What is poverty and how can it be tackled? The view of the Old Left adopts redistribution as the solution to poverty; the New Right identifies the poor as an underclass in need of integration into the mainstream, while New Labour's 'Third Way' sees the root cause of poverty as joblessness and integration into the formal labour market as the route out of poverty. Taking the Third Way out of its narrow party political context, this book argues that it is necessary to harness work beyond employment in order to pave a Third Way beyond capitalism and socialism. The outcome is a thought-provoking new approach towards combating poverty. Poverty and the Third Way uncovers how New Labour's employment-focussed approach causes, rather than resolves, poverty. Searching for another approach, the authors find the seeds of an alternative 'Third Way' in radical European social democratic and ecological thought which seeks to transcend capitalism and socialism by developing work beyond employment.
Exploring the reasons why such an approach is needed and how it can be implemented, the authors transcend the 'there is no alternative' to capitalism school of thought dominant in many advanced economies by providing a clearly marked route map of the way towards a post-capitalist economy. This book will be of vital interest to academics and advanced students within the disciplines of human geography, social policy, sociology and economics and will also be of great value to practitioners in the fields of community and economic development, as well as those with an interest in central government and supra-national policy making.