The case for reparations

Are claims for slavery reparations of US$777 trillion, as made by a 1999 African World Reparations truth commission in Accra, realistic? How does one begin to conceptualise claims for reparations in a broader historical and social context when it comes to centuries of exploitation? M.P. Giyose from Jubilee South Africa makes the case for understanding reparations as a transformation of the way the world functions, ultimately serving to restore and sustain human civilisation.

When a victorious Roman army returned from its conquests, both before as well as after republican times, it entered the city of Rome in a triumphal march. Of course the triumph was bedecked with all manner of loot that came back as the spoils of war. Some of the best treasures forcibly taken from vanquished peoples were entered into the Roman treasury as part of the material gains of war. The conquering imperial armies of England, France and Germany in the 18th and 19th Centuries followed the old Roman tradition. This kind of “revenue” has to be distinguished clearly from what in this discussion we call reparations. By the 19th Century, European war makers had already long developed the custom of a reparations levy. A nation defeated in war was a nation to be doubly punished. At the point of signing a Peace Treaty for the purpose of ending the war, the vanquished nation was given a huge bill or levy which it had to pay the victorious party, not as a form of tribute, but rather as compensation for “losses” or “the expenditure of war” suffered by the victorious nation in the course of prosecuting the given war. With this levy the victors were supposed to repair whatever damages they had endured in war. Of course this was a purely retributive measure, oppressive in every sense. As a result the defeated nations always understood it to be a form of vengeance.

We need to disclaim altogether any connection between what we are discussing with this type of tradition. The nearest parallel we can adduce to the notion of reparations is that of damages as is defined in relevant branches of the law. Put succinctly in legal practice, the aim of damages is to restore the injured party to that position where he would have been if he had not suffered injury. And whilst this is possible in legal practice, and measurements can come close to scientific exactness, the similar process is a lot more complex in the arena of political economy. Damages carried out through history are highly rapacious at the point of commission. They carry with them extensive loss of life as well as incalculable material harm. They also carry a historical legacy that puts back a nation scores of years in time.

If we understand reparations to be a broad genus, we will also accept that it has a number of species. It is difficult, in the result, to define reparations both in terms of its general features as well as its specifics. And the problem is brought about by both the historical as well as social content in the entire process. We will therefore have to satisfy ourselves with a purely descriptive indication of reparations and proceed into our analysis in terms of both the general as well as the specific. Overall, the aim here will be to chart out an economic future for the countries of the South, in terms of a global economic model that is designed to override in mitigation the woeful history of conquest, economic plunder and financial pillage.

Global Reparations – Are They Possible?

Let us begin by delineating the entire historical and social process from which reparations are now being determined. From a purely European point of view capitalism first begins to flex its muscles in the course of the crusades, thus securing a passage for exchanges in goods through Asia Minor to the Indian sub-continent and China. This was reinforced later in the passage around the African continent. Simultaneously other tentacles spread far and wide into the Atlantic and Caribbean and later, onto the Pacific Islands. The ancient Italian City States of Venice, Florence, Genoa, etc., were thus able to make a rapid transition through feudalism onto a capitalist base. The slave trade is one of those reinforcing factors that integrated an African economy, which was at the same time being retarded together with the Caribbean Islands and the Americas. The road was now open for a transfer of wealth and power from the bankers of the Mediterranean and the Iberian peninsula to an assumption of economic power by the merchant classes in England, Holland and France.

Second, by this time the question of foreign conquest with concomitant ecological brigandage was a settled issue. Thirdly, from quite early on, the 20th Century foreign acquisitions took on a financial and industrial colouration. And it was a perfection of this process that took matters a stage further towards the end of the 20th century. The age of globalisation has been the age of subjugation strictly through the sheer power of money.

Each of these four stages of capitalist development has put to the sword, not just the liberties of other nations; it became crucial in the expropriation of their wealth. At each stage the bonds of enslavement have been taking on a variety of means, namely: the ecology, labour, trade, debt, investment. Throughout this history, the true indebtedness of Northern societies has stood in direct proportion to the changes in these means.

The question we have to pose at this stage is – how can the North discharge the settlement of so monumental a debt to Southern societies? Is such a discharge practicable? The question has to be posed quite regardless of the lies and deliberate promises given in mendacity by such ruling classes as those in the USA, when they pretended restorative programmes of upliftment to the slaves whom they took out of the plantation economy of the South. Can the North truly work out a programme of reparations for the South in the emerging economy of our times?

Let us illustrate these questions by offering two examples of claims by representative groups of people from the economic South of the world. In 1999 a truth commission deliberating under the aegis of the African World Reparations in Accra, made a demand from Northern nations for compensation over the slave trade in the amount of US$777 trillion, to be paid over 5 years. Immediate questions which arise are as follows: Who exactly is liable for this bill? What are the direct particulars of the offence? To whom are the debtors liable? Has the process for these types of reparations been able to establish the actual number of slaves that were extracted out of Africa; the actual number that died in the middle passage; the actual number that were landed in America; the actual societies from which the slaves were drawn in Africa? Are these numbers a hundred million, or ten million, or another number in between? Has there been a determination made of exact losses in labour hours from any particular nations or groups of nations in Africa? Or, is the quantum of this claim a shot in the dark?

