Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
So you're studying at Oxford and you join its most illustrious debating society, the Oxford Union, and suddenly realise you might be part of a new fundamentalism. How on earth?
Yes, that was a big surprise to me, John. I turned up at the debating society expecting to hear some of the highest class debates in the world and maybe meeting some future British prime ministers without knowing it. And I was disappointed. I found that with a lot of the debates, they would ultimately land on what the English law was or what a United Nations pronouncement was. And people weren't arguing things much from first principles.
And I found that disappointing and superficial. That's Gordon Menzies, an economics professor at Australia's University of Technology. Gordon was in the room as bankers, economists and cabinet members deregulated Australia's economy several decades ago now. He's got good liberal credentials. But in a new book, he raises some second thoughts about Western liberalism.
The book's called Western Fundamentalism, which gives you an idea of where he's headed. Interestingly, he makes the case that the sexual revolution and economic deregulation are part of the same narrow vision of life, a liberal fundamentalism. And he feels we've all been injured a little by it.
So I had an opportunity to speak with one of the leaders. He kindly agreed to have a meeting with me. And I put this to him and he saw my point immediately. And he said, Gordon, you have to understand that everybody who comes to this place believes uncritically in three things. Democracy.
free market liberalism, that's market economics, and sexual freedom. So the debates are superficial because people are not questioning the basic things that they believe. And so I called this uncritical, sometimes naive adoption of democracy, free market liberalism, and sexual freedom, I called it Western Fundamentalism.
But weren't you an enabler of Western economic fundamentalism? You were an advisor in the very period when Australia deregulated its economy. You know, that's liberalism in a nutshell. So is this book a kind of mea culpa?
Oh, great question. I was, it's true, I was an economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia over the 1980s and 1990s. And this was a very exciting time for economists, for my profession, because the whole world was embracing free markets and indeed some of the communist world began to embrace free markets at that time as well.
Yeah, I guess the book is, it describes a journey or it describes the completion of a journey when I've come to see economic liberalism and its connections with other forms of liberalism in a way that I hadn't really seen it before.
I don't regret being involved in a lot of economic, in the promotion of a lot of economic reforms. I think that economic reforms don't have to lead to selfish chaos, but they can. And other forms of freedom don't have to lead to selfish chaos, but they can.
I want to drill down on the very odd claim that you make, that things like deregulating the dollar and removing tariffs are really just part of the same fundamentalism that lies behind the sexual revolution. Are you just trying to be provocative? Are you just trying to bring sex into an otherwise boring economic argument? Well, of course, economics isn't boring, John. I'd like to dispute that immediately. No.
Although those things are different in many ways, in a neoliberal mindset, they can be justified and grouped together in the sense that you regard things as commodities. So whether that's cars, imported cars, cars,
or bodies. If you treat people or things as commodities in a neoliberal mindset, then they are connected. They are the same kind of phenomena. Now, what do I mean by a commodity? Well, a commodity is a thing. You don't care about its feelings. You trade it, you use it while it's useful to you, and then you get rid of it after it's no longer useful to you. And the key thing about a commodity is your impersonal stance towards it.
And the other thing about a commodity is you're allowed to trade it. It's called alienable. That's the technical legal term. If I sell you my computer, the reason I can do that is that the law says I'm allowed to part company with my computer. It's not essentially part of me. And so if we agree on a price and a mutually advantageous trade, I'll give you my computer. You give me some money. But if I tried to sell you my children,
the law would step in and say, no, you can't do that. You can't part company with your children in the same way because your children are inalienable. Now, the issue with the sexual revolution is whether, for example, in prostitution, some people who are uncomfortable about prostitution would say that prostitutes are, in a sense, giving away something of themselves that they shouldn't and that there's something inalienable there that's being treated as alienable. And pornography, of course, would be the ultimate example of this issue.
commoditization of the body. Absolutely. Pornography is a perfect example of that because by definition it's impersonal and you are treating a person as a thing. And Gordon gets a little personal about his own family upbringing and why he thinks, somewhat unexpectedly, that Christianity may provide the humanizing effect secular liberalism needs.
You even say that your own life is a story of almost losing your life and freedom as a result of the sexual revolution. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, sure. So in the book, I reflect a little bit on the experience of my parents.
So my parents were troubled people and they had troubled lives. My father was someone who valued sexual freedom very highly and this humiliated my mother and caused her a great deal of pain. So looking at him, the sexual revolution and the greater tolerance for his behavior makes me think unfavorably of it.
