (Eds), Welfare State Change: Towards a Third Way, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 42, 43.
32. HM Treasury, Detailed Proposals for the Child Trust Fund, London, 2003.
33. See, for example, the Special Issue of Politics and Society, 32 (1) (2004), 'Rethinking Redistribution', edited by E.O. Wright, http:// www.ippr.org.uk/research/index.php?current=27, and http://government. politics.ox.ac.uk/Projects/New%20Politics%20of%20Ownership_Financing_the_Citizens_Stake.asp (sources accessed 1/10/04).
34. This revival of interest in the politics of ownership can be retraced at least to A. Gamble and G. Kelly, 'The New Politics of Ownership', New Left Review; 220 (1996) pp. 62-97.
35. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Expodata/Spreadsheets/D8737.xls
36. See HM Treasury, op. cit., Ref. 8.
37. Giddens, op cit., Ref. 1 (2001), p. 7
38. On the idea of two new liberal ideologies of 'humanized competition' and a 'cooperative commonwealth', see M. Stears and S. White, 'New Liberalism Revisited' in H. Tam, Progressive Politics in the Global Age (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), pp.36-53. Upon this account, the third way would seem to belong to the first of these tendencies.
39. Blair, op cit., Ref. 1, (1994) p. 4.
40. See R. Prabhakar, Stakeholding and New Labour (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003);
41. R. Prabhakar, 'Third Way and Public Interest Companies', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6 (2) (2003).
42. See also Ref. 6 above.
43. F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) p. 39.
44. For a more general treatment, see C. Pierson, Hard Choices, (Cambridge: Polity, 2001).
45. The clearest expression of the view of later critics came with Labour's Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) and Stuart Holland's articulation of it in The Socialist Challenge (London, Quartet; 1973). The verdict of Holland and other supporters of the AES was that a Labour strategy built around Keynesianism and indirect control of corporations had failed. The impact of the managerial revolution, of the professionalisation of managers and the empowerment of workers and their trades unions had been overstated. Labour's Keynesianism relied (among other things) upon Britain having a competitive market economy - but in fact the British economy was dominated by a comparatively small number of very large (and often multinational) corporations which were in a position to fix prices and dictate terms to the government. Nation states (including Britain under Labour) were disempowered by the increasingly multinational or global sphere of operation of the largest corporations. Under these circumstances, ownership was once again recognised to be important. Capital-holders could no longer be induced indirectly by government measures to make the right sorts of investment decisions. Therefore, the state had to take a stake in ownership. This was not a case for the classical state take-over of all enterprises. The argument of Holland was that in each key sector of the economy there should be a state-owned corporation whose price-determining activity and investment would force others into competitive pricing and policies. This was the origin of Labour's commitment (in the 1973 programme) to nationalise around 25 of the top 100 firms in the UK. There were other elements in the AES., including a renewed emphasis upon industrial democracy (another key concern of pre-war social democrats), price controls and import controls. By 1982 this agenda had come to include withdrawal from the EEC. The blood-letting that followed the defeat of Labour in 1979 focussed upon party organisation. But this was significantly a product of the frustration on the Left that Labour in government (between 1974 and 1979) had simply chosen to ignore the AES. Activists wanted to change the party's organisation precisely in order to be able to promote this policy. The AES underlay much of the economic content of Labour's General Election Manifesto of 1983. Labour lost 60 seats and three million voters. It was the party's worst electoral performance since 1918. In the aftermath, Foot resigned, Kinnock assumed the leadership of the party and the long march towards the Third Way was underway. 45 See also D. Howell, British Social Democracy: A Study in Development and Decay. (London: Croom Helm, 1976);
46. N. Ellison, Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics (London: Routledge, 1993);
47. M. Wickham-Jones, Economic Strategy and the Labour Party: Politics and Policy-making, 1970-83 (London: Macmillan, 1996).
48. Blair, op.cit. (1994, 1995, 1996), Ref. 1.
49. Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 1;
50. Vincent, op. cit., Ref. 1.
51. Blair, op. cit., (1995), Ref. 1.
52. On the diversity within the new liberalism, see Stears and White, Ref. 13.
53. J.A. Hobson, The Problems of Poverty (London: Methuen, 1895), p. 198.
54. J.S. Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 221-79.
55. L.T. Hobhouse, 'The Historical Evolution of Property, in fact and idea' in C. Gore, (Ed.), Property: Its Rights and Duties (London: Macmillan, 1913), p. 31.
