the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jun 9, 2025
Haiti was one of the first countries to break free of the colonial system imposed by Europe, and it was also the first place in which a massive slave revolt succeeded.
Despite what some people say, this does not explain why Haiti is so impoverished today. The cause of that impoverishment is the enormous ransom that French troops imposed on the newly independent country in 1825.
Below is the translation of an exposé made by comrades from the Organization of Revolutionary Workers—Haiti (Organisation des Travailleurs Révolutionnaires, OTR, Haiti) at the festival of Lutte Ouvrière held in Presles, France, on June 7, 8, and 9.
The “Haitian debt” is the term historians used to refer to the ransom that the Haitian people had to pay for two centuries to preserve the freedom they had won through struggle and to maintain their national independence.
Throughout the 18th century, Haiti, then called Saint-Domingue, was at the heart of the French colonial system. Torn from Africa, 450,000 slaves cultivated sugar under the rule of 5,000 planters. Whipping, torture, and sometimes death were the lot of those who dared to raise their heads. These slave camps produced three-quarters of the world’s sugar, for the greater profit of the French colonial bourgeoisie.
The slaves never accepted their fate. In August 1791, 100,000 slaves rose up and began setting fire to the plantations. The representative of the French National Assembly, Sonthonax, sent to restore order, had no choice but to proclaim the abolition of slavery in the northern part of Haiti, which was under his authority, on August 29, 1793, even while British and Spanish troops invaded the colony. This was the high point of the revolution in France, and the abolition of slavery was ratified with enthusiasm and extended to all French colonies by the Convention on February 4, 1794. The slaves took control of Haiti under the leadership of their general, Toussaint L’Ouverture.
Their victory was sealed by the surrender of the army sent by Napoleon in December 1803, and Haiti’s independence was signed by General Dessalines on January 1, 1804.
The French bourgeoisie refused to accept defeat, and the planters hoped to return to resume the lucrative exploitation of sugar cane and slaves that had made Saint-Domingue the “pearl of the Antilles.” And English, Spanish, and French colonists from other islands feared that the Haitian example would spread to their colonies.
Thus, twenty-one years after the French government had signed Haiti’s independence, the French fleet came to threaten the coast of Haiti. On April 17, 1825, by an order signed by King Charles X, France demanded 150 million gold francs from the young Republic of Haiti.
This is equivalent to five billion euros today to compensate for the “losses” of the former colonists, in other words, the dispossessed slave owners. This colossal sum represented about ten times the annual budget of the young Haitian state and about 300% of its national income, or three years of production.
Unable to come up with this astronomical sum, the Haitian president was ordered by France to borrow from French banks—Rothschild and others—in order to compensate France! Thus was born the famous “double debt”: first the ransom, then the debt incurred to pay it, with interest, of course, under the threat of a French war squadron anchored in the harbor of Port-au-Prince.
Haiti doesn’t owe a “debt.” The so-called “debt” is simply theft by France sanctioned by the colonial bourgeoisie, a “ransom” that has trapped the Haitian state in a cycle of debt. In this morass, the merchant class, the nascent Haitian national bourgeoisie, reaped the benefits. The Haitian bourgeoisie founded the National Bank of Haiti (BNH) in September 1880. From its inception, this bank was an instrument in the hands of French financiers to maintain economic control over the former colony until the 20th century.
Behind the BNH was the French Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC), the debt collector. The loan obliged the Haitian government to pay the CIC nearly half of government taxes on exports, such as those on coffee, until the debt was repaid, thus drying up the main source of income for the country’s leaders.
As a result, most of the country’s public revenue—which should have been invested in construction, particularly schools and hospitals, infrastructure for running water and electricity, and education—was diverted. Haiti’s revenue was transferred to France, where the CIC invested it in lucrative activities such as the construction of the Eiffel Tower.
The profits from the exploitation of peasants raising coffee became a factor in the enrichment of the French bourgeoisie. For nearly a century, Haitian farmers bought their land from the former French colonists who had been expropriated during the independence of Saint-Domingue. The money was sent by ship across the Atlantic and arrived at the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations in Paris. These revenues were then distributed among 12,000 former expropriated French colonists, selected by a commission as rightful beneficiaries.
As long as the coffee market remained flourishing, the Haitian bourgeoisie paid the French banks their mandatory quota, while pocketing the portion they had embezzled.
But when the coffee market collapsed in the 1890s, the economy found itself on the brink of collapse and the bourgeoisie ruling the country needed a new loan. Fifty million francs (about 310 million dollars today) were obtained by the National Bank in 1896. The loan was once again guaranteed by coffee taxes, the country’s most reliable source of income.
