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Comment on Reparations:
By
Carlito Rovira
The
demand for reparations is based on the outright theft, degradation, and
genocide of the African American. At least 12 million Africans were
kidnapped and taken to the Americas in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
It is based on the continued impact of this period that lasts to this
day in the form of systematic racism and inequality experienced by the
Black community throughout the country. It is also based on the
continued benefits the U.S. capitalist class still derives from the
wealth extracted from Black labor during the period of chattel slavery.
African chattel slavery arose in the 15th century based on the
expansion of capitalism, and the exploitation of the labor of millions
of African slaves allowed the then-infant European capitalist economies
to achieve a level of growth never before seen by any social system.
This system also formed the economic basis of deeply embedded racist
ideology among people of European descent in the United States.
The
initial process of rapid capital accumulation, a requirement for
capitalist economic development, was accomplished by the European
capitalist classes from the wealth created by enslaved Black labor and
the massive theft of gold and other wealth from the Indigenous peoples
of the Western Hemisphere—also victims of genocide. Today,
bourgeois historians try to exonerate or distance the capitalist class
from complicity in the brutal system of chattel slavery. But slavery
was inextricably bound to the development of capitalism. It became an
inseparable appendage of rising capitalism until its abolition in the
19th century. The wealth accumulated from slave labor strengthened
capitalist industries and commerce. Textile industries, agriculture,
and shipbuilding prospered as a result of cheaper goods and raw
materials obtained by enslaved African labor. The more Black slavery
expanded, the more it became an impetus for capitalist economic
development—not only in the United States, where slavery was
strongest, but throughout the world.
Slavery
was abolished after the Civil War. But the impact of that brutal system
of exploitation remained, both in the wealth of the U.S. ruling class
and the devastation and continued racist oppression of the Black
population. Colossal wealth, amounting to trillions of dollars, is
boasted about today in stock market reports by the world’s
richest corporations like Fleet Boston Financial, the railroad firm
CSX, and the Aetna insurance company. These entities owe their growth
to the brutally exploited labor of millions of African people.
But
like any system of exploitation, slavery also provoked the aspirations
of the Black masses for justice and compensation. The demand for
reparations is one expression of these aspirations. The exact
formulation of this demand has varied over the many phases of the Black
liberation struggle—through the era of slavery itself, the period
of Reconstruction following the Civil War, to the present day. But
whatever the form in which the demand has manifested, it has always
expressed the collective desire of African Americans to be compensated
for the criminal exploitation they endured as an enslaved people.
On
Jan. 11, 1865, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman met with leaders
of the Black community in Savannah, Georgia. Most of them were former
slaves. The spokesperson of the Black leaders was 67-year-old Garrison
Frazier, who was born a slave in North Carolina. Frazier gave
voice to the aspirations of the millions of African Americans who had
just been released from slavery as a result of the 1863 Emancipation
Proclamation. "The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have
land," Frazier told the Union general.
These
African Americans were a principal factor in Sherman’s decision
to issue Special Field Order 15 on Jan. 15, 1865. That military order
provided 40,000 former slaves with 400,000 acres of land confiscated
from the defeated slave owners. It is believed to have been the origin
of the demand for "40 acres and a mule." For the first time, a
representative of the northern capitalist class had recognized, in a
limited way, the rights of former slaves to receive some form of
compensation for their centuries of oppression. And while the order was
issued for tactical purposes by the northern capitalist government in
its campaign against the southern slavocracy, it provided a glimpse of
what the oppressed Black nation could achieve in a full-blown social
revolution.
Hopes
for real economic reparations for former slaves were short-lived. The
immediate needs of the northern ruling class in crushing their southern
competitors were replaced by the overall goal of stifling the
aspirations of the oppressed Black masses. Sherman himself went on to
unleash U.S. government terror against the Native American people. The
overthrown slave owners were enlisted as allies in this project. Former
members of the Confederacy engaged in counterrevolutionary activities,
setting up the terrorist Ku Klux Klan to roll back the gains of the
postwar period of Radical Reconstruction. One of Andrew Johnson’s
first acts as president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was
to rescind Special Field Order 15, returning the old land titles to
their former owners. Throughout Johnson’s presidency, he vetoed
every proposal that granted land to former slaves in the southern
states and the western frontier. Radical Republicans made other
attempts to pass legislation compensating former slaves, such as
providing pensions for the former slaves. These bills met fierce
opposition in Congress; none survived.
