Marxism and religion:
the challenge of
liberation theology
The involvement of Christians in revolutionary struggles is not a new phenomenon, at least in Latin America. 'Traditional' Marxism has reacted with an analysis counterposing Christian workers, supporters of the revolution, to the Church (the 'clerics'), a thoroughly reactionary body. The death of the cleric, Camillo Torres, a Colombian guerrilla fighter, killed in a skirmish with the army, could be considered an exceptional case. But the growing commitment of Christians and priests to mass struggles and their massive involvement in the Sandinista revolution clearly requires us to revise this simplistic analysis.
Counterposing the base of the Church to its conservative hierarchy is no longer sufficient when a large number of bishops have declared their solidarity with popular movements. This commitment has occasionally cost them their lives as was the case with Monsignor Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, assassinated by the death squads in March 1980. Marxists who are disconcerted or confused by these developments still resort to the distinction between these Christians' valid social practice and a religious ideology defined as necessarily regressive and idealist. However, with liberation theology we have seen the emergence of religious thinking using Marxist concepts and inspiring social liberation struggles...
It is time Marxists realised something new is happening. Its importance is world historic. A significant sector of 'God's people' and its Church (Christian) is in the process of changing its position in the field of the class struggle, going over with arms (spiritual) and supplies (material resources)
This new phenomenon has little connection with the former 'dialogue' between Christians and Marxists-conceived as two separate camps-and even less to do with the dull, diplomatic negotiations between bureaucratic apparatuses. The caricatural example of the latter was the recent Budapest
'meeting between Christians and Marxists' —that is between representatives of the Vatican and the East European states. What is happening in Latin
America (and elsewhere) around the theology of liberation is something quite different: we are seeing a new fraternity between revolutionaries who believe in God and those who do not, within an emancipatory dynamic which
Undoubtedly this all signifies a challenge to the 'classic' Marxist conception of religion-especially in its vulgarized version, reduced to the materialism and anti-clericalism of the eighteenth century bourgeois philosophers. Nevertheless, we can find in Marx and Engels' writingsand in those of some modern Marxists-concepts and analyses that can help
We can begin with the celebrated phrase "religion is the opiate of the people', which seems to summarize the Marxist conception of the religious phenomenon in the eyes of most of its supporters and adversaries. First of all we should remember that this statement is not specifically Marxist.
The same phrase can be found, in various contexts, in the writing of Kant,
Herder, Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer and Heine. A careful reading of the text from Marx shows he is more nuanced than one may have believed. He took
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opiate of the people.'
This analysis owes more to a left neo-Hegelianism, seeing religion as the alienation of the human essence, rather than to Enlightenment philosopy
(religion as a clerical conspiracy). In fact when Marx wrote the above passage he was still a disciple of Feuerbach, a neo-Hegelian. His analysis of religion was therefore 'pre-Marxist'. But it is nevertheless dialectic since it grasps the contradictory character of the religious phenomenon: sometimes a justification of existing society and sometimes a protest against it. It was only later—particularly with The German Ideology (1846)—that the strictly Marxist study of religion as a social and historical reality began. In other words an analysis of religion as one of the many forms of ideology, of the spiritual production of a people, the production of ideas, representations and consciousness-necessarily conditioned by material production and the
Friedrich Engels showed a much greater interest than Marx in religious
92 International Marxist Review to the side of working people.
us understand today's rather surprising reality.
The opiate of the people?
corresponding social relations.?
is outside the control of both Rome and Moscow.
into account the dual character of the phenomenon:
Marxism and religion: the challenge of liberation theology 93 phenomena and their historic role. Engels' main contribution to the Marxist study of religions is his analysis of the relationship of religious representations to the class struggle. Over and beyond the philosophical polemic (materialism against idealism) he tried to understand and explain concrete social expressions of religions. Christianity no longer appeared as a timeless 'essence' , but as a cultural form undergoing transformations in different historical periods: first as a religion of the slaves, then as the state ideology of the Roman Empire, then tailored to feudal hierarchy and finally adapted to bourgeois society. It thus appears as a symbolic space disputed over by antagonistic social forces: feudal theology, bourgeois protestantism and plebeian heresies. Occasionally this analysis tends towards a narrowly utilitarian, instrumental vision of the problem:
(..) each of the different classes uses its own appropriate religion... and it makes little difference whether these gentlemen believe in their respective religions or not. 3 Engels seems to only find the 'religious disguise' of class interests in the different forms of belief.
However thanks to his class struggle method, Engels realised-unlike the Enlightenment philosophers-that the conflict between materialism and religion is not always identical to the struggle between revolution and reaction. For example, in England in the eighteenth century materialism in the figure of Hobbes defended absolute monarchy while Protestant sects used religion as their banner in the revolutionary struggle against the Stuarts
4 In the same way, far from seeing the Church as a socially homogenous whole, he makes a remarkable analysis showing how in certain historical conjunctures it divides according to its class composition. Thus during the Reformation, on the one side there was the high clergy, the feudal summit of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and on the other side there was the lower clergy, which supplied the ideologues of the Reformation and of the revolutionary peasant movement.
