The Problem of Socialism in Liberation Theology

Abstract

F ITS inception in late 1960s Latin American liberation theology has been subject of much controversy. Unquestionably one major factor in generating heat surrounding liberation debate has been tendency, common to both its proponents and critics, to regard liberation theology as bound up with an unmistakeably left-wing political stance. Some have gone as far as to pronounce it Marxism pure and simple. This latter claim is one I reject. Nor do I accept that liberation theology is reducible to left-wing politics, even if conceived more broadly than Marxism as such. But there is a strong case to be made that a left-wing political posture, though somewhat indeterminate, has been a marked feature of liberation theology. In particular, many liberation theologians have at various times and in various ways made explicit a preference for socialism over capitalism. In this article I will explore possible meanings of this preference, reasons adduced for it, and some of criticisms made of it. I will confine my discussion to issue of what might be called the socialist option, and will not examine related but separable issues of use in liberation theology of Marxism and of dependency theory. At first sight this might appear an unwise or unworkable separation, since Marxism is obviously a major source of inspiration for much socialist thinking, and has had some influence on liberation theology; and dependency theory played an important role in ''break with traditional Catholic approaches to social ethics which made liberation theology stand out as a novel and distinct theological movement. I would defend separation on several grounds: that acceptance of socialism does not depend on a prior evaluation of core theory in Marxism, namely historical materialism; that few if any liberation theologians appear to subscribe to that core theory in any case, at least in anything like its classical form; and that analogous remarks can be made substituting dependency theory for Marxism.