With a nod to Socrates, where does Western civilisation begin or end?

Marxism has its roots in western economics, Christianity is an eastern religion. So what exactly is Western civilisation?

Karl Marx developed Marxist theory based on economist David Ricardo’s labour theory of value.

I suggest that we have used far too much ink on the “Western civilisation war” in talking at, not with or to, each other. A tutorial group would be pulled into line if nothing but this ideological slanging match was under way.

Questions arise: Where does one draw the line between Western and non-Western civilisation? Is Western civilisation’s opposite Eastern civilisation, or something else? And yet another: does capitalism equal Western civilisation and socialism non-Western civilisation?

Allow me to argue why a little more printer’s ink on the matter wouldn’t be wasted.

I come to write this small piece due to frustration. What I hope to bring to the debate is something like the Socratic approach: that is, asking awkward questions based on both wide practical experience and book learning.

As an emeritus professor I have read a lot of books. This reading I have mixed with years as a worker in outback shearing sheds, plus another slab of time as a commissioner with the Industry (later Productivity) Commission: from the breeding ground of socialist ideas to the high church of neo­liberal economics.

In between I have taught in three universities in southeast Queensland: Griffith University, the University of Queensland and Bond University. In the main I teach conventional economics: how and why do economies grow, or don’t; why some people and some societies become better off; how satisfying human needs and aspirations can be achieved in the context of limited natural resources and environmental limits.

Now, economics is one of the social sciences and, in the eyes of some, those who teach this discipline must be as guilty as the psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and historians in demeaning Western civilisation.

So where does one start in teaching economics? Aristotle. He defined economics as the study of management of the household.

The Greek root for the home is oikos. As a digression, the same Greek root gives us ecology, the study of the surrounds of the home. Aristotle, before him Plato, and before him Socrates, gave us the foundation ideas about democracy. Hippocrates gave us the foundation of medicine.

A statue of Socrates in Athens. Picture: AFP.

Some argue, quite rightly, that we got much of Western culture from ancient Greece, via Rome. But ancient Greece sat at the crossroads of civilisation as we know it, and a true mixing of cultures was the result.

It is possible to assert that both ancient Greece and modern Greece were/are more Mediterranean or Middle Eastern than western European.

Of course, it does not matter. Given Alexander’s conquests in the East, Greek ideas spread in that direction as much as Chinese and Indian ideas spread the other way.

As an economist studying human behaviour I can’t determine where East and West divide. I certainly don’t have a clue if I visit modern Japan, South Korea or China.

All have some form of a capitalist economy. Their people are more “Western” in dress than Australians, who delight in fake foreign attire.

These countries have diets that comprise of steamed vegetables and rice plus beef steaks and lobsters from Australia. Ours are exactly the same except lobsters are too expensive for most.

Let me skip forward more than 2000 years from ancient Greece and take up the story with the founder of modern economics, Adam Smith.

No dispute that he was of the Scottish Enlightenment. One can’t be more Western. Those who followed him spread modern economics in all directions around the globe.

As a digression, Thomas Malthus, with his influence on Charles Darwin, brought economics and ecology together for the first time since ancient Greece, if only for the two disciplines to split again at the end of the 19th century.

Another founder of economics, David Ricardo, made much of the labour theory of value. This Karl Marx took on board and it helped him and Friedrich Engels develop the Marxist theory of economic development. I raise this because some of the warriors in the Western civilisation debate will claim that socialism is not embedded in Western culture. There are those who go further, arguing that if the theory and practice of socialism is taught, one is a traitor to Western civilisation. This is not true; Marxism is just another branch of the Enlightenment.

What this does do is beg another question. Are the northern European countries with their wide-ranging social welfare and egalitarian policies “socialist”? They would appear to be more socialist than Jeremy Corbyn’s British Labour Party or Bernie Sanders and his supporters, both of which are viewed as socialist enemies of the West.

Is Norway socialist? Norway has topped the list of the Human Development Index for so long, it is hard to remember.

It is far more equalitarian than we are. It has free university education. One can read how much income your neighbour earned and the amount of tax they paid. How free is that! Even its worst criminals are in prison to be reformed. No eye-for-an-eye “Eastern” notion of justice. Norway is a market economy. No Western civilisation war is under way.

It is not just economic and government systems that are the centre of the Western civilisation war. Religion is probably the most crucial element. Are Judaism, Christianity and Islam Western or Eastern religions?

My reading has left me with the impression that they are Eastern religions. Of course, this should not matter in the least. But maybe if it is true and is recognised, the debate might abate. What would Socrates do?

Tor Hundloe is an emeritus professor at the University of Queensland.