While being a materialist, an atheist and an irreconcilable enemy of religion, Engels nevertheless grasped, like the young Marx, the dual character of the phenomenon: its role in legitimizing established order, but also, according to social circumstances, its critical, protest and even revolutionary role. Furthermore, most of the concrete studies he wrote concentrated on this second aspect. First of all with regard to primitive Christianity, the religion of the slaves, the banished, the damned, the persecuted and oppressed. . ® The first Christians came from the lowest levels of societyapart from the slaves this also meant those free men who had been deprived of their rights and small peasants who were crippled by debts.
Engels even went so far as to draw up an astonishing parallel between this primitive Christianity and modern socialism: a) the two great movements are not made by chiefs and prophets—although prophets are never in short supply in both of them-but are mass movements: b) both are movements of the oppressed, suffering persecution, their members are proscribed and hunted down by the ruling authorities; c) both preach an imminent libera-
94 International Marxist Review tion from slavery and misery. To embellish his comparison Engels, somewhat provocatively, quoted something Renan said:
If you want to get an idea of what the first Christian communities were like take a look at a local branch of the International Workingmen's Association. The essential difference being of course that the primitive Christians transposed deliverance to the hereafter whereas socialism places it in this world.'
Is this difference as clear-cut as it appears at first sight? In his study of the second great Christian protest movement-the Medieval heresies and the Peasant Wars in Germany-it seems to become blurred: Thomas Munzer, the theologian and leader of the revolutionary peasants and plebeians of the sixteenth century, wanted the immediate establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God, of the millenarian Kingdom of the prophets. According to Engels, the Kingdom of God for Munzer was a society without class differences, private property and a state authority independent of, and foreign to, the members of that society. However, Engels still tended once again to reduce religion to a stratagem: he speaks of Munzer's Christian phraseology and his biblical cloak. •8 The specifically religious dimension of Munzerian millenarianism, its spiritual and moral force, its authentically experienced mystical depth, seemed to escape him.
Having said this, with his analysis of the religious phenomenon from the point of view of the class struggle Engels brought out the protest potential of the phenomenon and opened the way for a new approach—one distinct from both that of the Enlightenment philosophers and from the German neo-Hegelians—to the relationship between religion and society. Bloch and Goldman's contribution Most of the twentieth century Marxist studies on religion are limited to developing the ideas sketched out by Marx and Engels, or to applying them to a particular reality. This was the case for example with Karl Kautsky's historical studies on primitive Christianity, the medieval heresies and on Thomas Munzer. While he provides us with interesting details on the social and economic bases of these movements and their communist aspirations, he reduces their religious beliefs to a simple 'envelope' (Hulle) or 'garment' (Gewand) that 'conceals' social content. As for Lenin, Trotsky or Rosa Luxemburg's writings, they especially deal with the tactical problems religion posed for the workers movement-their key idea was that the atheist battle against religion must be subordinated to the concrete necessities of the class struggle, which demands unity between workers who believe in god and those who do not.
Ernst Bloch radically changed the framework of the Marxist approach to religion. In a similar way to Engels he distinguished two socially opposed currents: the theocratic religion of the official churches, opium of the
Marxism and religion: the challenge of liberation theology 95 people, a mystifying apparatus in the pay of the powerful, and the underground, subversive religion of the Cathars, the Hussites, of Joachim, of Flore, Thomas Munzer, Baader, Weitling and Tolstoy. However, unlike Engels, Bloch refuses to see religion uniquely as a 'cloak' of class interests (he explicitly criticises this thesis, but attributes it to Kautsky...) In its protest movement forms religion is one of the most significant forms of utopian consciousness, one of the richest expressions of the 'hope' princi-
Through its capacity of creative anticipation, judeo-Christian eschatology—Bloch's preferred religious universe—marks out the imaginary space of not-yet-being."°
Basing himself on these presuppositions, Bloch develops a heterodox and iconoclast interpretation of the bible-both the Old and New Testamentdrawing out the Biblia pauperum, that denounces the Pharaohs and calls on each and everyone to choose aut Cesar aut Christus (either Caesar or Christ).
A religious atheist—according to him only an atheist can be a good Christian, and vice-versa-and a theologian of the revolution, Bloch not only produced a Marxist reading of millenarianism (following Engels in this) but also-—and this was new—a millenarian interpretation of Marxism. The eschatological and collectivist heresies of the past are not for him simply 'precursors of socialism' (the title of Kautsky's book) —a closed chapter of the past—but a present-day subversive heritage.
Of course Bloch, like the young Marx of the famous 1844 quotation, recognised the dual character of the religious phenomenon, its oppressive aspect and its potential for revolt. The first requires the use of what he called Marxism's "breath of cold air' the relentless materialist analysis of ideologies, idols and idolatries. The second on the other hand call for Marxism's 'inviting warmth' seeking to save religion's utopian cultural surplus, their critical and anticipatory force. Beyond any 'dialogue' ", Bloch dreamed of an authentic union between Christianity and revolution, like in the period of the Peasant Wars.
