Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-swilling Englishmen Created Family-centered Economies-- and why They DisappearedFreewheeling capitalism or collectivist communism: when it came to political-economic systems, did the twentieth century present any other choice? Does our century? In Third Ways, social historian Allan Carlson tells the story of how different thinkers from Bulgaria to Great Britain created economic systems during the twentieth century that were by intent neither capitalist nor communist. Unlike fascists, these seekers were committed to democracy and pluralism. Unlike liberal capitalists, they refused to treat human labor and relationships as commodities like any other. And unlike communists, they strongly defended private property and the dignity of persons and families. Instead, the builders of these alternative economic systems wanted to protect and renew the "natural" communities of family, village, neighborhood, and parish. They treasured rural culture and family farming and defended traditional sex roles and vital home economies. Carlson's book takes a fresh look at distributism, the controversial economic project of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton which focused on broad property ownership and small-scale production; recovers the forgotten thought of Alexander Chayanov, a Russian economist who put forth a theory of "the natural family economy"; discusses the remarkable "third way" policies of peasant-led governments in post-World War I Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania; recounts the dramatic and largely unknown effort by Swedish housewives to defend their homes against radical feminism; relates the iconoclastic ideas of economic historian Karl Polanyi, including his concepts of "the economy without markets" and "the great transformation"; and praises the efforts by European Christian Democrats to build a moral economy on the concept of homo religious--"religious man." Finally, Carlson's work explains why these efforts--at times rich in hope and prospects--ultimately failed, often with tragic results. The tale inspires wistful regret over lost opportunities that, if seized, might have spared tens of millions of lives and forestalled or avoided the blights of fascism, Stalinism, socialism, and the advent of the servile state. And yet the book closes with hope, enunciating a set of principles that could be used today for invigorating a "family way" economy compatible with an authentic, healthy, and humane culture of enterprise. |
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Abraham Kuyper agrarian agricultural Alexander Chayanov Alexei Alva Myrdal American argued Bulgaria capitalism capitalist Catholic century Chayanov child Christian Democracy communism Communist cooperative culture Dimitrov Distributism Distributist early Eastern Europe economic economist equality European family economy family wage fascism favor feminist G. K. Chesterton G. K.'s Weekly gender Hilaire Belloc Hirdman homo economicus household housewife housewives human Ibid income individual industrial Journal Karl Polanyi Kuyper labor market land liberal liberty marriage married Marx ment Mitrany modern mothers movement natural family nomic ownership Peasant Economy Peasant Europe Peasant Farm Organization Peasant Party Peasant Utopia peasantry Peasants in Power percent Peselj political private property production radical reform regime Rerum Novarum Revolution Ricardo Riksdag role Romania Röpke rural Russian Servile Social Democratic socialist society Stamboliski Sweden Swedish tion Union University Press welfare woman women workers York