“Men of Stone and Children of Struggle”: Latin American Liberationists at the End of History

Abstract

This article critiques the political theory of Latin American liberationists and suggests a theological source of resistance to the regnant capitalist order. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, the liberationists’' commitment to “politcs as statecraft,” manifest originally in the hopes of seizing the state and more recently in the praise of an emergent civil society, is shown to be unable to resist “paranational hyper capitalism.” Instead, liberationists should reconsider the church as a “public”, as a social, political, economic formation in its own right. Toward this end they might learn from the Christian base communities.