These problems are indicated quite articulately in the second example to be cited. In a remarkable document submitted before the nations who had “discovered” a discovery which had been made 40 000 years before, the Native American Chief Guaicaipuro Cuautemoc makes a deposition that is full of scorn, sarcasm, wit and intelligence. At the height he declares: “On this basis, and applying the European formula of compound interest, we inform our ‘discoverers’ that they only owe us, as a first payment against the debt, a mass of 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of sliver, both raised to the power of 300. This equals a figure that would need over 300 digits to put it down on paper and whose weight fully exceeds that of the planet Earth. What huge piles of gold and silver! How much would they weigh when calculated in Blood?”

This is a masterful performance. It refers to one small claim covering a short period of time in historical plunder in a particular location in America, that is, 1503 to 1660. Taken on a world scale, the claims of the countries of the South are literally both astronomical and immeasurable.

On this basis it is perhaps not too difficult to conclude that current Northern societies do not possess a capacity, in spite of their incredible wealth, to repay the debt that they owe the South. In a punitive understanding of reparations equal to that of European powers in the 19th Century, the combined capacities of all Northern societies would not be able to satisfy a pound by pound repayment of all that they owe the South. This is not only a measure of the gargantuan proportions of the Northern debt; it is an indicator of the unimaginable degree in conspicuous consumption that has become the lot of Northern societies in the last six hundred years. Clearly, a rational method has to be designed and adopted so that the scales of history should be re-weighted in a manner that would enable the sustained survival of human civilisation in terms of obligations admitted by all sides in current society.

Immediate Practical Proposals

The question of reparations therefore is definitely beyond dispute. What begins to concern us now as an immediate practical measure, is the vehicle on which we seem to depend for negotiating the reparations question. Given the fact that this matter needs to be viewed from the point of view of the whole world economy, it becomes clear that this issue can only be dealt with in terms of a systemic solution.

During our time the question of one form or another of reparations has posed itself before our policy makers. Currently, the most verbose intellectual among the nationalist tendencies on the African continent, is President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Speaking at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2001, Mbeki pooh-poohed the very idea of projecting the question of economic development in Africa on any such notion. Now, the key thing is that there is a Thabo Mbeki in the heartbeat of every other leader in the countries of the South – save one or two exceptions. How can that crop of persons then become our agents for a reparations programme, whatever its character may be? That is why we have to fall back for the development of strategy and the discharge of tasks on this question on dynamic political movements operating both in the South as well as elsewhere in the world.

Sometimes reparations work occurs in terms of piece meal measures in favour of restorative justice. Some of these may be life and death struggles fought by rural people for land redistribution. At other times conflicts may be joined which are based on some aspects of the debt question. Important examples of this are the struggles over odious debt. These are particularly germane in Southern countries where the debt creating regimes may have been constituted by dictatorships, or at the very least, there might exist a continuing legacy from colonial rape that might compel successor democratic governments to plunge into a debt with corrective intentions. And yet at other moments restorative justice could obtain in the sphere of extending human rights in law. Politically, all these efforts need to be given support especially if they happen on the basis of a fundamental programmatic position.

In terms of advancing a systemic reparations programme, the ideas now on offer are premised on the integrative forces in the current world situation. That situation consists of three parts. We are presented with a single world political system. This under-girds one economic system that exists on the basis of, and in turn, should feed one ecological system. The three parts make one total world system. It is no longer possible therefore, for us to offer any solutions to the problems of the nations of the South, if these are segregated and can only be expressed through division. A cardinal tenet of an integrated world consists in an understanding that separation and separate means with “their own” institutions, can only lead to inequality.

Given these circumstances, measures working in favour of reparations can only be based on the building and sustaining of one world economy - not several pieces thereof. Egalitarian features within the building of the nation will actually express themselves at their very best when they work in conformity with other expressions of the same principle on a world scale. We therefore come to the conclusion that the reorganisation of the world has to occur on the basis of new social foundations – the foundations of a post-capitalist society. This is a society where the forces of equality are universal; they have become the very life force of economics, of the ecology and of politics.

Conclusion

Reparations therefore can be understood to be a means by which social life in the current nations as we know them today can be reformed. In that way they could be seen as an agent for creating “a better life” for impoverished sections of humanity. The need for reparations of this kind is most urgently felt in the countries of the South. However, in the longer view of human history, reparations cannot be viewed as purely ameliorative measures even if they are seen in terms of restorative justice. There is an inbuilt system of “diminishing returns” in this method of sustaining reparations. In the longer view of historical development, reparations should be seen as an agency for restoring and sustaining human civilisation. And in this manner they cannot be a purely national issue. They are an international phenomenon encompassing the combined fortunes of all humankind and all the fauna and flora that keep pace with us in our natural domain.

* M.P. Giyose is chairman of Jubilee South Africa

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