Why reparations are essential to class struggle

Marxism, Reparations and the Black Freedom Struggle. Available at Leftbooks.com.

Reactionaries of all political stripes have ridiculed the idea of reparations for African Americans, just as they ridicule the struggle for socialism. So it’s fitting that these two great historical movements for social justice should meet in the pages of a new book, “Marxism, Reparations and the Black Freedom Struggle,” published by World View Forum.

The book—which includes speeches, eyewitness accounts, news reports and historical analysis from the pages of Workers World newspaper—seeks to elevate the call for reparations by showing its centrality to the class struggle and self-determination in the United States and around the globe.

A diverse group of writers demolish the ruling-class myth that white workers are the ones being asked to pay for the crimes of slavery. A victory for African-American reparations against Big Business and the U.S. government, they argue, would elevate the whole multi-national working class and strike a blow against the bosses’ downward pressure on wages and benefits.

In the words of a Workers World Party statement reprinted here, “Every worker can understand that unpaid labor is theft—whether slave or wage-slave labor.”

Reparations for the descendants of African slaves is a demand that has been raised over and over, in many forms, since the U.S. government abandoned its pledge of “40 acres and a mule” after the Civil War. Disdain, violence and silence have all failed to bury this historic demand because the lords of U.S. capital continue to grow fabulously wealthy off institutionalized racism, while Black people pay the price of criminalization, police brutality, discrimination and unequal pay.

The modern reparations movement emerged at the 2001 United Nations Conference on Racism and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, where African-American forces took up the call. Next came class-action lawsuits against Fleet Boston Financial, Aetna, CSX and other corporate beneficiaries of the slave trade. The December 12th Movement, National Black United Front, N’COBRA and other groups initiated the Millions for Reparations Movement rally in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 17, 2002.

Monica Moorehead, the new book’s editor, writes: “The U.S. government has a despicable history of downplaying or outright dismissing the issue of reparations. To grant compensation to millions of descendants of African slaves would expose the institutionalized racism that African Americans and other people of color still suffer today.”

Moorehead has assembled a unique volume that places the reparations movement in a broad global, historical and theoretical context. Articles put today’s efforts in the context of the historic struggle for Black liberation, from Reconstruction and Jim Crow through the Civil Rights Movement, Million Worker March Movement and beyond.

Originally published as a pamphlet in 2002, this greatly-expanded and updated book encompasses recent political developments, from the war in Iraq and the genocidal aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the explosion of the immigrant rights movement in 2006.

It breaks the illusion of isolation created by the corporate media and political establishment, showing how reparations is a demand with widespread appeal for oppressed peoples and nations around the world as redress for centuries of colonialism, imperialist exploitation and war crimes, from Jamaica to Iraq, Zimbabwe to the Black Belt South.

An overview of section titles give a sense of the book’s scope: “Black liberation and the working-class struggle”; “The material basis for reparations in the U.S.”; “Brief overview of racist oppression and heroic resistance”; “What Hurricane Katrina exposed to the world”; “Africa: A battleground against colonialism and for sovereignty”; “Justice for the Caribbean”; “A salute to women revolutionaries”; “Why fight-back is inevitable”; and “Black labor and class solidarity.” This book is a must read in libraries, class rooms and for those activists mobilizing in the streets.

Given pride of place in the book is the need to build solidarity between workers, with a special focus on unity between African Americans, including those in communities devastated by Katrina and Rita, and immigrant workers, who are under fierce attack but fighting back for their rights.

In his article “Black and Brown Unity,” Saladin Muhammad of the Black Workers League writes: “Building the convergence of these movements demands respect for their independence and diversity. A strategic alliance ... must be concretized and built around real struggles that enable both to see the power in unity to make radical changes in the interests of democracy and revolutionary transformation. ... This is why it is so important to focus this alliance today on the struggles for Reconstruction in the Gulf Coast and the struggle for immigrant rights.”

Other contributors include Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pat Chin, Sam Marcy, Larry Holmes, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Clarence Thomas and Chris Silvera, Tony Van Der Meer, John Parker, Teresa Gutierrez, LeiLani Dowell and many more. The book features a stunning cover graphic by Sahu Barron and is illustrated with photos and graphics throughout.

Available at www.leftbooks.com.