We say that struggle resolves all contradictions. What does that mean? Part 1 of 3

We say that struggle resolves all contradictions. What does that mean?

In the sense that we use the word, “contradiction” we are talking about opposition that occurs within and between people, and within and between contending forces and within and between things as well. Opposition and struggle---contradiction---are natural and universal. Opposition and struggle are the means by which things change, and since everything is in development and motion then change is also on-going and constant. Contradictions may be antagonistic or non-antagonistic, but they are ever-present.

It is not that unrelated people or forces or things come into contact and conflict with one another, but that there are interrelationships at work, and that people and forces and things have distinct stages of development and self-development. If we want to understand someone or something, we must look at a web of relations and relationships, the history of development that is at work, what is intrinsic and what is external, and what contradictions are present. You must enter and experience the environment of what it is that you are studying in order to know it.

Grasping contradiction is a way of understanding the mutually exclusive and opposing tendencies that develop within, and are present in, everything within us and around us, including our thoughts and thinking and even motion itself. The most common way that we have of talking about this in talking about water. When water is heated to certain point it becomes steam, and in so doing the quantity and quality of the water is changed. Motion (heat) creates changes in quantity and quality. Heat is itself the product of opposing forces. But even without heat water will undergo other changes as well, although it appears to be still: evaporation, or freezing to become slush or ice come readily to mind. The parallel for us is that the “motion” of social movements creates changes in the qualities of societies and changes in the numbers of people involved and in the qualities of their thinking, their work, and their cultures.

Since contradiction and change are universal and constant, then, something of the past, something of the present, and something of the future is always present. The quantities and qualities of what is around us are changing. What is new supersedes what is old. Old conditions (old forces, old quantities, old qualities, and old contradictions) may be defeated, but some part of the past goes into the new thing that has been created and new contradictions and struggles are born. Interdependence means that in the process of change the aspects that exist within something become their opposites. Think here about how the organisms that eventually made human life possible developed in stages over long periods of time.

Here we also often use the example of capitalists and capitalism: the capitalists were a subordinated force within feudalism, and capitalism existed in an embryonic state, but through a clash between rival means of producing and distributing commodities the capitalists and capitalism took power. This was “progressive” in the sense that productive powers were freed up and the mechanisms of production and distribution could acquire social characteristics---more people involved, triumphs for science, an end to a dying order that was being crushed under its own weight---but it was oppressive in the sense that the new order rested on the subjugation of working-classes and nationally oppressed peoples and new levels of environmental destruction and slavery continued and took new forms. Also, capitalism continued and deepened the contradiction between people and nature. The primary contradictions that quickly emerged were between capitalism and capitalists, on the one hand, and the working-classes and nationally oppressed peoples on the other hand.

Socialism must emerge as a new form of production and distribution and take on the task of restoring to us a place within nature. Socialism will not come as a clean slate, but will carry something from capitalism within it. It took changes in quantities and qualities---of people, of the means by which things were produced and distributed, of thinking and science, of class relations, of cultures---to give capitalism its victory. But in its victory capitalism created its opposing forces in the forms of workers and nationally oppressed peoples. Just so with socialism: something from capitalism will be present, the work of building socialism will; be present, and in this work are the seeds of communism.

The new most often replaces the old in a capitalist society when there is clarity among the working-class and oppressed masses around what the primary and secondary contradictions are and when antagonism defines the struggle between contending ideas and social forces. Antagonism is not always necessary or present, but it is a stage in contradiction and struggle. We have implied or said so far that contradiction and struggle are not the same, that as something is negated something else is created, that this is on-going and constant, that changes in quantities and qualities are most deeply imbedded in these processes, that the new supersedes the old and carries in it something of the old and the present and the new, that there is a unity in opposites in the sense that every thing is identified by the opposing forces within and around it and by its history of development, and that under certain conditions opposing forces with some thing can coexist and “become one another” by creating a new identity. Negation is of course a necessary step or stage, but negation is itself negated through development and the role of negation should not be over-emphasized.

Some of our critics object by saying that cooperation and mutual aid are responsible for development. We respond that even in situations where mutual aid is predominant, it is so because existence is itself a contradictory state (life opposing death or decay, motion as a contradictory state, apparent solidarity existing as necessity) and so it is a matter of struggle. Some of our critics object by emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, but we respond that these are limited factors in development and exist in relation to (as relative to) other forces. Some of our critics say that we should be agnostics, or “objective,” in our approach, but we say that (human) activity is primary in all things and that it is through action and understanding action that relative truth comes to be understood; there is no limit to (human) activity and understanding. Some of our critics say that we leave no room for idealism, and they are correct in the sense that we do not believe that ideas have power or meaning by themselves. Other critics say that we make no room for freedom or will, and we say that we understand freedom to be the recognition of necessity and that it is the people---and people alone---who make history. We add to that that history is the “space” in which human beings develop.

Go here for Part 2.