Big Mac compassion

Well, we knowwhat happened to the Great Alternative man had ever dreamt. Communism was the First Way, or the Second Way, depending on which came first, capital or class, of nirvana. It failed because it was not real. It sought to humanise the capital by de-humanising the individual. Still, the collapse of communism 8212; it was predetermined 8212; didn8217;t mark the death of the socialist, or the idea of salvation which struck a fine balance between Marx and market.

But it marked the end of an argument, and the beginning of many. The great battle between capitalism and socialism was settled, and new battles would be fought in the realm of post-communist prophecies. It8217;s still on: clashes of ideas for the benefit of the man in the market. The chronicle of post-1989 enlightenment varies from the end of history to the clash of civilisations, brought to us by philosophers who insist that the Great Victory doesn8217;t mean the end of the war. The neo-Hegelian from the Rand Cooperation said the end of communism is the triumph ofmarket-driven, western, liberal democracy, so relax and manage the market. The civilisational man from the Harvard said go, go beyond the market, and manage the wars along the cultural faultlines. They wanted the kings to come to terms with the world without One Big Undesirable Idea, the post-Soviet world.

And who8217;s is saying that it is a runaway world, a world where the old definitions about left and right are redundant, that globalisation is not a negation of social compassion, that 8220;we can8217;t leave global problems to the erratic swirl of global markets and relatively powerless international bodies if we are to achieve a world that mixes stability, equity and prosperity?8221; Welcome Professor Anthony Giddens, director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, author of many books on social democracy, philosopher to kings like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, and the man who has made The Third Way fashionable. He was in Delhi to deliver a part of his Reith Lectures, Runaway World. His question:8220;Can we live in a world where nothing is sacred? I don8217;t think we can. Cosmopolitans, of whom I count myself one, have to make plain that tolerance and dialogue can themselves be guided by values of a universal kind8221;.

Giddens is making sense of globalisation, not in terms of markets alone. But the market is the defining factor, perhaps the only certainty, in the age of globalisation. Today, Giddens is famous more than textbooks and classroom lectures because he has put the market in a social, socialist to be apt, context. There is a way other than socialism and capitalism, there is something between left and right, there is a new way for the desperate centre-left, there is a third way, the principal values of which are: 8220;equality, protection of the vulnerable, freedom as autonomy, no rights without responsibilities, no authority without democracy, cosmopolitan pluralism and philosophic conservatism8221;. The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy is his elaboration of his salvation theory, which is,apparently, the middle path between the dead certainties of the old left and the neoliberal arrogance of the new right. Incidentally, the book has been famously described by The Economist8217;s Bagehot as 8220;awesomely, magisterially and in some ways disturbingly vacuous.8221;

Anyway, The Economist is not supposed to agree. But Third Wayism, as sloganised by Blair and explained by Gid-dens, is the politics of defeat without the honesty to accept it. Or, it is an acknowledgement of the triumph of the right without the honesty to admit it. The New Labour says it all. It is Maggie socialism, that is Margaret Thatcher plus society. You may ask Clinton about Reaganism with a human face. There is no such thing as society, the Lady once said. More nation, less government, free market, celebration of the individual, a repudiation of the politics of dispossession the neoliberal radicalism of Lady Thatcher was the most defining political shift in modern Britain. Major couldn8217;t enhance it. Tony Blair could. He put societyinto Thatcherism. Blarism, or Labour modernity, is the left8217;s homage to the triumph of the right, a homage with the extra script of I-care-for-you sentimentalism. Giddens makes it pompously banal. Lionel Jospin makes it sound true: market economy yes, market society no.

We have been here before: The genuine social democratic impulse to postpone redundancy. And we have seen desperate centre leftists borrowing liberally from the communitarian rhetoric of Amitai Etzioni. Perhaps, this desperation is a healthy thing. The Socialist with a capital S lost both society and history. The right has won the economic debate. The new socialist, who rules most of the EU countries today, buys the best commodities from the right market and sells them as wares of welfare. Anthony Giddens tells them: remember the ecology, strike a partnership between government and civil society, practise cosmopolitan pluralism, celebrate the social investment state, and avoid fundamentalism 8212; market or the social variety. For, globalisationdemands a social awakening.

So the new spectre is following the third way, in continental Europe and elsewhere. Is the Third Way then the repetition of the spectral story as a farce? No, it is real, and dishonest. It is the new way of the centre-leftist who believes that you have to call yourself a socialist even if you are in the other man8217;s market. Perhaps it is the right thing to do if you want to be there at all. And Prof. Giddens is there with you, always with the shopping list.