Bill Jordan
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781847426567
- eISBN:
- 9781447304296
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781847426567.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Economic Sociology
The Third Way was a project for finding new expression for the values of socialism, feminism, antiracism, and social justice. This chapter shows that the attempt to define a new settlement of this ...
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The Third Way was a project for finding new expression for the values of socialism, feminism, antiracism, and social justice. This chapter shows that the attempt to define a new settlement of this sort was a conscious effort to transcend Margaret Thatcher's ‘property-owning democracy’, by combining individualism with egalitarianism in a new way. This involved the reconciliation of two apparently conflicting ‘cultural projects’, one concerned with personal self-realisation and rights to autonomy, the other with membership and community. The attempt to do this through abstract general principles, combined with detailed codification, legislation, regulation, prescription, reward, and punishment, marked out the Third Way as a utilitarian project, in the tradition of Jeremy Bentham. However, a politics of the common good requires both the mobilisation of snap judgements derived from social experiences and the intelligent design of a collective infrastructure that promotes solidarity.Less
The Third Way was a project for finding new expression for the values of socialism, feminism, antiracism, and social justice. This chapter shows that the attempt to define a new settlement of this sort was a conscious effort to transcend Margaret Thatcher's ‘property-owning democracy’, by combining individualism with egalitarianism in a new way. This involved the reconciliation of two apparently conflicting ‘cultural projects’, one concerned with personal self-realisation and rights to autonomy, the other with membership and community. The attempt to do this through abstract general principles, combined with detailed codification, legislation, regulation, prescription, reward, and punishment, marked out the Third Way as a utilitarian project, in the tradition of Jeremy Bentham. However, a politics of the common good requires both the mobilisation of snap judgements derived from social experiences and the intelligent design of a collective infrastructure that promotes solidarity.
