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Question of the Month

What is the Third Way?

How to negotiate a path between capitalist & socialist excesses? Each answer below receives a book. Apologies to the many entrants not included.

In political philosophy a ‘Third Way’ is usually taken to mean a position that rejects the extreme views to be found at either end of the left/right spectrum. It is commonly seen as occupying a middle ground, rejecting radicalism. Its proponents often say it offers the best of both worlds, whilst detractors see it, unsurprisingly, as the worst of both. Since 1945, the Third Way has tended to be associated with groups nominally on the left, although conservative Harold Macmillan in The Middle Way (1938) advocated a centrist politics that drew upon several ideas, such as nationalisation, that were usually the preserve of the left.

So far so conventional, but this definition relies on the political spectrum being drawn up on a single axis – right (free unfettered market) to left (state control of enterprise).

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