Lucien Goldmann's work is another interesting and original attempt at the Marxist study of religion. In his book The Hidden God (1955) (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1964) he compared (without assimilating one to the other) religious faith and Marxist faith: both have in common an opposition to individualism (rationalist or empiricist) and believe in transindividual values-God for religion, the human community for socialism. A similar analogy exists between the Pascalian gamble on the existence of God and the Marxist gamble on the liberated historical future: both presuppose risk, the danger of failure and the hope of success. Both come down to a question of faith and are not demonstrable on the exclusive level of factual judgements. What separates them is of course the supernatural or superhistorical character of religious transcendence. Without wanting in any way to 'Christianize Marxism', Lucien Goldmann brought a fresh approach to the conflictual relationship between religious belief and Marx-
96 International Marxist Review ist atheism.
Marx and Engels thought religion's subversive role was a thing of the past, which no longer had any significance in the epoch of modern class struggle. This forecast has been more or less historically confirmed (with a few important exceptions) for a century. But to understand what has been happening for more than twenty years in Latin America-as well as in the Philippines and to a lesser extent here and there in Europe-we need to integrate into our analysis the intuitions of Bloch (and Goldmann) on the utopian potential of the judeo-Christian tradition. What is liberation theology What is liberation theology? Why does it cause concern not only in the Vatican but also in the Pentagon, not only for the cardinals of the Holy See but also for Reagan's advisors? Quite clearly because the stakes involved go considerably beyond the framework of traditional ideological debates: for the supporters of both clerical and social established order it is a question of a challenge in practice to their power.
As Leonardo Boff has stated, liberation theology is a reflection of, and reflects on, a pre-existing praxis. More precisely it is the expression and legitimation of a huge social movement, that emerged at the beginning of the 1960s—well before the new theological writings. It involved significant sectors of the Church (bishop, priest, religious orders), lay religious movements (Catholic Action, Christian University youth, young Christian workers), popularly based pastoral interventions (among workers, in urban communities and among peasants) and ecclesiastical 'base' communities. Without this movement (one could call it Christians for liberation) we cannot understand social phenomena as important as the rise of the revolution in Central America or the emergence of a new workers movement in Brazil.
This movement (here we will examine only the Catholic version of it, but it also exists in the Protestant milieu) is vigorously opposed by the Vatican and by the Church hierarchy in Latin America-the CELAM (Latin American Bishop's Conference) led by the Colombian bishop Alfonso Lopez Trujillo. Can we say there is a class struggle inside the Church? Yes and no. Yes, to the extent that certain positions tend to correspond to the interests of the ruling classes or to those of the oppressed. No, to the extent the bishops, Jesuits or priests who head the 'Church of the Poor' are not themselves poor. Their rallying to the cause of the exploited is motivated by spiritual and moral reasons inspired by their religious culture, Christian faith and Catholic tradition. Furthermore, this moral and religious dimension is an essential factor in the motivations of thousands of Christian activists in the trade unions, the neighbourhood associations, the base communities and the revolutionary fronts. Poor people become conscious of their condition and organise to struggle as Christians, belonging to a Church
Marvism and religion: the challenge of liberation theology 97 and inspired by a faith. If we consider this faith and religious identity, deeply rooted in popular culture, as a simple 'envelope' or 'cloak' of social and economic interests we fall into a sort of reductionist approach which prevents us from understanding the richness and authenticity of the real movement.
Liberation theology is the spiritual product—the term spiritual production comes, as we know, from Marx in the German Ideology —of this social movement, but in legitimising it, in providing it with a coherent religious doctrine, it has enormously contributed to its extension and strengthening. Even if the Christian/liberation current is still a minority and the majority of the Latin American Church remains moderate or conservative (with its notoriously reactionary strongholds in Colombia and Argentina) its influence is far from negligible-particularly in Peru and Brazil, where the Episcopal Conferences, despite insistent pressure from the Vatican, have refused to condemn liberation theology. Marxism and liberation theology Why does liberation theology so disturb Vatican orthodoxy? Of all the sins that Rome attribute to the new theologians there is one which is far and away the most dangerous, the most worrying: the sin of Marxism. According to Monsignor Lopez Trujillo (President of CELAM), the representative of the conservative current, the indiscriminate use of Marxist analysis is in the process of getting out of hand and of undermining the ecclesiatical structure.
There is no doubt that Marxism is one of the main bones of contention in the polemic concerning liberation theology. How is it that Roman Catholic theologians have been attracted to such an heretical doctrine? Cardinal Ratzinger (the main Vatican theologian), whose political insight should not be underestimated, had the following to say about it: "(around the 1960s) a definite sense of a vacuum of significance in the Western World developed.' In this situation "various forms of neo-Marxism went through a transformation, taking on a moral elan and providing a promise of significance which appeared nearly irresistable to university youth.' Furthermore, 'the moral challenge of poverty and oppression could no longer be ignored at a time when Europe and North America had reached a level of unheard-of opulence. This challenge obviously required new answers that could not be found in the then existing traditions. The changed theological and philosophical situation directly stimulated the search for answers within a Christianity which was to let itself be guided by Marxist philosophers' apparently scientifically founded models of hope.'
