Third Way
Third Way refers to the late-20th-century political project (Blair's New Labour, Clinton's DLC, Schröder's Neue Mitte, and in some periodizations Gorbachev's "third road") claiming a middle course between classical social democracy and neoliberalism — which in practice delivered neoliberalism with social-democratic vocabulary.
Substance
- Acceptance of financialization, deregulation, and globalization as irreversible
- Replacement of class politics with identity-pluralism and meritocracy talk
- Welfare retargeted toward "workfare"; privatizations under left branding
- Humanitarian-interventionist foreign policy (Kosovo, Iraq-era complicity)
Critique
For Marxists the Third Way was social democracy's final capitulation: the moment the labor parties became explicitly the managers of neoliberalism. Its wreckage — rust belts, financial crises, collapsed trust — created the vacuum filled by right populism and by projects like MAGA Communism which claim a genuinely new synthesis rather than a centrist mush.
Note: distinguish from Gorbachev-era usage and from Chinese discourse on "third road" liberalism.