Giddens grounded third-way politics on reflexivity replacing left-right class antagonism

Evidence

WIlJ. Socialism, argues Giddens, is dead, and this is true not only for its communist but also for its traditional socialdemocratic version whose aim was to confront the limitations of capitalism in order to humanize it. But social democracy underestimated the capacity for capitalism to adapt and innovate. Moreover, it was based on a ‘cybernetic model’ of social life which could make sense in a world of ‘simple modernization’ but cannot work any more in a globalized, post-traditional social order characterized by the expansion of social reflexivity. In taday’s world of ‘reflexive modernization’ we need, he says, a new type of radical politics because life politics are now more important than life chance politics. The alternative to state action is a ‘generative’ politics that provides a framework for the life-political decisions of the individual and allows people to make things happen themselves. Democracy should become ‘dialogic’, and far from being limited to the political sphere, it has to reach the various areas of personal life, aiming at a ‘democracy of the emotions’. This new ‘life’ politics overcomes the traditional left/right divide, since it draws on philosophic conservatism while preserving some of the core values usually associated with socialism. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 486

Categorization

• QUESTION: Giddens’s ‘reflexive modernization’ premise is exactly what an agonistic view would contest — worth chasing whether Mouffe shows it empirically false.
• XREF: connects to: The third way is a politics without adversary that pretends all interests reconciles — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 70; The shift to subjectivity-based politics relocated rather than abandoned the political — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 996; Social democratic parties abandoned class politics for a pro-market Third Way — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 117 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The left’s ‘third way’ is ideological capitulation, not new initiative #responds-to (0.88) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 523
• The shift to subjectivity-based politics relocated rather than abandoned the political #expands (0.85) — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 996
• Social democratic parties abandoned class politics for a pro-market Third Way #exemplifies (0.82) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 117
• Erasure of left-right distinction harms rather than advances democracy #complicates (0.82) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 46
• Class solidarity, not individual self-interest, structures ideological thinking #contradicts (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 375
• Postmodern pluralist philosophies politically uphold the very liberal system they claim to critique #complicates (0.77) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2394
• Left antipolitics must unify divergent class fractions rather than a single working class #complicates (0.75)