The result has been the emergence of liberation theologians who 'have adopted a basically Marxist approach'. The seriousness of the danger presented by this new doctrine was underestimated 'because it did not fit into any previously existing scheme of heresy; its starting point fell outside
98 International Marxist Review what could be dealt with by the traditional schemas of discussion.' The Cardinal recognises it is undeniable that the new theology, articulating biblical criticism and Marxist analysis, is 'seductive, with a near flawless logic'it seems to respond 'both to scientific requirements and to contemporary moral challenges' . But this only makes it more formidable: "indeed an error is even more dangerous the bigger its kernel of truth. "
We know what came next—a few months later the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document, signed by its 'prefect' (Cardinal Ratzinger himself) who, for the first time, officially condemned liberation theology as a 'deviation' . The main criticism made by this Instruction on some aspects of 'liberation theology' against the new Latin American theologians is their use 'in an insufficiently critical way' of concepts 'borrowed from various currents of Marxist thought'. As a result of these concepts-particulariy that of the class struggle-the Church of the poor in the Christian tradition becomes in liberation theology 'a class-based Church, now conscious of the needs of the revolutionary struggle as a stage towards liberation and celebrating this liberation in its liturgy which necessarily leads to calling into question the Church's sacramental and hierarchical structure..
These formulations are obviously polemical, but it is undeniable that liberation theologians have drawn analyses, concepts and points of view from the Marxist theoretical arsenal which play an important role in their understanding of social reality in Latin America. Liberation theology has profoundly shaken up the political/cultural field merely by referring positively to certain aspects of Marxism-independently of the content of the reference. By this it breaks a taboo and encourages a great number of Christians to take a fresh look, not just at the theory but also at the practice of Marxists. Such an approach could be critical, but it was quite distinct from the traditional anathema against 'atheistic Marxism, diabolical enemy of Christian civilisation'-that we can find on the other hand mentioned in the speeches of mistarcal coators, (eila, s Pial and political that. have permitted this opening of Catholic culture to Marxist ideas goes beyond the scope of this article. We can just note however the role of two series of convergent events: the new European theology and the Second Vatican Council, which opened the Church up to new currents of modern thought, and on the other side, the break up of Stalinist monolithism following the CPSU's Twentieth Congress and the Sino-Soviet split. In Latin America you also had the role of the Cuban revolution and the end of the communist parties' hegemony: Marxism ceased to be seen as a closed and rigid system, submitted to the ideological authority of Moscow and became once again a thought in movement, open to various interpretations and therefore accessible to a new Christian interpretation. '4
It is difficult to present an overall view of liberation theology's attitude and positions on Marxism, because, on the one hand, there is a very wide
Marxism and religion: the challenge of liberation theology 99 range of attitudes—going from the prudent use of some elements up to the integral synthesis-and on the other hand, a certain change has taken place between the positions expressed in the more radical period of 1968 to 1980 and today's more reserved stance (following Rome's criticisms). But, on the basis of the writings of the most representative liberation theologians (like Gutierrez and Boff) and of certain episcopal documents, one can identify some essential points of reference.
Certain Latin American theologians (influenced by Althusser) refer to Marxism simply as one (or the) social science, to be used in a strictly instrumental way to improve our knowledge of Latin American reality. This is at one and the same time too wide and too narrow a definition. Too wide because Marxism is not the only social science ... Too narrow because Marxism is not only a science but is founded on a practical chosen option. It aims not just to know the world but to change it.
In reality, the interest—many writers speak of the 'fascination'—of liberation theologians for Marxism is greater and more profound than the heuristic borrowing of a few analytical concepts.
It also involves values (of the community), ethical/political choices (solidarity with poor people) and future utopias (a society without classes or oppression). Gustavo Gutierrez thinks Marxism does not only provide a scientific analysis but also a utopian aspiration of social change. He criticises the scientistic vision of Althusser, which 'prevents us seeing the profound unity of Marx's work and consequently of easily understanding its capacity to inspire a radical and permanent revolutionary praxis. '15
Which sort of Marxism inspires the liberation theologians? Certainly not that of the Soviet diamat textbooks nor that of the Latin American communist parties. Rather they are attracted to 'Western Marxism'-occasionally dubbed 'neo-Marxism' in their documents. In Liberation TheologyPerspectives, Gustavo Gutierrez's great inaugural work (1971), the most quoted Marxist writer is Ernst Bloch. There are also references to Althusser, Marcuse, Lukacs, Gramsci, Henri Lefebvre, Lucien Goldmann and ... Ernest Mandel (counterposed to Althussser for his better understanding of Marx's concept of alienation).
But these European references are less important than the Latin American ones: Mariategui, as a source of original Marxism, adapted to the reality of the continent, the Cuban revolution, as an event galvanizing the history of Latin America, and finally the theory of dependence: the criticism of dependent capitalism put forward by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, André Gunder Frank, Theotonio dos Santos, Anibal Quijano (all mentioned several times in Gutierrez's book). It goes without saying that Gutierrez and his co-thinkers prioritize certain Marxist themes (humanism, alienation, praxis, utopia) and reject others ('materialist ideology', atheism).
100 International Marxist Review The starting point is poverty The starting point for this discovery of Marxism is an unavoidable social fact, a brutal mass reality in Latin America: poverty. Obviously poverty has existed for centuries on the continent, but with capitalist development in the town and country side, the rural exodus, unemployment, the explosive growth of the shantytowns on the periphery of the urban centres, a new, more dramatic and extensive poverty has emerged. In many respects it is worse than in the past. For the liberation theologians Marxism appears to be the most systematic, coherent and global explanation of the causes of this poverty and as the only sufficiently radical proposition for abolishing it.
