Third System Associations
Proposed Definition
Marc Nerfin:
"Contrasting with governmental power and economic power —the power of the Prince and the Merchant—there is an immediate and autonomous power, sometimes evident, sometimes latent: people's power. Some people develop an awareness of this, associate and act with others and thus become citizens.* Citizens and their associations, when they do not seek either governmental or economic power, constitute the third system. Helping to bring what is latent into the open, the third system is one expression of the autonomous power of the people.
...
Third system associations are formed by citizens whose situation in society, and/or some personal reason, whether intellectual, moral or spiritual, makes them anxious to improve their lifes, individually or collectively, and that of others. Social history suggests that individual motivation is more important, collective motivation more ardent, and the combination of both stronger. A worker usually remains a worker, and his/her reasons to be active in a trade union are part and parcel of her/his social existence. The same holds true for members of ethnic minorities (or majorities). A woman has even deeper reasons to be a lifelong feminist activist. But not all workers, all women, and so on, become citizens, and the personal motivation is always essential. Motivations are many, but observation of the third system as it currently unfolds—i.e. beyond its 'traditional' manifestations like the trade unions—suggests that there are only a few deep-seated mobilizing themes; peace, women's liberation, human and peoples' rights, environment, local self-reliance, alternative life-styles and personal transformation and consumers' self-defence as well as, in some industrialized countries, solidarity with the people of the Third World, including refugees and migrants, and, in Eastern Europe, or at least in Poland, a new form of trade unionism" (http://www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/87_1/87_1_12.pdf)