Reparative JusticePart 11 of 11 · Myths, and the way out
Liberation for everyone
Capitalism divides us by race, class and sex, and it harms our minds. Together, we can all be free.
Race, class and sex
For capitalism to function, it must subjugate and exploit humanity into artificial groups that it codified and regulates
- These are predominantly race, class and sex with many others
- It is why we understand capitalism to be racial capitalism and so on
In order to extract most wealth from workers, a hierarchy based on these groups is maintained by imperialism and capitalism where whiteness, Christianity and masculinity dominate.
71% of the world’s workers, who are in the global south/colonised countries are paid less than $10 dollars a day
- This is entirely due to the racial legacy of slavery and colonialism that endures today.
- By contrast, top hedge fund managers “earn” 4 million dollars a day in London and New York ($1 billion per annum).
Classism, racism and sexism etc., along with poverty are the fatal choices made by the rich to maintain the capitalist world order.
Wealth can never be levelled-up or made equal under capitalism, which means neither can power. When power is held by a minority, there can never be democracy. Our government structures today are designed with this is mind. Only the dismantling of capitalism deliver democracy and the change to live in a world with reparative justice, peace, equality and sustainability.
Mental health and liberation
There has been a rising mental health crisis around the world as people continue to be ravaged by crisis after crisis caused by capitalism and imperialism.
Medical professionals and health and labour policies tend to locate mental disorder or psychological issues that need correction at the level of the individual, in line with the discourse of individualism prevalent in liberalism. Under capitalist regimes, government policy is to diagnose and fix people, not the political conditions that caused their distress such as being bombed, forced migration, precarious work, indebtedness, abuse, neglect, racialistion and much more. This conveniently depoliticises people’s distress and lays the blame on the individual being unable to cope with the reality of modern life and work
Liberation psychology founded in the 1980s by the Salvadorian activist and psychologist Ignacio Martín Baró argues that we cannot isolate “mental health problems” from our broader societal structures. Suffering emerges within people’s experiences and histories of oppression, subjugation, forced migration etc..
Liberation psychology sees people not as patients, but potential social actors in the project of freedom, valuing their own lineages, creativity and experience, rather than being forced into a white, eurocentric and individualistic idea of therapy. It directly challenges the social, cultural and political causes of distress through collective social action.
What the movement makes possible
The movement for Revolutionary Reparations for reparative justice and system change enables us
- to speak our truth, heal and repair from enslavement and colonialism
- emancipate and liberate ourselves and all from the violence of capitalism, the legacy of enslavement and colonialism.