Concern for the poor is millenarian tradition within the Church going back to the evangelical sources of Christianity. Latin American theologians place themselves within the continuity of this tradition, which provides them with both reference and inspiration. But on a key point they sharply break with the past: for them poor people are no longer essentially objects of chariry, but subjects of their own liberation. Paternalist aid or assistance is replaced by solidarity with the poor's struggle for self-emancipation. Here is where the link is made with a fundamental Marxist political principle-the emancipation of working people will be the work of the workers themselves. This change is perhaps the liberation theologians' most important new political contribution. It also has the greatest consequences in relation to the Church's social doctrine.
The Vatican accuses Gutierrez and his allies of having replaced the poor of the Christian tradition with the Marxist proletariat. This criticism is not exactly valid. For the Latin American theologians the poor is a concept having moral, biblical and religious connotations. God her/himself is defined by them as the 'God of the Poor' and Christ is reincarnated in today's crucified poor. It is also a socially broader concept than that of the working class: it includes, according to Gutierrez, both the exploited classes and the despised races and marginalized cultures (in his most recent writings he adds women who are doubly exploited).
Some Marxists will no doubt criticise this replacement of the 'materialist' concept of the proletariat by such a vague, emotional and imprecise category. In reality, this term corresponds to the Latin American situation, where one finds, both in the towns and in the countryside an enormous mass of poor people-unemployed, semi-employed, seasonal workers, street vendors, marginal people, prostitutes etc-who are excluded from the 'formal' productive system. The Christian/Marxist trade union activists of El Salvador have invented a term which covers all these components of the oppressed and exploited population: the 'pooriat' (pobresiado)
The priority option in favour of the poor, adopted by the Puebla Conference of Latin American bishops (1979) was in practice a compromise formula, interpreted in a traditional (social assistance) sense by the Church's more moderate or conservative currents, and read more radically by the
Marxism and religion: the challenge of liberation theology 101 liberation theologians and the more advanced clerical currents—as a commitment to the organisation and struggle of poor people for their own liberation. In other words, the Marxist class struggle, not only as an 'instrument of analysis' but as a guide for action, became a essential feature of the new Church of the Poor. As Gustavo Gutierrez states:
to deny the reality of the class struggle means in practice taking a position in favour of the dominant social sectors. Neutrality on this question is impossible.
What is needed is:
to eliminate the appropriation by some of the surplus value produced by the work of the great majority, and not lyrical appeals in favour of social harmony. We need to build a socialist society which is more just, more free and more humane and not a society of false conciliation and apparent equality. This leads to the following practical conclusion:
Building a just society today means necessarily being consciously and actively involved in the class struggle taking place in front of us. 16
How can this be squared with the Christian obligation of universal love? Gutierrez's answer is distinguished by its great political rigour and moral generosity: we do not hate our oppressors, we want to liberate them too by freeing them from their own alienation, their ambition, their egoism, in a word from their inhuman condition. But to do that we have to resolutely choose the side of the oppressed and concretely and effectively fight the oppressor class . .. Liberation Christianity and revolution Choosing the side of the poor is not for liberation Christianity a mere literay phrase: it is expressed in practice by the commitment of hundreds of thousands of Christians-members of base communities, lay people involved in pastoral work, priests and members of religious orders. It is seen in the setting up of neighbourhood committees in the shantytowns, the formation of class struggle opposition currents in the trade unions, the organisation of landless peasant movements and the defence of political prisoners against torture. It inspires their active participation in workers' and popular struggles throughout the continent, the creation in Brazil of the Workers Party, the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the FMLN's revolutionary combat in El Salvador.
If this is seen, as by some shortsighted Marxists, just as a 'trick' by the Church, a 'populist manoeuvre' to keep control over the masses or a skilful tatic to hold off communism, then the essential reality is ignored and nothing is understood either of the subjective motivations or the objective significance of the phenomenon. It is not a "trick' but a deepgoing spiritual turn, an authentic moral and political conversion to the cause of the poor which led the priests Domingo Lain (killed in 1974) and Gasper Garcia Laviana (killed in 1978)—both of Spanish origin--to join the guerrilla fighters in Colombia and Nicaragua. It inspired the Brazilian Jesuit, Joao Bosco Penide
102 International Marxist Review Burnier (killed in 1976) and the Salvadoran Jesuit, Rutilio Grande (killed in 1977) to work in solidarity with the peasants and help their organization. Such a conversion led Monsignor Oscar Romero (killed in 1980), despite having already received death-threats from the army, to call on soldiers to refuse to obey their superior officers when told to fire on the people. '
To fight effectively against poverty we must understand its causes. This is where liberation theology converges again with Marxism. the great majority's poverty and the obscene wealth of the privileged few are underpinned by the same economic foundation-the capitalist system. More precisely in Latin America we are talking about dependent capitalism subordinate to the multinational monopolies of the big imperialist centres.
The moral criticism of capitalism's injustices and hostility to its cold and impersonal nature is an old tradition of the Church. Max Weber, the sociologist of religions, already has drawn our attention to the fundamental opposition between Catholicism's ethical rationalism and capitalism's economic rationalism. Of course this did not prevent the Church from becoming reconciled with bourgeois order from the 19th century on, but the criticism of "liberal capitalism' remains a component of Catholic culture.
