CPS Summer School summary of discussions - Our philosophy is Marxism

2019 CPS Summer School

Summary of discussions – Sunday 22 December 2019

Our philosophy is Marxism

Sunday 22 December 2019 marked the third day of the 2019 School of the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS). The CPS Summer School discussed the question of society and its relations. This was done under the heading “Our philosophy is Marxism”. The School thus unpacked the concept of philosophy and Marxist philosophy as well as gender and class struggle.

Using Marxist philosophy, the most advanced revolutionary theory, the School also unpacked the question of “gender and class struggle”.

The School thus briefly defined philosophy as a world outlook, a study of human behaviour, how things happen and the study of society including its development.

The Marxist philosophy and political economy

The philosophy of Marxism is materialism. Materialism has proved to be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition, cant and so forth. As Lenin put it in 1913, in his Three Sources and Three Component parts of Marxism, classical political economy, before Marx, evolved in England, the most developed of the capitalist countries. Economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, by their investigations of the economic system, laid the foundations of the labour theory of value. Marx continued their work. He proved and consistently developed this theory. He showed that the value of every commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time spent on its production.

Marx thoroughly analysed political economy as well as its development. His principal work is Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, published in 1867. He made a stufy of political economy and recognised that the economic system is the foundation on which the political superstructure is erected. Marx thus devoted his most attention to the study of this economic system.

Dialectics

The School understands dialectics basically as a science of continuous development. It is the understanding that everything is in a constant state of motion and change, that is, development. It is a science of interconnections and interpenetrations. The study of dialectics helps us understand that, as Engels said, nothing is stable except instability, nothing is immovable except movement, and that the only thing that never changes is change itself. Thus, we must study and understand society in its historical basis as it develops through the various modes of production. It is for this reason that the tinkhundla regime and its bourgeois friends hate communists. They know very well that the tinkhundla system and capitalism will not be here forever; the winds of change will at some point qualitatively strengthen and sweep them away from the face of the earth.

The laws of dialectics are often summarised into three, in the main: 1) the law of transformation of quantity into quality, and vice versa, 2) the law of the unity and struggle of opposites, and 3) the law of the negation of the negation.

There is a difference between dialectics as defined by Hegel and as defined in the Marxist philosophy. While Hegel’s dialectics amounted to idealism, Marx’s dialectics are materialist, or, put differently, are based on materialism.

Surplus value

In a capitalist society, human labour power becomes a commodity; as something to be bought, with the price being determined by the owners of means of production and appropriators of the products of labour power. Workers sell their labour power to the owners of the means of production who utilise it to maximise their profits. As Lenin shows, workers use one part of their labour day to cover the expense of maintaining themselves and their families (wages), while the other part of the day the workers toil without remuneration, creating surplus value for the capitalists, the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class. Thus, the capitalists appropriate the fruits of workers’ labour power and appropriate the surplus value, a product of the working class. That is the secret of capitalist exploitation.

CPS cadres must thus thoroughly study the class struggle that is ongoing in society as well as its historical development.  For instance, under feudalist society, the ruler was a landlord and under the landlord there were people that did not own the land. Feudalism has similarities to slavery, though at an advanced stage. The highest point of feudalism is when the whole country is ruled by a monarchy. In Swaziland, for instance, Mswati operates as a feudal lord, an absolute monarchy, and he rules the country in collaboration with capitalist imperialism.

Gender and class struggle

When a child is born, society defines the sex of the child only in two ways; male or female. Society then uses that distinction to determine the roles of the two sexes.  This is what we refer to as gender roles. Society does not accept any other sexual orientation and gender identity, and neither does it accept that the different sexes can be equal in the production of the means of subsistence as well as their enjoyment of the products thereof.

Swaziland is a deeply patriarchal society – system where males dominate society and thus males are seen as superior beings to women and any other sex. We must remember that patriarchy, as a system, has existed even before capitalism. Capitalism reinforced and deepened patriarchy and thereafter justified it with its laws, cultures and religious beliefs. In such society, men are regarded as heads of families while women are home keepers as well as housewives.

By “gender” the mistake sometimes is made that we refer only to women. The School clarified this aspect. Our understanding is that “gender” should refer to all kinds of sexual orientation, including LGBTQI+, as well as the roles imposed by society upon the different sexes. The objective of the gender struggle, therefore, is the emancipation of all sexes from patriarchal oppression along with the economic system which produces and reinforces it, capitalism.

Due to the mistake mentioned above, in numerous gender discussions in society, men are often ignored. It is because of patriarchal society that men do not complain, for instance, when they are oppressed and bullied by women – even when this is committed by other men. Society perceives men as strong and almost invincible, and thus comes stereotypical beliefs such as indvodza ayikhali (a man never cries), etc.

However, despite the above, capitalist economy is dominated by males – but the owning class of males. Males are paid more than women for the same job of equal value. Thus, the direction of society follows the direction of males and the rest of the groups are suppressed under the rule of men.

We must remember, however, that despite this fact, the primary thing remains class rule. Women are oppressed as a class, together with all other working class men (though these working class men often step on women and consider them inferior). But women suffer more because they are also oppressed as women. This is why when we talk about gender, the discussion often gravitates around women and women struggles. House chores, for instance, often done by women, constitute a part of unpaid labour without which the man cannot go to work. The man is paid a salary for his work at his place of employment, but the woman is unpaid for her labour. Thus, the exploitation of women deepens. Women are also not paid for pregnancy and giving birth to the future working class which will be presented for exploitation by the bourgeoisie.

The school must conscientiously engage on the question of women’s unpaid labour. Additionally, the School must discuss the question whether women must not be paid for pregnancy and birth-giving.