French bankers paid themselves huge commissions. Haitian bankers also helped themselves, siphoning off a large portion of the money. Other loans followed, officially to build the country. The debt was spread out over several decades, and therefore benefitted several generations of payers and beneficiaries.
The American bourgeoisie was also interested in Haiti’s economic situation. The National Bank of New York bought part of the debt and then took control of the country’s banks. In 1914, U.S. Marines invaded the country, looted $500,000 from Haiti’s gold stock, and settled in Haiti. During the American occupation, the military imposed forced labor, akin to slavery, to build infrastructure. American bankers controlled its finance and successive Haitian presidents were their puppets. They imposed new loans in 1922. The military occupation lasted until 1947.
That was followed by more than 30 years of a dictatorship. The Duvaliers, father and son, continued to exploit workers and peasants. They enriched themselves on the backs of the working class and further increased its misery. After the fall of the Duvaliers, the bourgeoisie continued to sail on a sea of misery. It was not the oligarchy or the ruling political class that paid the debt. It was the peasants of that time and their descendants today.
The impact of this ransom on Haiti’s economy was devastating. This colonial racket bled the country’s public finances dry for a century. The money that should have been used to build roads, schools, hospitals, and develop agriculture and industry was siphoned off to line the pockets of the former colonizers and their banks. Beyond the French bourgeoisie, it benefited the global bourgeoisie.
As a result, the peasantry, which was the economic backbone of the country, was squeezed to the bone. Taxes had to be levied, people had to be fleeced and forced to produce in order to pay off this debt. Without infrastructure, access to credit, technical support or anything else, peasants were reduced to a life of misery, condemned to survive from day to day in the slums and on impoverished land.
This ransom, paid with the sweat and blood of the working masses, condemned Haiti to underdevelopment, the effects of which are still visible today: a country with no industrial base, no public services, and an extremely impoverished population.
But this ransom is not the only cause of Haiti’s underdevelopment. African countries, which did not have to pay a ransom for their independence, find themselves in comparable misery, and in some cases even worse.
The real common denominator is global imperialist domination. Colonization destroyed local economic structures, imposed dependent rentier economies, and kept former territories under the thumb of foreign powers through debt, resource control, and political domination. Since then, capitalism has continued to exacerbate these inequalities, transforming formerly colonized countries into reservoirs of raw materials and cheap labor, stifling any possibility of autonomous development. The ransom was just one tool among many used to keep Haiti in the grip of dependence. The capitalist system itself is the global matrix.
“Capitalism came into the world sweating blood and mud from every pore,” said Marx, recounting the crimes of primitive capital accumulation and the “trafficking in human flesh.” Crimes and pillaging during the Crusades, the enslavement and extermination of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, the enslavement of more than 15 million Africans deported to the Americas, child labor in Europe, vagrancy laws, forced labor, 16- to 18-hour workdays in Europe’s first factories and manufacturing plants: it was through theft, plunder, and the ferocious exploitation of human beings throughout the world that the primitive accumulation of capital by the current exploiting class, the bourgeoisie, took place.
Two centuries after independence, Haiti continues to pay for daring to break its chains. Today, in 2025, we are celebrating the bicentennial of this international swindle, a legally certified plunder that has strangled Haiti for more than a century. The only true tribute to be paid on this bicentennial is not a hypocritical commemoration or yet another promise of reparations. It is to blow up the system that gave birth to such injustice. A system that crushes people for the profit of a minority of parasites. The imperialist bourgeoisie and its local lackeys in Haiti continue their work of destruction, plundering resources, impoverishing and massacring the masses, now under the barbarism of armed gangs, modern avatars of the same capitalist domination.
Macron talks about reparations, but which ones? Real reparations will not come from the billions promised or from commissions created by the imperialist states. For the debt accumulated by the capitalist bourgeoisie—through the enslavement of Black people and the exploitation of workers of all colors—is simply immeasurable. Capitalism was built on the plunder, sweat, and blood of the oppressed masses of the entire world. That is why the only real way forward is through a social revolution led by those who make society function: the workers.
Wage slaves, the producers of all wealth, are the only ones capable of overthrowing the capitalist order. This task can only be international, because the oppression of Black people, like that of all oppressed peoples, is the product of a global system.
The emancipation of the descendants of slaves cannot be separated from that of the exploited on all continents. This is not a slogan, but a historical imperative: it will be world socialism or barbarism!