In the 1960s this tradition started to be articulated with the Marxist analysis of capitalism (which also includes a moral condemnation of injustice) specifically in the form of dependence theory. The great merit of dependency theorists (notably André Gunder Frank and Anibal Quijano) was to break with the 'developmentalist' illusions that dominated Latin American Marxism in the 1950s (particularly the communist parties' ideology), by showing that the cause of misery, of underdevelopment, of growing inequality and military dictatorships was not 'feudalism' or insufficient modernization, but the very structure of dependent capitalism. Consequently they argued that some form of socialist transformation could wrest Latin American nations from dependency and poverty. Certain aspects of this analysis were to be integrated not only by the liberation theologians but also by bishops and episcopal conferences, particularly in Brazil.
In May 1980 a group of experts from the US Republican Party prepared a document which was to become a basic political 'primer' for the party's presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan-the Santa Fé Document. In the second part of the document, entitled 'Internal Subversion' ', proposal No.3 states:
United States' foreign policy must begin to confront (and not only react a posteriori to)
liberation theology. In Latin America the Church's role is vital for the concept of political liberty. Unfortunately Marxist-Leninist forces have used the Church as a political weapon against private property and the capitalist system of production, infiltrating the religious community with ideas that are more communist than Christian.
On the other hand, if by 'communist ideas' the Republican Party experts mean those of the communist parties than their analysis completely misses what is basically happening. The Church of the Poor, inspired in the first place by religious and ethical considerations, displays a much more radical,
Marxism and religion: the challenge of liberation theology 103 intransigent and categorical anti-capitalism—since it includes the dimension of moral revulsion-than the continent's communist parties, who still believe in the progressive virtues of the industrial bourgeoisie and the historical 'anti-feudal' role of industrial development (capitalist). Just one example shows this paradox. The Brazilian Communist Party explained in its Sixth Congress (1967) resolutions that:
the socialisation of the means of production does not correspond to the present level of the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production. In other words, industrial capitalism must at first develop the economy and modernize the country. However in 1973 the bishops and religious superiors from the Centre-West region of Brazil published a document (The Cry of the Churches) with the following conclusion:
We must overcome capitalism: it is the greatest evil, an accumulated sin, the rotten roots, the tree which produces all the fruits we know so well-poverty, hunger, illness and death
•.. In order to do this it is necessary to go beyond the private property of the means of production (factories, land, commerce and banks) ..
Another episcopal document is even more explicit. The Declaration of the Bishops from the North East of Brazil (1973) states:
the injustice produced by this society is the fruit of capitalist relations of production which necessarily create a class society characterised by discrimination and injustice (...) The oppressed class had no other option for its liberation than to follow the long and difficult road (the journey has already begun) leading to the social ownership of the means of protransformation of present society into a new society in which it becomes possible to create the objective conditions allowing the oppressed to recover the humanity they have been stripped of... The Evangelist calls all Christians and all men of good will to join this prophetic current. This document was signed by 13 bishops (including Helder Camara), and by the provincial superiors of the Franciscans, Jesuits, Redemptionists and by the Abbot of St. Benoit monastery in Bahia... What model of socialism? As we can see with these extracts-and by a lot more that have come out of the Christian/liberation current—solidarity with the poor leads to a condemnation of capitalism and then to a desire for socialism. What sort of socialism? There is a more or less generalized and explicit criticism of 'presently existing' models of socialism among revolutionary Christians and liberation theologians. As for Gutierrez, he insists that the oppressed people of Latin America must leave the previously adopted paths to socialism and creatively seek its own road to socialism. His approach is inspired by Mariategui's writings for whom socialism in Latin America cannot be a 'pure imitation' or 'copy' of other experiences but a 'heroic creation': 'we must give birth, through our own reality, our own language, to an indoAmerican socialism. 2° It goes without saying that, for the liberation theologians, socialism, or any form of human emancipation is only a prepara-
104 International Marxist Review tion or anticipation of total salvation, of the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth.
We should not deduce from all this that the liberation theologians purely and simply support Marxism. As Leonardo and Clodovis Boff emphasise in their answer to Cardinal Ratzinger, Marxism is used as a mediation for the propagation of the taith:
... it has helped clarify and enrich certain major theological notions: people, poor, history and even praxis and politics. That does not mean to say that we have reduced the theological content of these notions to the limits of the Marxist form. On the contrary, we have used the valid theoreticai content (which conforms to the truth) of Marxist notions within the theological horizon. 21 Critique of the Church Among those aspects of Marxism they reject are, as one might expect, materialist philosophy, atheist ideology and the characterisation of religion as the 'opium of the people' • However, they do not reject Marxist criticism of the Church and 'presently existing' religious practices. As Gustavo Gutierrez has said, the Latin American Church has contributed to giving a sacred character to established order:
The protection it receives from the social class that benefits from and defends capitalist society that dominates Latin America, has made the institutionalized Church a part of the system, and the Christian message a component of the ruling ideology. 22
This severe judgement is shared by a sector of the Latin American bishops. For example, the Peruvian bishops in a declaration adopted by their Thirtysixth Episcopal Assembly (1969), stated:
Above all we Christians should recognise that through lack of faith we have contributed in our words and actions, by our silence and omissions, to the present situation of injustice. One of the most interesting documents on this question is a resolution adopted by the CELAM Department of Education towards the end of the 1960s:
The Christian religion has been used and is still used as an ideology justifying the domination of the powerful. Christianity in Latin America has been a functional religion for the system. Its rites, its churches and its work have contributed to channelling popular dissatisfaction towards the beyond, totally disconnected to the present world. Thus Christianity has held back popular protest against an injust and oppressive system. 23
Of course this criticism is made in the name of an authentic evangelical Christianity, in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, and has nothing in common with a materialist questioning of religion as such.