My mother, on the other hand, although she was the victim of this, as you know, the sexual revolution coincided with, in second wave feminism, greater rights for women to leave abusive relationships. And so she benefited from that. And so that's a kind of plus, I guess, for the sexual revolution in my mind.
In terms of myself, my parents, when I was conceived, made a decision that it wasn't the right time to have me. And so there were several attempts to abort me. My mother told me this herself and my siblings have confirmed it. And so I guess I'm glad to be here. And that counts as a negative for the sexual revolution, in my personal opinion.
But how is all of this a fundamentalism? What do you mean by lumping the sexual revolution and economic liberalism in that pretty hot buzzword of fundamentalist? Because no one wants to be a fundamentalist. Yeah, I actually think it's unavoidable to be a fundamentalist of some kind. Now, I'm going to go back to the original coining of the word, which is in the early 20th century, a group of Christians saying,
declared that they built their lives and their beliefs on a set of things that they couldn't prove. That doesn't mean they're unreasonable, but they just couldn't prove them. And so this is, they said, these are our pillars, our building blocks, and here's where we go from here.
Now, I think actually everybody's in that position. Everybody's in the position of having certain things in their lives and in their worldview that they just can't ultimately prove. If you could prove them, a lot of disputes would have been settled a long time ago.
So everybody's in that position. So I call a fundamentalist someone who builds their life on something that they can't ultimately prove. And I think we're all fundamentalists. And I want to change the conversation so people start talking about those things. And so the word's provocative, but I hope it's also humbling because all of us are in the same position. Do you also mean that it's unquestionable, you know, to go back to your Oxford University experience,
if these things are your fundamentals, does it mean in our current climate that you're not allowed to question these things? I don't think it should mean that. I think being aware, being able to say to someone, look,
The reason I think this is because of these basic beliefs. I'm aware of them. I know that I can't prove them, but I'm aware of them. And that's the source of our disagreement is we have different basic beliefs. I think that's a really healthy thing to do in a conversation. And I wouldn't call that not questioning your fundamentals. I think you can question your fundamentals. You can be aware of them. You can't ultimately prove them.
But that's a different thing to not being able to question them. And I think we should go into conversations with that gift of saying to people, look, I know we disagree on this detail, but I think here's why. You have a different basic, you're looking at the world in a basically different way. Christianity is sometimes closely associated with economic liberalism in some parts of the world. But are you kind of saying there's not much that's particularly Christian about economic liberalism?
Yes, I am saying that. It's very complicated, John, because right-wing politics in Australia and other countries is usually a combination of two things or two groups. It's a combination of social conservatives plus it's a combination of people who are libertarians almost. They really value freedom very highly. And so
While I agree that Christians can and should sometimes support the social conservative side of conservative politics, when it comes to the economic liberalism, I think we have to be very, very careful.
Some of the key writers in this area, like Ayn Rand is one example, they draw heavily on Friedrich Nietzsche, whose idea was that the powerful, the beautiful in the world have a moral duty to marginalize the weak.
And so a completely unfettered laissez-faire capitalism without any social safety net would indeed fulfill that vision. The people who are marketable would get richer and more powerful, and the people who weren't would fall further into the abyss of disadvantage. And no, I don't see any particular reason why Christians should support that.
So I imagine some listeners are going, hang on, is he right wing or is he left wing? He sounds right wing on the whole sex stuff and he sounds like a lefty on the economic stuff. Are you just a tortured soul or is there something that unifies these poles, as it were, in your life? Well, at any time in history, we all get given categories that come to us for all sorts of reasons.
And as a Christian, I don't feel under any obligation to accept those categories. I think that I can just break out of them if I feel that's what's obedient to God. So yes, I think the categories left and right are losing their usefulness now in many ways, or at least they should be used sparingly.
I prefer the idea of being radically conservative. So as a Christian, I would look at anything that the past delivers me, any traditions, and try and interpret them and evaluate them theologically. And if there is something worthwhile from the past to be preserved, I'm a conservative. I'm a traditionalist.
If there's something that's antithetical to human flourishing, it deserves to be overturned and rejected, and I'm a revolutionary. Bring on the revolution. Thanks so much, Gordon.
We're hard at work on the next season of Undeceptions. We've got full episodes coming on pornography, the Crusades, human flourishing and much more. Until then, I hope you like these weekly Undeceptions singles. See ya. You've been listening to the Eternity Podcast Network.