I subscribe to ITT too. I have been taking ITT since they started out in late 1970's. Over the years ITT has gone through a lot of changes. Mostly for the good. Sometimes they take a dense editorial position; like their original position on social security with the O'Shea afterglow. Then some of their readers remind them about the real world and ITT rethinks its position. My wife calls ITT, "In These Times...out of this world...your other magazine."
As far as this third way stuff goes, it does sound like foundation hustlers on the make. But, to paraphrase a former governor of Maryland, some of my best friends are foundation hustlers.( As in some of my best friends are __________)
Btw Doug, when is the next issue of the Baffler coming out? I have abook I'd like to see them review called the 48 Laws of Power.
Sincerely, Tom L.
Doug Henwood wrote:
> The November 29 ish of In These Times features a giant load of mush - so
> formless you wonder how it sticks to the page - called "Finding The Third
> Way," written by David Dyssegaard Kallick (author of the piece on surveying
> the left in this week's Nation, too - busy guy!). I think there's a
> misprint in the title, though - he must mean "Funding the Third Way," since
> this seems to be government of, by, and for the foundations.
>
> These folks who promote "civil society" should be forced to read what Hegel
> said on the matter: "civil society is the battlefield where everyone's
> individual private interest meets everyone else's" - a war each of against
> all. It "affords a spectacle of extravagance and want as well as of the
> physical and ethical degeneration common to them both." It's the domain of
> "capital and class-divisions," a world of "compulsion" and social
> polarization. Civil society's "resources are insufficient to check
> excessive poverty and the creation of a penurious rabble." Oh, but that's
> where the program officers come to the rescue.
>
> The beginning of DDK's article:
>
> <quote>
> Last month, President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
> met at New York University to talk about the politics of a "third way." Few
> journalists covered this unusual occasion and those who did mostly feigned
> incomprehension. Was there anything here other than muddy centrism?
>
> As a matter of fact, yes. But asking Clinton and Blair to define the new
> politics is like asking surfers to explain why the ocean swells. They're
> not the major thinkers behind the movement-they're just along for the ride.
>
> The "third way" is a political philosophy that poses an alternative to
> capitalism and communism. In recent years, it also has come to mean a
> politics beyond the narrow confines of liberalism and conservatism. Clinton
> and Blair are right to say we need to abandon the tired dichotomy of the
> two-dimensional political spectrum. But they're wrong when they imply the
> third way is just "post-ideological" problem-solving, or a bland
> triangulation to the middle. Americans should not confuse Clinton and
> Blair's compromising centrism with a real third way.
>
> A genuine third way draws from far wider traditions than the current
> liberal-vs.-conservative context. While liberals stress the role of
> government (weakly echoing communism's vision of a state-dominated society)
> and conservatives stress the role of "free" markets (loudly trumpeting
> capitalism's vision of a market-dominated society), the third way seeks a
> balance between the public sector, the private sector and a strongly
> developed civil society. Instead of posing an alternative between "the
> state" and "the individual," the third way values both of these realms, but
> adds the in-between realm of community.
>
> As we approach the end of the century, a third way seems more politically
> viable than ever. During the Cold War, capitalism and communism were hotly
> defended systems of belief, and proposing an alternative was seen as heresy
> or pie-in-the-sky posturing. Today, however, the American public is just
> waiting for the right suitor to come along-party loyalty is at an all-time
> low, and the public seems tired of the narrowing political options it is
> offered. It has been 30 years since the last time a serious alternative to
> liberalism commanded the attention of the Democratic Party. Ideas have
> evolved. It's time for a new attempt to dislodge liberalism and replace it
> with a third way.
> </quote>
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