56. Hobhouse, op. cit., Ref. 25, p. 31; emphasis added.
57. M. Freeden, The New Liberalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p. 43.
58. Of course, this was not the only position adopted amongst new liberals. Some took a more traditional view of the merits of private property; (see Freeden, op. cit., Ref. 27).
59. J.S. Mill, op. cit., Ref. 24, p. 436.
60. S. Olivier, 'Moral' in G.B. Shaw (Ed.), Fabian Essays (London: Walter Scott Publishing, 1989), p. 114; emphasis added.
61. S. Webb and B. Webb, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (London: Longmans Green, 1920), p. xii.
62. Cited in M. Beer, A History of British Socialism: Part II (London: Bell, 1920), p. 286.
63. G.D.H. Cole Guild Socialism Re-stated (London: Leonard Parsons, 1920), p. 30.
64. See A. W. Wright, G.D.H. Cole and Socialist Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 117-20.
65. See G. Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990);
66. on the overlap of socialist and pluralist thinking in the inter-war period, see P.Q. Hirst (Ed.) The Pluralist Theory of the State (London: Routledge, 1989)
67. D. Runciman, Pluralism and the Personality of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
68. B. Clift and J. Tomlinson, 'Tawney and the Third Way', Journal of Political Ideologies, 7 (3) (2002), p. 315.
69. N. Dennis and A.H. Halsey, English Ethical Socialism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), p. 149;
70. Clift and Tomlinson, op. cit., Ref. 36.
71. See, for example, Blair, op. cit. (1996), Ref. 1, p. 73.
72. R.H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (London: Bell, 1921), p. 57.
73. Tawney, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 99.
74. For a detailed discussion, see Jackson, Ref. 2.
75. See T.H. Marshall, Sociology at the Crossroads, (London: Heinemann, 1963).
76. Tawney, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 87.
77. Tawney, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 167;
78. see also, Jackson, Ref. 2.
79. J. Tomlinson, 'The limits of Tawney's ethical socialism', Contemporary British History, 16 (4) (2002), pp. 1-16.
80. Howell, op. cit., Ref. 19;
81. Ellison, op. cit., Ref. 19.
82. R. Toye, The Labour Party and the Planned Economy, 1931-1951 (London: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 2003), p. 70.
83. Labour Party, cited in Toye, op. cit., Ref. 47, p. 71.
84. On the characterisation of the differing strands within Labour thinking in this period, see Ellison, op. cit., Ref. 19.
85. G.D.H. Cole, Fabian Socialism (London: Frank Cass, 1971 [1943]);
86. R.H. Tawney, Equality (London:Unwin, 1964[1931]).
87. Blair, op. cit. (1995), Ref. 1.
88. E. Durbin, The Politics of Democratic Socialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1940), p. 146.
89. Durbin, op. cit., Ref. 52, pp. 113-7.
90. A.A. Berle., and G.C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (London: Transaction Books, 1991 [1935]).
91. S. Brooke, 'Evan Durbin: Recovering a Labour 'Revisionist", Twentieth Century British History, 7 (1) (1996), pp. 27-52.
92. D. Jay, The Socialist Case (London: Faber and Faber, 1937).
93. A. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London: Cape, 1964 [1956]), p. 22.
94. A. Crosland, op. cit., Ref. 57, p. 35; emphasis added.
95. A. Crosland, op. cit., Ref. 57, p. 42.
96. A. Crosland, Socialism Now (London: Cape, 1974).
97. On this, see, amongst others, Howell, op. cit., Ref. 19;
98. Ellison, op.cit., Ref. 19;
99. Wickham-Jones, op. cit., Ref. 19.
100. Crosland, op. cit., Ref. 57, p. 332-335.
101. On AES, see Ref. 19 above.
102. Crosland, op.cit., Ref. 60, p. 35.
103. Crosland, op.cit., Ref. 60, p. 45.
104. Again, see Howell, op. cit., Ref. 19;
105. Ellison, op.cit., Ref 19;
106. Wickham-Jones, op. cit., Ref. 19.
107. C. Pierson, Socialism after Communism: the New Market Socialism (Cambridge: Polity, 1995);
108. P. Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
109. A. Gamble and G. Kelly; op. cit., Ref. 7;
110. B. Ackerman and A.. Alstott, The Stakeholder Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999);
111. B. Ackerman and A. Alstott, 'Why Stakeholding?', Politics and Society, 32 (1) (2004), pp. 41-60;
112. E.O. Wright, (Ed.) 'Special Issue: Rethinking Redistribution', Politics and Society, 32 (1) (2004).