Opinion Sur
That is the title of one of most recent books written by Michael Löwy. Born in Brazil, he lived and taught at the Sorbonne for many years, keeping tight bonds with Brazil and its libertarian movements. He is Hebrew, with depth knowledge of the Bible. Without exaggeration I can safely say that he became one of the most insightful experts on Latin American liberation theology. He always united the worlds of rigorous research with the transforming commitment, the Judean-Christian tradition option for the poor with their concrete liberation.
His vast work deserves to be studied in-depth, as its contributions are of surprising relevance for the historic moment we live on, with multiple crises and under the grievous domination of capital culture.
Two are the main characteristics of his work: rescue and recreation of libertarian tradition from the Judean-Christian tradition for current contexts. In this rescue, Jewish legacy stands up, with names that go from Marx, Heine and Freud to Bloch, Goldman, and Benjamin. His studies about romanticism, not as literary school, but as world vision, critic of the bourgeois society in the name of another perception of nature (not as pure means of production, but as living reality) are classic and of permanent reference.
He devoted a whole book to Christianity of liberation in Latin America, first with the title War of Gods (Voces, 2000), updated into What is Christianity of liberation (Fundación Perseo Abramo, São Paulo 2016), and the affinities and influences of the critical tradition. He stressed out the value of the Peruvian socialist spiritualist Jose Carlos Mariategui.
The work What is the Christianity of liberation has the merit of showing that the ideals of the revolution and liberation are not the monopoly of the Marxist tradition. They can be and are also ideals of a large part of Christianity who takes seriously the legacy of historic Jesus, the Mediterranean carpenter and peasant and the option for the poor and against poverty, as Pope Francis has done.
What happened and is still happening in the depth of Latin American society and society-world is a true war of gods. The market god and the capital god want to create a final sense for life and populations starving for goods, continuously frustrating them against the living god of the Judean-Christian tradition that unveils them as fake gods and, as such, as idols. The living god takes sides by the forgotten classes and is materialized in a political process of liberation. In his book Marxism and Theology of Liberation (Cortez Editora, 1991) he clearly says: “the interest on the poor is a millenary tradition of the church dating back to the evangelical sources of Christianity. Latin American theologists placed themselves in continuity with such inspiration. For them, the poor are no longer essentially the object of charity but rather subjects of their own liberation. Here is where the union with the main Marxist principle operates: the self-emancipation of workers will be the work of the own workers … this change is the richest consequence brought by theologists of liberation regarding the social doctrine of the church.” (page 96). Lately, he has dealt with ecology, not as an issue among others, but rather as a strategic question for human emancipation that includes nature and the entire planet Earth. He is one of the world’s founders of eco-socialism. He presents it as a radical ethics, in the sense of descending to the roots of the perversity that punishes everybody. He proposes a change in paradigm, a revolutionary transformation whose center is life in its multiple forms.
With that we enter the second characteristic of the intellectual work of Michael Löwy: his ability for imaginary recreation. His approach, despite being based on critical text with their due contexts, is never positivist. He is hermeneutic. He is aware that reading is always re-reading and that understanding always implies interpreting. His objective is to supply the reader with categories, visions, concepts and dreams that can let him/her better understand the present and base a political-transforming commitment that, for him, is in line with socialist tradition, radically democratic and ecological.
For that reason, each book is inspiring and reveals us how the radical questions, that the classics from emancipating and revolutionary thinking presented, maintain permanent relevance. And he shows how they can be enlightening for obscure times and of great creative indigence, as the present.
In all of his texts, an esprit de finesse is perceived, an unbreakable faith in the dignity of the oppressed, in the future of freedom and the political-redemptive function of the libertarian tradition of modernity and the Judean-Christian heritage.
That is why he is a faithful companion of so many that are walking in the social movements such as the Sin Tierra, progressive parties, and militants of the Churches that, in the name of their biblical faith, opted for the liberation of the dispossessed masses. With all of them, he has an elective affinity that creates a true community of destiny. That is why we are thankful for Michael Löwy, for having offered his present book: What is Christianity of liberation.
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