The Free Market and the Liberation of Faith

Abstract

This article introduces the issue of economics in Latin-American theology and explores the opposite meanings of freedom and liberation in the market and the theological vocabulary, with special attention to the Latin-American region in its present context. It considers how the imperial ‘free market’ functions at a globalized level, and the economic and political outcome of the neoliberal market system. It also focuses on the consequences of these phenomena with regard to human subjectivity, and what can be called the ‘capture of desire’, the creating a desire for others. The consumption structure of late capitalism ends in the denial of the other as an autonomous subject, with destructive consequences for human life and communities. Its oppressive mechanisms work basically at symbolic level, and destroy the freedom they claim to protect. Over against that we find the Christian concept of love, the responsibility for the neighbour, the other in need, and understand true liberation as the possibility of a desire with the other.