I Franz J. Hinkelammert Foreword by Carne/ West FRANZ J. HINKELAMMERT The Ideological Weapons of Death A Theological Critique of Capitalism Translated from the Spanish by Phillip Berryman DRBIS.BO • KS Maryknoll, NewYork 10545 Digitalizado por Biblioteca "P. Florentino Idoate, S.J." Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll) recruits and trains people for overseas missionary service. Through Orbis Books Maryknoll aims to foster the international dialogue that is essential to mission. The books published, however, reflect the opinions of their authors and are not meant to represent the official position of the society. Except where otherwise noted, Bible quotations are from the New American Bible; JB Jerusalem Bible; Bib. Lat. = Biblia Latinoamericana. First published as Las armas ideológicas de la muerte, by the Departmento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, San José, Costa Rica; first edition 1977; second edition, revised and enlarged, 1981 English translation copyright© 1986 by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 10545 Ali rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Manuscript Editor: William E. Jerman Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hinkelammert, Franz J. (Franz Josel), 1931- The ideological weapons of death. Translation of: Las armas ideológicas de la muerte. Bibliography: p. Includes index. l. Sociology, Christian. 2. Capitalism-Religious aspects-Christianity. 3. Liberation theology. l. Tille. BT738.H5413 1985 261.8'5 86-2557 ISBN 0-88344-260-4 (pbk.) Digitalizado por Biblioteca "P. Florentino Idoate, S.J." Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas Contents Foreword by Cornel West V Preface viii Introduction by Pablo Richard and Raul Vidales xi Overall Structure of the Work xn A Question Raised by History xiv Fetishism xv The Ethics of Capitalism xx The Realm of Freedom xx PARTONE THE VISIBILITY OF THE INVISIBLE AND THE INVISIBILITY OF THE VISIBLE: MARX 'S ANAL YSIS OF FETISHISM 1 Chapter 1 From Commodities to Money to Capitalism 5 The Enchanted World of Commodities-Commodity Fetishism 5 Money, the Beast, and Saint John: The Sign on the Forehead- Money Fetishism 16 The Sorcery of Creation from Nothing: Value as a Subject- Capital Fetishism 27 Chapter 2 The Thralldom of Capital and the Realm of Freedom 43 The Ethics of Capital Accumulation 43 The Realm of Freedom 52 Chapter 3 The Harsh Face of Destiny: Fetishism in Other Traditions of Social Science 62 The Old Gods Ascend from Their Graves: Max Weber's New Polytheism 62 Milton Friedman's Happy Fetishism 74 Chapter4 The Economic Creed of the Trilateral Commission 98 Interdependence and the International Division of Labor 99 The New Democracy 116 ¡¡¡ Digitalizado por Biblioteca "P. Florentino Idoate, S.J." Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas iv Contents PARTTWO THE REALM OF LIFE AND THE REALM OF DEATH: LIFE AND DEATH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 125 Chapter 5 Domination and Love of Neighbor 127 The Resurrection of the Body 127 Pauline Bodiliness 129 Death, Law, Sin, Faith 133 The King Commands Because He Commands: Authority and Class Structure 144 PARTTHREE THE BODILY CONNECTION BETWEEN HUMAN BEINGS: LIFE AND DEATH IN MODERN CATHOLIC THOUGHT 153 Chapter6 Private Property and Modero Catholic Social Teaching 157 The Right of the Poor and the Right to the Use of the Goods of the Earth 157 Property Hypostasized in the Natural Right to Prívate Property: The Right to Life in Catholic Social Teaching 159 The Division of Labor and the Property System 171 Law, Morality, and the Human Subject 178 Chapter7 The Good News of Crucifixion and Death: Antiutopia in the Christian Understanding of Society 183 Three Antiutopian lnversions 184 The Human Subject Crucified 190 Domination and Crucifixion 197 Crucifixion of the Crucifiers 204 Denunciation of the Antichrist: Lucifer Returns 217 Chapter 8 Theology Aimed at Life: Liberation Theology 226 Utopia and the Biblical God 226 Palpable Reality and Symbolic Reality: Reality Turned Upside-down 238 How Christianity Ennobles Real Life: Absolutized Values versus Historical Materialism 268 Notes 275 Works Quoted 277 Indexes 279 Index of Topics 279 Index of Names 281 Digitalizado por Biblioteca "P. Florentino Idoate, S.J." Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas Foreword Liberation theology at its best is a worldly theology-a theology that not only opens our eyes to the social misery of the world but also teaches us to understand it better and to transform it. Academic theology in the First World, true to its priestly role, remains preoccupied with doctrinal precision and epistemological pretension. lt either refuses to get its hands dirty with the ugly and messy affairs of contemporary politics or pontificates at a comfortable distance about the shortcomings of theoretical formulations and practica! proposals of liberation theologians. Yet for those Christians deeply enmeshed in and united with poor peoples' struggles, theology is first and foremost concerned with urgent issues of life and death, especially the circumstances that dictate who lives and who dies. Franz Hinkelammert's The Ideological Weapons of Death marks a new point of departure for liberation theology. First, it is the first product of a unique institutional setting-the renowned Departmento Ecuménico de Inves­ tigaciones (DEI) in San José, Costa Rica-that is intentionally interdiscipli­ nary and explicitly political. Shunning the narrow confines of the intellectual division of labor in academic institutions, DEI rejects the compartmentalized disciplines of our bureaucratized seminaries and divinity schools. lnstead DEI promotes and encourages theological reflection that traverses the fields of political economy, biblical studies, social theory, church history, and social ethics. In this way, DEI reveals the intellectual impoverishment of academic theologies that enact ostrichlike exercises in highly specialized sand-with little view to the pressing problems confronting ordinary people in our present period of crisis. Second, Hinkelammert's book is significant in that it tries to ground libera­ tion theology itself in a more detailed social-analytical viewpoint and a more developed biblical perspective. For too long liberation theologians have simply invoked Marxist theory without a serious examination of Marx's own most fecund analysis of capitalist society, namely, his analysis of fetishism. As Georg Lukács noted in his influential book History and Class Consciousness (1923), the Marxist analysis of fetishism in Capital brings to light the hidden and concealed effects of commodity relations in the everyday lives of people in capitalist societies. These effects result from the power-laden character and class-ridden structure of capitalist societies that make relations between people appear as relations between things. This deceptive appearance presents capital­ ist realities as natural and eternal. A Marxist analysis of this veil of appearance V Digitalizado por Biblioteca "P. Florentino Idoate, S.J." Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas VI Foreword discloses these realities to be transient historical products and results of provi­ sional social struggles. Hinkelammert's book takes as its point of analytical departure the three central stages of Marx's analysis of fetishism: commodity fetishism, money fetishism, and capital fetishism. The magical power people ascribe to commo­ dities produced, money acquired, and capital expanded has idolatrous status in capitalist societies, a status not only rarely questioned, but, more importantly, hardly analyzed and understood by Christians. Too often Christians merely condemn seductive materialism or pervasive hedonism with little or no grasp of the complex relations of the conditions under which commodities are pro­ duced, the ways in which money is acquired, and the means by which capital is expanded. Positing these complex relations as objects of theological reflection is unheard of in contemporary First World theology. Yet, if theologians are to come to terms with life-and-death issues of our time, there is no escape from reflecting upon and gaining an understanding of these complex relations. Such a monumental step requires a grounding in the history of economic thought and contemporary social theory. In this regard, working knowledge of the classical economic theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the neo­ classical economic formulations of Alfred Marshall and Stanley Jevons, the intricate debates between followers of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim in social theory and the present-day viewpoints of Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, and Ernst Mandel become requisite for serious theological engagement with the burning life-and-death issues of our day. Needless to say, the immediate intellectual risk is a debilitating dilettantism that obfuscates rather than illuminates. Yet to refuse the risk is to settle for an arid academicism that values professional status and career ambitions at the expense of trying to lay bare the richness of the Christian gospel for our time. Therefore Hinkelam­ mert's text may seem strange to First World Christians-with his analyses of the links between Milton Friedman's thought and the economic policies of the Chilean dictator Pinochet, or his critique of the Trilateral Commission's rec­ ommendations for the Third World. In fact, many First World academic theologians may balk at such exercises that seem to fall outside tamer theologi­ cal investigations. Yet it should be apparent after reading