Abstract: I highlight three enigmatic conditions of Marxism in South Africa. Firstly, the avoidance of the racialized property relations by white communists, which I argue is indicative of their unwillingness to address the sociohistorical material conditions of the black working class. Secondly, the critique of the seizure of bourgeois property by communists in South Africa suggests that they are bourgeois ideologists masquerading as Marxists-Leninists. Thirdly, historically Marxism was presented in South Africa as a racialized bourgeois science which in principle resonated with the socio-economic conditions of the black working class, while in practice it was devoted to pursuing the bourgeois interests of the white workers, the labor aristocracy. That is, it concealed itself in the pretext for a universal vision of revolutionary freedom for all the working classes of the world, except for black workers. Consequently, Marxism failed to recognize black social, economic, and political problems (our racialized experiences) as a consequence of systemic and structural injustice. This alludes to the failures in the indigenization of a Marxist project as an epistemological system with which to critique a racialized political economy that functions as a crucial ideology for the bourgeois capitalist class in South Africa. I relate these failures to the early communist anti-blackness prevalent in white-organizations like the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), South African Labour Party (SALP) and the International Socialist League (ISL).
Keywords: Communists, Marxism, capitalist economy, racialized property relations, white supremacy, black working class, Land.
Title: Marxism: Another Racist Bourgeois Science?
Author: Bukelani Mboniswa
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
Vol. 13, Issue 2, April 2025 - June 2025
Page No: 464-473
Research Publish Journals
Website: www.researchpublish.com
Published Date: 16-June-2025