Undoubtedly among all the liberation theologians Leonardo Boff has formulated the most systematic and radical criticism of the authoritarian structures of the Catholic Church, from Constantine to today. In his opinion these structures reflect a Roman and feudal model of authority: pyramid hierarchy, making obedience sacred, refusal of any internal criticism, papal personality cult. Boff's 'irreverence' goes so far as to compare (quoting from the writings of a left-wing Brazilian Christian, Marcio Moreira Alves) the institutional and bureaucratic structure of the Church with that of the
Marxism and religion: the challenge of liberation theology 105 Communist Party of the USSR:
The parallels in their structures and practices reveal the logic of any centralising power.
This type of analysis certainly did not please the Vatican, because following the publication of his book Boff was condemned by the Roman ecclesiastical authorities to a year of silence... Having said this, we should note that Boff does not reject the Church as such. He demands its protound transformation, its re-foundation from the periphery to the centre, by the poor, by those who live in 'basements of humanity. 24 Christians in the revolutionary movement As these extracts from the theologians' writings and the bishops' conferences show, a significant but minority sector of the Latin American Church has integrated certain basic Marxist ideas into its new understanding of Christianity. Some Christian trade unionists, Christians who are member of leftwing organizations or certain more radicalized movements like Christians for Socialism have a more direct approach of accepting a synthesis or fusion between Christianity and Marxism. Here we are talking about a Christian current inside the revolutionary movement. Indeed in many countries it is one of the main components of the revolutionary movement. More or less direct links exist between this current and liberation theology but it would be a mistake to confuse them. One of the best known representatives of this radical consciousness is the Brazilian Dominican priest, Frei Betto, a leader of the base communities movement who has become famous through his dialogue on religion with Fidel Castro.
While liberation theologians have learnt a lot from Marxism do Marxists have anything to learn from them? Certain interesting questions can be posed, both from the theoretical and practical point of view. For example: 1) Should one still consider—as most 'Textbooks of Marxism-Leninism' do—the opposition between 'materialism' and 'idealism' as the fundamental question of philosophy? Is it still possible to contend, as does the Concise Philosophical Dictionary that dialectical materialism was superior to metaphysical materialism which was undeveloped, dead, crude and "idiotic'?25 Isn't it true that the revolutionary idealism of the liberation theologians is superior to the idiotic materialism of the bourgeois economists and even of certain Stalinist 'Marxists'? Particularly since this theological idealism has been shown to be perfectly compatible with a historical materialist approach to social reality... 2) Why can't liberation theology help us combat the reductionist, economist and vulgar materialist tendencies that exist within the Marxist tradition? We have to take into consideration the role of moral and 'spiritual' motivations if we want to understand why a whole layer of middle class intellectuals and individuals (the radicalised clergy) broke with their class and now support the cause of the oppressed. In the same way, to explain why the
Christian masses shrug off their apathy and rise up against their oppressors we have to examine not just their objective social condition, but also their subjectivity, culture, beliefs, their new way of living their religion. Linking up again with the intuitions of Latin American Marxists like Jose Carlos
Mariategui, the liberation theologians also help us to re-evaluate certain pre-capitalist communal traditions, kept alive in popular tradition
(particularly among the peasants) and to distrust the blinkered culture of productive forces' as such. Revolutionary Christians have been more aware of the social consequences of the 'development of underdevelopment' under the multinationals' domination that many Marxists enmeshed in the chains
3) In revolt against the Church's authoritarianism, the Christians for liberation are wary of political authoritarianism in the trade unions and political parties. Their 'basism' or 'rank and filism' occasionally takes on naive and excessive forms but is an understandable reaction against the antidemocratic, corrupt or manipulative practices of the populist or Stalinist apparatuses. Correctly formulated isn't this anti-authoritarian sensibility and this aspiration to democracy at the base a vital contribution to the selforganization of the oppressed and to an anti-bureaucratic recomposition of
4) Liberation theologians stimulate us to reflect on the moral dimension of revolutionary commitment, of the struggle against social injustice, and the building of a new society. The Jesuits were deemed in the eyes of their enemies to support the amoral maxim 'the end justifies any means' sky in Their Morals and Ours defends them from this accusation and notes that such a doctrine, taken in the strict sense of the term would be 'internally contradictory and psychologically absurd. 26 In any case the new revolutionary Jesuits, like Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal, Sandinista government members, have little in common with this type of
Machiavellism: their political commitment is inseparable from certain ethical values. It is to a large extent due to the role of the Sandinista Christians that the Nicaraguan revolution is the first authentic social revolution, since
1789, to have abolished the death penalty. An example to be followed!
