The English progressive/experimental rock band, Pink Floyd, was founded in 1965. Their best known albums include Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. The protest song, “On the Turning Away” was written by David Gilmour and Anthony Moore for their thirteenth studio album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, which was released in 1987.
The song begins:
On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away¹
“On the Turning Away” is a call for people to accompany and stand in moral solidarity with those who are described (in verse one) as “the pale and the downtrodden,” and (in verse four) as the “weak and the weary.” It enjoins us to resist the temptation — described in verse two as “a sin” — to join the ranks of those who pretend not to understand the pleas of the suffering poor (verse one), instead “turning away” from them “with a heart of stone” (verse four).
The recurring and titular phrase, “the turning away” uses the definite article ‘the’ to reify what is otherwise a verb phrase (‘turning away’). It is thus presented as a thing — a social phenomenon, a movement — that one can but shouldn’t be part of or join.
In a 1987 interview, Gilmour explained that he was objecting to the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. This is in keeping with the social and political commentary from Pink Floyd’s previous album, The Final Cut (1983). In the years since Gilmour penned the lyrics to “On the Turning Away,” the socio-economic and political program that drew his ire came to be known as neoliberalism.²
Neoliberalism is the political and economic ideology that promises that the free market is a superior mechanism for securing social goods than the state. Neoliberals advocate that the state should be subjected to market control, rather than democratic decision-making and planning. However, they use state power to create open markets and remove impediments to corporate and financial capitalism.
Neoliberal ideology was burgeoning in the 1980s under the Thatcher and Reagan regimes, both of which were conservative. Hence, Gilmour associated the “dream of the proud” — one of the many turns of phrase he uses to refer to this socio-political program — with right-wing conservativism.³ Although neoliberalism is a right-wing ideology (it is opposed to leftism, understood as broadly encompassing both social democracy and socialism), it is not necessarily conservative.⁴ Indeed, it called for and brought about deep changes to the traditional communitarian and republican values that were widely held under Fordism (the previous social and economic paradigm). Moreover, it quickly became the consensus ideology shared by both conservative and liberal parties. In the United States, it was entrenched by the Bush and Clinton regimes and subsequently maintained by the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. In the United Kingdom, it was advanced and maintained by every subsequent regime after Thatcher’s, including those of John Major (Conservative Party) and Tony Blair (Labour Party).
This song poignantly expresses what Gilmour takes to be a lack of love, care, and mutuality that exists in advanced capitalist societies. He lyrically asserts that a sinful darkness (verse two) is spreading and drawing people into its ranks — the phenomenon and social movement that he calls “the turning away,” and which I have argued should be identified as neoliberalism.
What I find most interesting is that the neoliberal “turning away / From the pale and downtrodden” was instituted by self-professing Protestant Christians, such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who successfully convinced Christians (especially evangelicals) to support their policy positions.
In some sense, this isn’t surprising since Protestantism has arguably long served to lend ideological support to capitalism. Indeed, Max Weber’s influential book, The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905, translated 1930), argued that capitalism flourished as a result of Protestant teachings, especially those of John Calvin. Among other things, Calvin argued that the classical religious prohibition on usury, or charging interest, was misunderstood and inapplicable. The subsequent shift in theological ethics that he initiated correlated with the expansion of capitalism, which is a system in which money can be accumulated and used to make more money. Interest-bearing loans are one of the many ways in which money functions as capital.
More broadly, Protestantism led to the notion that individual people stand in a direct, unmediated relationship with God. Each of us is, in a metaphorical sense, a free and independent agent, and it is left to us “to work out [our] own salvation in fear and trembling.”⁵ Under capitalism generally and neoliberalism in particular, a similar thing is true. We are each a free agent — free to contract our labor or resources and free to starve if we do not.
While the coupling of neoliberal political and economic policy with Protestantism is not surprising, I do find it surprising how readily the Catholic laity and clergy came to favor, and adapt to, the consensus economic paradigm. Unlike its Protestant counterparts, Catholic theology has traditionally insisted that the liturgical, communal dimensions of the faith are at least as important as private prayer and individual piety. Indeed, the US Council of Catholic Bishops has explained, “The celebration of the Mass is the center of the life of the Church.”⁶ Historically, this community-oriented expression of Christian faith was at odds with the individual piety that is characteristic of Protestantism, and this was reflected in a more communitarian (rather than individualistic) socio-political perspective. I am left wondering whether the blurring of the distinctions between evangelical and Catholic spirituality is causally bound up with the acceptance by Catholics of a socio-economic ideology that is highly analogous to Protestant theology.
“On the Turning Away” lyrics ©Pink Floyd Music Publishers.
The term ‘neoliberalism’ was more or less introduced to the English-speaking world by Milton Friedman in his 1951 essay “Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects.”
See, e.g., Only Music (OM), December 1987.
“Conservativism” literally refers to the political maintenance of traditional values and ideas.
Philippians 2:12.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “‘Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper’: On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist” (November 14, 2006).