Adair Turner, Macmillan, £20
The Third Way is a little tarnished, what with the disillusionment from the left with what they see as Tony Blair's snail-like reforms and the right's "I told you so".
The election of George "Dubya" Bush in the US ended the Clintonite flirtation with the idea and indicated a return to more traditional battle lines.
Along comes Adair Turner with what, uncharitably, could be called the Fourth Way.
It attempts to navigate a path between the hard rock of neoliberal economics and the soft sand of the Third Way.
For those on the traditional left this is yet another nail in the coffin of the orthodox socialist/ capitalist approach and reduces Marxism to just another tool for understanding political economy.
Turner's basic argument is that these ancient certainties have locked us into a cycle of high spending versus low taxes, and the ascendancy of either means a diminution of the quality of life. For him the swings-and-roundabouts approach is too simplistic.
Turner reaches back for his solution to the modern malaise and argues for a return to Adam Smith's classical liberal approach, and not his thoughts as reflected through the distorting prism of Thatcherism.
Adam Smith - and Turner supports this - recognised that individuals act on self-interest, and wider social objectives are achieved not by the actions of corporations or individuals but through the laws and taxes to which they are subject.
This precludes the direct intervention of the state in the economy, which is the central tenet of socialist thought.
Turner is aware that relinquishing this standpoint is something that socialists are reluctant to do, despite the near-universal embracing of "market forces" as the driving force of the political economy.
However, restraining the market with laws and taxes is anathema to the full-blooded marketeer, so he is safe enough in angering both sides.
Adair's attempt to tread a new path by dusting off classical liberalism is intriguing and he delivers it with a considerable punch.
comidheach@irish-times.ie
