Anthony Giddens, Gaddafi and the Third Way.

Lord Giddens of Enfield and the Third Way.

Anthony Giddens the former director of the LSE, and noted theorist of the Third Way, has been in a spot of bother (More Here).

Baron Giddens , after a trip to Lybia, observed in  March 2007,

“If Gadafy is sincere about reform, as I think he is, Libya could end up as the Norway of North Africa.”

As one-party states go, Libya is not especially repressive. Gadafy seems genuinely popular. Our discussion of human rights centred mostly upon freedom of the press. Would he allow greater diversity of expression in the country? There isn’t any such thing at the moment. Well, he appeared to confirm that he would. Almost every house in Libya already seems to have a satellite dish. And the internet is poised to sweep the country. Gadafy spoke of supporting a scheme that will make computers with internet access, priced at $100 each, available to all, starting with schoolchildren.

Will real progress be possible only when Gadafy leaves the scene? I tend to think the opposite. If he is sincere in wanting change, as I think he is, he could play a role in muting conflict that might otherwise arise as modernisation takes hold. My ideal future for Libya in two or three decades’ time would be a Norway of North Africa: prosperous, egalitarian and forward-looking. Not easy to achieve, but not impossible.

Here.

Who is His Lordship?

Many people who studied sociology in the 1970s and 1980s began with a foundation course based around Gidden’s Capitalism and Modern Social Theory. An Analysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber. This was a solid, if somewhat summary, overview of the bases of contemporary social thought – a seen through the ‘founding fathers’.

A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (1981) followed. This attacked Marxism as a dogmatic mono-causal theory. In place of economic determinism we should pay attention to a multiplicity of social antagonisms, from class to sexuality to state and social power. It outlined an overall left agenda for social advance, bringing Giddens close to radical socialism on some issues. He developed his own ‘structuration’ theory, which is basically a conceptualisation of everything agreeable to left-of-centre sociologists that has ever been said about structure and agency. By the time of the 1995 Second Edition and the Fall of Communism Giddens dropped socialism (or ‘the cybernetic model of socialism’) altogether. He began to talk of being “beyond left and right”.

Third Way.

In the rest of the decade Giddens developed the theory, and policies,  of the Third Way. There was no alternative to capitalism, only different ways of managing it. Social democrats backed equality and social justice within this framework. They should modernise society (welfare reform onwards) and help everyone ‘pilot’ their way in the age of globalisation.

Tony Blair appeared to endorse this approach. In practice, Blair’s leadership was used to turn  the outward practice of the Labour Party into a form of Christian Democracy (favouring social solidarity and market economics). Giddens’ own influence has left little ideological imprint. I wonder if even the author read Over to You, Mr Brown – How Labour Can Win Again (2007).

 Giddens was beguiled by Gaddafi. He illustrates that the ability to willingly let the wool be pulled over one’s eyes is not confined to the left. ‘Tends’ ‘Coulds’ and ideal futures apart the fact that he could not see the basic character of the regime speaks volumes about Giddens  The creatures that  have found progressive radicalism in Islamism are paralleled by this state intellectual who discovered the merits of the Green Book State and  its Great Helmsman.

Some say that there is no stupid idea that some intellectual somewhere has not come to support (as Karel Čapek observed in the  War of the Newts ).

Giddens, unable to show much for his labours,  proves that at least.