Third Way Utopianism
Third Way Utopianism

Anarcho-Democratic and Liberal Socialist Ideas in Central Europe

Author(s): András Bozóki, Miklós Sükösd
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Political Theory
Published by: Central European University Press
Keywords: liberal socialism;utopia;Anarchism;Central Europe;
Summary/Abstract: In this chapter we examine hybrid political ideas that bridged or even blended allegedly incompatible ideologies and created a new texture. The ideas to be discussed are “anarcho-democracy” and “liberal socialism” in twentieth-century Central Europe. These ideas came close to utopian thinking in that their representative proponents tried to find a non-existent third way between clear-cut models. Instead of hewing to either anarchism or liberal democracy, they tried to figure out a third way solution between the two. Instead of taking sides in the historic debate between liberalism and socialism, they tried to find a new blend, liberal socialism. Therefore it is not unjustified to call them variations of third way, or hybrid, utopianism. Refusing to accept “either/or” solutions, third way thinkers wanted to discover a new road to human paradise that incorporated all the good sides of opposing ideologies and eliminated their negative aspects. In approaching this topic, we suggest that a utopia does not always represent a clear and coherent single idea. On the contrary, a utopian vision might appear as a positive way out of two or more sometimes negative (but often contradicting) perspectives by merging and transcending them.

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