third way

is a round about way of suggesting that there is no 'second way', no alternative to global capitalism, that there is only potential for what amounts to capitalism with a human face.

What is Zizek's objection to the Third Way (that form of modern democratic politics that seeks to find a middle path between the alternatives of socialism and capitalism, and exemplified by such governments as those of Blair in Britain, Schroder in Germany and Clinton in the United States)' It is that it seeks to deny the fundamental antagonism that characterizes the social, believing that capitalism can one day be rendered harmonious and unified, or more simply that there is no alternative to capitalism: The idea of a 'third way' emerged at the very moment when, at least in the West, all other alternatives, from old-style conservativism to radical social democracy, crumbled in the face of the triumphant onslaught of global capitalism and its notion of liberal democracy. The true message of the notion of the Third Way is that there is no 'second way', no alternative to global capitalism, so that, in a kind of mocking pseudo-Hegelian 'negation of negation', the Third Way brings us back to the first and only way. Is this not global capitalism with a human face'' (149). If put into these terms, not only would it be a matter of avoiding the 'blackmail' of the existing alternatives to capitalism, but also of rejecting any 'third' choice between these alternatives and capitalism. Indeed, the true lesson of Hegelian dialectics is that the very attempt to create a universal necessarily brings about an exception, and this is the case with the Third Way. For what characterizes the period of its emergence in the 1990s after the collapse of Communism is a series of nationalist racisms and religious fundamentalisms, which must be understood as the exact equivalent of its false multicultural inclusiveness: 'The 'disappearance' of the working class then fatally unleashes its reappearance in the guise of aggressive nativism. Liberals and populist meet on common ground... all they talk about is identity. Is not Haider himself the best Hegelian example of the 'speculative identity' of the tolerant multiculturalist and the postmodern racist'' (40). In fact, in just that kind of 'infinite judgement' that Zizek often speaks of, there was a real 'third way' that emerged at the time of Communism, a brief 'vanishing mediator' that was swept away either by the drive towards capitalism or the revival of nationalism: 'Neues Forum consisted of groups of passionate intellectuals who took socialism seriously and were prepared to put everything at stake in order to destroy the compromised system and replace it with a Utopian 'third way' beyond capitalism and 'Really Existing Socialism'' (17).

third way, n.Definitions

third way