Liberation theology grew out of the socio-economic context of Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. As it was during the Cold War era, there was great sceptism towards capitalism and Marx’s teaching played an important role in the development of liberation theology, although liberation theologians were anxious to emphasise that Marx was only a useful ‘companion’ along the way, but there was only one teacher, Jesus (Boff).

Alienation is important in liberation theology because it gives liberation theology a useful tool to critique capitalism, which many liberation theologians consider to be unjust. Marx teaches that the root cause of alienation is capitalism. Ownership of land gives individuals power over others; those without property and land are dispossessed and dehumanized. Those do not have control over the factors of production, i.e. the proletariat, have to work for those who have and sell their labour as a commodity and gives up his creative power. In this sense the worker is alienated from himself because the process of creation is a projection of his humanity and humans are designed to work and be productive, as Marx says, ‘In my production I would have objectified my individuality and so when I look at the object I would have the satisfaction of knowing my personality to be objective.’ Liberation theologians agree with this critique of capitalism because according to Genesis 1:28, men are created to work and be productive. When workers are alienated from themselves, they cannot do what God wants humans to do, and therefore the situation needs to be reversed. In addition, in a capitalist society, the worker is also alienated from the bourgeoisie, who sees the worker as an object instead of a human. This illustrates Marx’s principle set out in the first Theses on Feuerbach that alienation occurs when humans falsely objectify the world and then treat it as their own possession. These alienations hence open up the way for exploitation of the worker. Because he has no power to control production and is therefore merely ‘an appendage of the machine’. Moreover, as liberation theologian Jose Miranda points out, because the bourgeoisie own the factors of production, it also creates in his mind the idea that he also owns the lives of the workers because he sees them as objects. Miranda further demonstrates this point by giving the example of factory owners in Mexico tried to save the machines rather than the workers in a fire. This again needs reversal because God intends for men to live in harmony with one another with respect to others’ humanity. Liberation theologians also argue that religious institutions, i.e. Churches, have also alienated people from their humanity. This is because the poor have no control of the religious means of production, they are not treated as subjects in their own right and are given no part in the moral and spiritual processes of religion. Religious alienation is a theme Jesus often touches on and the ‘fossilised Church’ as Boff terms it has alienated itself from the people by perpetuating an idea of church, which has little to do with the situation the poor find themselves in. Moreover, many liberation theologians believe that in trying to be politically neutral, the Church has become an extension of the ruling class hierarchy while keeping the poor at arm’s length, hence alienating them religiously. It is important to liberation theology because it justifies their claim of the need of a People’s Church (iglesia popular).
False consciousness describes how a person or people may hold a view of the world which they consider to be true when in fact it is fundamentally false. In fact, Marx also considers religion to be another source of alienation. Marx argues that religions objectifies deep-seated human desires such as justice, love and hope as God and forgetting it has done so then makes God a supreme power which humans then have to obey. As long as human believes that God is an actual being, they are suffering from false consciousness. To be truly human is to be part of the material free from such illusions. This echoes with Gutierrez’s view that heaven is not a utopia, but rather a ‘topia’, i.e. a vision of what is possible but has yet to happen. In liberation theology false consciousness is to be found in the belief that God has created the poor to be poor in this world only to be rewarded in the after-life. It suggests that justice is only an eschatological event when the biblical tradition teaches that justice is a state on earth when God’s rule reverses society’s order and the poor become the subjects of the Kingdom. In order for this reversal to happen with false consciousness eliminated, conscientisation is needed. It is a process whereby a person learns to discard his false consciousness, becomes fully in control of his own destiny and changes it. In Hegelian terms he or shes realizes that they are no longer defined as a ‘slave’ or object in the master- slave relationship, but are independent human subjects in their own right. The role of liberation theologians is to help the poor along the process of conscientisation.