Capitalism and Reparations: A Struggle for the Survival of Humanity
Nora Wittmann's Capitalism and Reparations follows her groundbreaking first book Reparations Time is Now, in which she demolished the ex-enslavers' argument that there would be no right to reparations because "slavery" would have been "legal”. Our current euro-centric world order of capitalism is illegal, having been built on illegal and sustained acts of genocide, enslavement, resource plunder, violations of sovereignty, and terror, and being dependent to this day on structures laid centuries ago. As an international law expert, Nora Wittmann demonstrates how the claim to global Afrikan reparations, if pursued and carried out as required by international law and the meaning of the term reparations, includes the abolition of capitalism. Since its start with transatlantic slavery, capitalism as a world system has relied on expansion and maximization of profit, no matter the real costs, since these were and are outsourced to "other" people and future generations. Now humanity has reached a point where we are faced with disaster all around. The world system that is causing this havoc was established during transatlantic slavery and continues to operate violently under the same dynamics and structures today. Reparations must address the mindset of ever-more, ever-bigger, ever-greater, the euro-centric capitalistic mantra of economic growth that has been fed to us as sacrosanct, as if it were a natural necessity for survival, when in reality it destroys Earth as our habitat and has its roots in transatlantic slavery. The anti-life system of capitalism has always relied on Afrikan resources. If Afrikan people were to effect the reparations due, starting with of the cessation of the continued crime, capitalism would be finished. The destruction of Earth as our habitat, humanity's self-destruction would be brought to a stop. History has shown that we cannot rely on European initiative to get humanity out of this precarious situation, and that we must be wary sub-integrationist initiatives, as European philanthropists and cliques have joined reparations campaigns, while US government agencies have declared that US National Security is militarily and economically dependent on Afrikan resources. Capitalism and Reparations demonstrates how the madness of industrial warfare and euro-centric consumerist culture that endangers humanity's survival could not occur without Afrikan resources, and how reparations must address this issue.