5) Finally liberation theology forces Marxists to re-examine their traditional thinking about religion: if this has played and continues to play in the tocsin of the people, as a call galvanising the oppressed from their lassitude, their passivity, fatalism and make them conscious of their rights,
What then are the criticisms we can raise with the liberation theologians?
106 International Marxist Review
'economic progress of a purely economistic 'developmentist' logic.
the workers movement?
many places the role of the 'opium of the people' their strength and their future?
With Christians or not at all!
', capitalist modernisation and the 'development of the
. Trot-
', can it not also act as
Marxism and religion: the challenge of liberation theology 107
The most urgent discussions to have with the Christians for liberation are not debates on materialism, religious allenation or on the history of the
Church (and even less on the existence of God), but on the eminently practical and burning questions of the day: for example, divorce, abortion, contraception, the right of woman to control their bodies. In fact it is a debate which concerns the whole of the Latin American workers movement and it is far from having a coherent line in this area. It is difficult to foresee what will be the outcome of the conflict between the Vatican and liberation theology, between the conservative Church and the Church of the Poor.
In any event we can be reasonably sure about one thing-the revolution in Latin America will be made with the Christians or it will not take place.
1) Louis S. Feuer ed., K. Marx, Toward the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1844.
reproduced in Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (London:
2) K Marx, German Ideology 1846 London: Lawrence and Wishart 1974.
3) F.Engels, 'Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of Classical German Philosophy', in Feuer
"The Peasant War in Germany', 1850, in Feuer op cit, pp. 452-475.
6) Engels, Anti-Duhring, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1969), pp. 121-2, and 407.
7) Engels, 'Contribution to a history of Primitive Christianity', Marx and Engels, 'On
9) K.Kautsky, Vorlaufer des neueren sozialismus, Erster Band, 'Kommunistische bewegungen
10) E.Bloch, Le Principe Esperance, (Paris: Gallimard 1976) and L'atheisme dans le chris-
11) A. Lopez Trujillo, Theologies de la liberation, (Paris: Cert 1985), p. 113.
12) Cardinal Ratzinger, 'Les consequences fondamentales d'une option marxiste', Theologies,
13) " Instruction on some aspects of 'liberation theology ', 1984. Theologies op cit pp 156.
171-174. This document was followed in 1985 by a more concilitary and 'positive.
marxisme(s)' in 'Pourquoi la theologie de la liberation?, Cahiers de l'actualité réligieuse et sociale, 1985, supplement to No. 307. For a historical study of this process also see the interesting essay by Enrique Dussel, 'Encuentros de cristianos y marxistas en America
15) Gustavo Gutierrez, Theologie de la liberation-Perspectives, (Brussels: Lumen Vitae,
1974, p.244.) However in 1984, following criticism from the Vatican, Gutierrez seemed to retreat to less exposed position, limiting the convergence with Marxism to a link up between theology and social sciences. See G. Gutierrez, "Theology et Sciences Sociales',
17) For an impressive list of Christians victimised as a result of their commitment to the struggle, see La Sangre por el Pueblo. Nuevos martires de America Latina published
Collins/Fontana, 1969), p.304 op cit, p.281
4) Engels, 'On Materialism', in Feuer op cit, p99.
5) Engels,
Religion' (London: Lawrence and Wishart).
8) Engels, 'The Peasant War in Germany', op cit, p.464 tianisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1978).
op cit, pp 122-130.
'Instruction on Christian liberty and liberation'
Latina'
1984, in Theologies op.cit, pp 189-193.
16) G.Gutierrez, Theologie de la liberation op cit, pp 276-7.
NOTES im Mittelalter' (Stuttgart: Dietz Verlag, 1913), pp 170, 198.
, Cristianismo y Sociedad, No.74, 1982.
by the Jesuits of the Instituto Historico Centroamericano do Managua, (IHCA) Managua,
Documentos do Partido Comunista Brasileiro, (Lisboa: Ed Avante, 1976), p 71. Los
Obispos Latinoamericanos entre Medellin Y Puebla, (San Salvador: Universidad Centro-
19) 'I have heard the cries of my people' (Exodus 3.7) Document adopted by the bishops and religious superiors of North East Brazil, Brussels, Entraide et Fraternite, 1973,
G.Gutierrez, Théologie, op cit. p. 102,320. The quote from Mariategui is taken from
22) Ouoted by Gutierrez, op cit, p. 117-118. In a note, Gutierrez mentions several other Latin
23) Jeventud y cristianismo en America Latina, quoted by G.Gutierrez, op cit, p.266.
24) Leonardo Boff, Igreja, Carisma e Poder, Petropolis, Vozes, 1982, Pp. 70-72,91-93.
(Published as Church. Charisma and Power, (London: SCM Press, 1985))
25) ludin and Rosenthal, Concise Philosophical Dictionary, Moscow, 1955, pp. 256,360.
26) L. Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours, (London: New Park Publications, 1986), p. 10.
108 International Marxist Review'
1983.
americana, 1978), p.71.
Ideologia y politica (Lima: p.249)
21) Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, 'The cry of poverty' de la Liberation, p. 139.
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, 1984 article included in Theologies American Episcopal documents which take a similar line.
SALAH JABER