On Novak's Will It Liberate?
Dorrien, Gary
WILL IT LIBERATE? QUESTIONS ABOUT LIBERATION THEOLOGY, by Michael Novak. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1986. 311 pp. $14.95. Neoconservative Michael Novak, once a man who decried U.S. military...
...He observes that virtually all liberation theologies are attached to some version of economic dependency theory, but the latter, he insists, is a mistaken and, by now, discredited account of socioeconomic development...
...But as he surely realizes, market socialist strategies (such as the Meidner Plan in Sweden) offer worker and community-controlled forms of ownership that fulfill the traditional goal of socialism: to establish democratic control over the economy, especially the process of investment, in the context of political freedom...
...It is true, as Novak repeatedly insists, that dependency theory does not present a completely sufficient explanation of underdevelopment...
...Yet the discussion of democratic socialism is the strangest feature of Novak's book...
...For the most part, as in the works of Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Gutierrez, Jon Sobrino, and Jose Comblin, liberation theology is rooted in the Latin American struggles for self-determination and freedom...
...Dependency theorists cite unfavorable trade agreements, the promotion of cash crops for export, exploitative policies of transnational corporations, aid to corrupt and repressive governments, and large external debts contracted with these governments as examples of the dependent relationship...
...His hold on that mantle, however, is only as firm as the weakness of the democratic socialist movement...
...The lifeblood of liberation theology is not any given theory or collection of books...
...It is equally true, as Novak frequently insists, that Latin American political cultures are largely preliberal and therefore precapitalist...
...By selling multimillion dollar technologies to the (often corrupt) governing elites of poor countries, First World financial and business corporations have saddled these countries with unpayable debts and stripped them of their capacity to invest in their own future...
...The most democratic system within human reach is the market socialist model that Novak ridicules...
...Some of the poorest countries in the world have had little or no contact with the outside world...
...Other studies have confirmed the same pattern...
...By increasingly assuming control over Latin American finance capital, natural resources, producnn• SPRING • 1988 • 247 Books tion, and marketing, transnational firms have skewed the investment priorities of undeveloped nations and undermined their prospects for economic self-determination...
...Novak ignores the role of military sales and aid in promoting economic dependency and therefore avoids the most pressing policy questions of the moment, but he does take direct aim at critics of the transnational corporations, pointing to the recent economic successes of the East Asian rim nations and implying that Latin American nations could experience the same economic growth if they developed the East Asian work ethic and promoted transnational investment as aggressively as the South Koreans and Taiwanese...
...military credits to purchase F5-E jet fighters...
...Novak cites examples of these arguments, offers an intelligent critique of state collectivism, and then—apparently encouraged by his success at deflating the utopianism in some liberationist writing—delivers a highly generalized and unwarranted assault on the entire liberationist project...
...In Latin America, for example, networks of modernized airports, hotels, and telecommunications systems have been financed by unprecedented volumes of debt in countries where most people have never driven a car or used a telephone...
...Novak dismisses economic democracy out of hand in order to claim the democratic mantle for his own position...
...Novak now plugs for capitalism as though it were an unknown ideal...
...In its most typical versions, however, and in the common experience of those who have been changed by it, liberation theology is a rejection of the legacy of Latin American authoritarianism and a call for community self-determination, economic democracy, and political freedom...
...That is the point...
...These communities live out their religious faith by digging community wells, building roads to inaccessible villages, establishing community services, and organizing trade unions and cooperatives—often at the risk of their lives...
...When Novak gave a speech in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1985, a protester held up a sign that read, "Liberation theology is ours...
...Though the liberationist literature contains its share of illusions, there is a hard core of democratic, Latin American self-assertion in the movement that Novak entirely overlooks...
...Between 1957-1965, for example, only 17 percent of the capital investments of U.S.-based transnationals were brought in from outside the periphery countries themselves...
...Novak claims that because it eschews nationalization, modern socialism is not socialist...
...In his exhaustive study for the United Nations, Estrategia Industrial y Empresas Internacionales, Fernando Fajnzylber has revealed that transnational enterprises in Latin America have taken, on average, approximately 75 percent of the net profits out of Latin America, and have traditionally financed the same percentage of their investments from local capital...
...Because cooperative forms of ownership are still forms of private ownership, he says, there is no difference in principle between capitalism and modern democratic socialism...
...This process of economic distortion has been reinforced by the arms trade, as in Honduras, which is currently being urged to use its U.S...
...q 248 • DISSENT...
...policy in Latin America in the guise of a critique of Latin American liberation theology...
...But dependency theory explains more than Novak acknowledges...
...Having lost his faith in his earlier ideals...
...But even taken as an ideal, "democratic capitalism" is compatible with only a truncated form of democracy...
...It does not look to either the capitalist or communist world for political models...
...Because I have elsewhere criticized him for failing to address these matters, I should note that in his new book Novak does at least mention the Central American record of the United Fruit Company (in a defensive two-page summary), and he also acknowledges the existence of modern democratic socialism...
...military base, has made the country dependent on external economic and political decisions...
...About the latter, he accurately explains that democratic socialists advocate political freedom and pluralism, market discipline, and decentralized forms of socialization, such as cooperative ownership...
...There are a few (very few) liberationists, such as Miranda, who are communists...
...Liberationism is essentially their vision of emancipation, as well as their struggle for it...
...Novak charges, with some justification, that certain liberationist writings are utopian, and he effectively criticizes the most extreme proponents of liberationism, such as José Miranda...
...This is pure dogma...
...Novak implies that because all liberation theologies thus far have been tied to dependency theory, all of them have been fundamentally distorted...
...Most important, liberationism is not primarily a trend among intellectuals...
...Novak asserts that transnational firms generate economic growth through their investment of capital in their own firms, and therefore argues that Latin American nations actually need higher levels of transnational investment than they have received...
...The problem with this argument, aside from its idealization of certain authoritarian, anti-union countries in East Asia, is that it overlooks the historical Latin American experience, which has not been unacquainted with transnational modernization...
...military and political encroachment in other lands, has written another apologia for U.S...
...There are other liberationists who have advocated sweeping nationalization programs and rather uncritically adopted Marx's labor theory of value...
...And it is even true, as Novak complains, that some of the liberationist literature has failed to present an alternative to this tradition of cultural and economic authoritarianism...
...It does not require much insight to see how the militarization of this desperately poor country, which has been virtually turned into a U.S...
...This is a curious pose, coming from the man who organized an attack on the American Roman Catholic bishops' overtures toward economic democracy, but as his considerable exertions against the pastoral letter reveal, the bedrock issue is the question of economic democracy...
...The basic insight of dependency theory is that developed nations create "centers" that dominate more vulnerable nations in their "periphery," causing the latter to become disproportionately dependent on external economic decisions...
...Novak explains that modern democratic socialism is actually a "variant" of "democratic capitalism," which he personally rejects only because it promotes too much political control over the economy...
...rather, it is the praxis of hundreds of thousands of "base communities" covering most of Latin America...
Vol. 35 • April 1988 • No. 2