As
the United States entered the 20th century, a rising imperialist power,
it became ever clearer that the capitalist class’s motives during
the Civil War had nothing to do with genuine Black emancipation.
Instead of receiving reparations, African Americans were the constant
target of disenfranchisement, persecution and racist terror.
The
struggle to win reparations for African Americans diminished in the
earlier part of the 20th century, largely overshadowed by the necessary
struggles against lynching and KKK terror. At the height of the Civil
Rights movement during the 1950s and ‘60s, reparations once again
became a central demand of the Black liberation struggle. The Black
Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the
Nation of Islam and others reintroduced this idea, often in militant
and defiant ways.
During
the course of the mass civil rights and Black liberation movements, the
U.S. government was forced to allow some progressive legislation. In
particular, voting rights, expanded welfare programs, and some elements
of affirmative action were achieved—although all of them are
under constant attack. But throughout this period, all sectors of the
U.S. ruling class have been hostile to any form of reparations to the
African American community. The reason is simple: The demand raises the
question of property rights. The bottom-line function of the U.S.
government is to preserve capitalist property against all demands from
those without property.
Economics
is the lifeblood that allows for human social development. Destroying,
hindering or depriving a people of an economic means of life is an
essential step for an oppressor in carrying out the business of
subjugation. This is why the capitalist class is hostile toward any
reference to reparations. (Of course, the capitalist rulers never
hesitate to demand reparations in the form of financial compensation
when it comes to their own property or interests. For example, they
still whine about property that was expropriated by the Cuban people
after the 1959 revolution.)
Ruling-class
commentators and pundits try to use bourgeois legality in arguing that
African slaves are no longer living and that the claim for reparations
should not apply to their descendants. But the wealth created by slave
labor became the foundation of many U.S. corporations, and was the
basis for the rise of the entire U.S. capitalist class. It is through
that bourgeois legality that the wealth created by the slaves and
appropriated by the slave owners has continued in the form of corporate
wealth and passed down through inheritance laws to families and
individuals.
Under
the legal codes of capitalism, the debt owed to the ancestors of the
vast majority of African Americans in the United States today should be
recognized by the same inheritance laws by which the rich have
benefited. The denial of these rights is another example of the racist
disenfranchisement of the Black nation in the United States.
What
will reparations look like? Of course, the concrete expression of
how reparations should be granted has generated discussion and debate,
even among advocates of reparations. For example, some call for
reparations in the form of material incentives such as funds for
education programs. At a September 2000 forum sponsored by the
Congressional Black Caucus and initiated by Rep. John Conyers,
Congressman Tony Hall supported a call for a panel to study the call
for reparations. "I would hope that it would consider among many
things, investments in human capital for scholarships, for a museum
like Congressman [John] Lewis has proposed, for things that would
improve the future of slaves’ descendants," he testified.
Hall,
who is white, articulated a modest message. He had sponsored
legislation calling on Congress to issue a formal apology for
slavery—something that the U.S. government has never done. The
version of reparations he described is one designed to be tolerated by
some sector of the capitalist class itself. Activist and author Sam
Anderson, representing the Black Radical Congress at the same 2000
panel, projected a more radical vision of the movement for reparations.
He laid out a program of fighting for free health care, debt
cancellation both for the Black community in the United States as well
as African nations, and freedom for political prisoners: "A
reparations campaign is fundamentally anti-racist, anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist," Anderson said.
Every
effort of groups like the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations
in America (NCOBRA) and others deserves the support of all working
people of every nationality. Solidarity among the working class means
recognizing the right of oppressed nations to real redress for the
exploitation of centuries. Socialists and revolutionaries should
recognize the anti-capitalist essence of the demand for reparations,
making it a central theme for the revolution in this country. Given the
dynamics of the class struggle in the United States and the extreme
reliance on racism by the ruling class, reparations for the oppressed
automatically implies the expropriation of the capitalist class. It is
a demand that has been taken up around the world by other oppressed
nationalities. In fact, reparations for Native American people after
the U.S. genocidal campaign, for Mexican people for the conquest of
territory, for Puerto Rican people for a century of U.S.
colonialism—these and more are part and parcel of the U.S.
working-class program for socialist revolution.
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