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A radical financial transaction tax narrative that is a non-reformist reform

Our policy embodies a deep tradition of emancipation and liberation theories for reparations for enslavement and colonialism. This means we see historic injustices undergoing constant reformulation by the incumbent rich and powerful, who administer and organise a war-torn, exploitative, extractive and overtly unequal and evil system: capitalism. We analyse the bloodshed of imperialism with a contemporary analysis of global political economy and hyper-financialised capitalism, the source of power today.

We are still in the political and economic formations set in stone a few hundred years ago that saw a small minority kidnap or obliterate entire societies from the planet across Latin America, Africa and Asia. As the Israeli state and military is doing to Palestinian civilians today, nothing short of a 21st century holocaust.

Reparative justice is firstly, rooted in apologies and truth. It is a process for healing and repair for centuries of capitalist and imperialist exploitation. Reparatory justice is not only for all the world’s enslaved, their descendants, and racialised, colonised and oppressed people; it is for all working class people and for humanity. We must all be free of the system based on infinite growth and exponentially rising inequality. Free from the logic and laws of profit, borders and private property.

This is why reparations has always meant nothing less than taking a revolutionary approach to building a new world order.

Our analysis of the 500 year old commodity and financial markets shows that it sits at the center of the globalised capitalist economy. It is the most essential (and systemically targetable) component in the machinery of capitalism, enabling multinational corporations to carry out their essential functions, enabling the world’s richest and powerful to speculate on our exploitation and build unimageable wealth and power in the process.

Which is clear to see through with billionaires, lobbying, ideological capture and hegemomy. This renders reform and regulation ineffective, and a distraction which those with power are happy to let the NGO industry busily pursue.

The design of this financial transaction tax makes it the ultimate non-reformist reform. It is a revolutionary use of reform in its truest sense, and makes non-violent system change in our lifetime possible.

Previous campaigns for a financial transaction tax were not able to sustain their momentum. So things have to be done differently now. We must seek to constantly build on our successes together, whether that is the Pink Tide in Latin America, the Arab Spring, the anti-racist and gender justice movements post George Floyd, and MeToo, or the Indian Farmers movement. Link our campaigners against fossil fuel finance, big pharma and agrobusiness. We must start acknowledging the certainties and symptoms of capitalism and imperialism.

This financial transaction tax has been designed through the lens of reparations struggles for enslavement and colonialism, anti-racism, Pan-Afrikanism, the Black Radical Tradition, intersectional feminism, Black Marxism, workers' liberation struggles, Indigenous, aboriginal and First Nation struggles and anti-colonialism struggles. The objective is to create a systemic and radical global policy and movement for justice, peace, equality and sustainability by recognising the inseparability of people’s struggles that are all tied to capitalism, colonialism and imperialism.

This tax on all commodity and financial market transactions is unprecedented in that is covers every major asset class, traded in all spaces including:

• shares and debts of corporations such as fossil fuel polluters, arms dealers and financial institutions
• world currencies,
• interest rate derivatives, bonds, credit default swaps, and other fixed income assets
• wholesale gas and oil, gold and silver, metals, lithium and other resources/minerals, and global food crops such as wheat, coffee, cocoa and sugar

The daily average value traded across all these markets is 16 trillion dollars. These markets are on traditional exchanges, online trading platforms, and setup between global investment banks and other intermediaries. These markets, organisations and processes originate from the financing and development of European empire building, industrialisation and modernity, all of which were predicated on enslavement and colonialism. These are patterns of exploitation, extraction, plunder and authoritarianism (with impunity) that have been in place for 500 years.

Today these legacy markets are crucial for international business and finance, wealth hoarding and ultimately power building. It is the meeting place for the world’s high net worth individuals, investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, asset managers, auditors, accountants, lawyers, ratings agencies, shadow banks, tax havens, insurance firms, pension firms and brokers. There is a reason why we have the saying “they who owns the banks, owns the tanks”.

The daily value of 16 trillion dollars across the markets can be understood as the ‘net present value’ of both slavery and colonialism, and future exploitation and subjugation of people and planet. It is the value of future profits and power that imperialism will protect at any human or environmental cost. It is the totality of real and fictitious capital in the financial markets that reinforces the drive for powerful people to dominate the global majority politically, economically and culturally. As the central flow of capital from which wealth and power derives, it is our most important struggle for reparative justice and for understanding the value of the system today on which enslavement and colonialism is based.