What Is Contradiction? | Socialism 101 #10

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Dialectical and Historical Materialism Resources:

Reading:

Videos/Podcasts:

General Resources:

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Quotes (in order of appearance):

David Harvey (2014), Seventeen Contradictions And The End Of Capitalism, p.1

("On Contradiction" again)

[SecondThought]

Been looking forward to this one! Understanding contradiction and applying that knowledge to the real world is so critical. Great episode!

[nanwang]

As a Chinese, I watched this video for 5 minutes before realizing that this is the concept of contradiction by Mao that we were taught in middle school. I nearly forgot this theory after twenty years.

[davidegaruti]

Contradictions are complicated,
But the contradiction between taking a few seconds to comment and helping paul with the algoritm isn't too complicated ...

[groofay]

"What's the difference between an egg and a rock?"
"Well, let's start by defining what a contradiction is..."

[ChipsNsalsita]

"If we want to change the world. Then we need to understand it." - get your reading in when you can. Talk to your comrades through the struggle. Let's do this!

[luc]

6:49 I'll say it louder for those people in the back:

*NON-ANTAGONISTIC CONTRADICTIONS ARE OFTEN INCORRECTLY TREATED AS ANTAGONISTIC ON THE LEFT*

[TheBdawg]

It's like the wool's been put over my eyes all these years... capitalism is the real matrix. That reacts to and defends its reality, and does all it can to keep people unaware...

[lexm]

As someone with extreme attentive issues, the short introductions to the topics make it a lot easier for me to get myself into the groove of understanding it all more :) thank you so much, really!

[michakoodziej]

Just finished reading "on contradiction". Excellent explanation!

[wrmgrl]

thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for this series! during my short stint as a university student I learned that deciphering dense academic language is much easier once you have a sort of 101-primer-understanding of the subject at hand.

[WhySoSquid]

I've really been enjoying this series, Paul, thank you for sharing with us 🙏 I so appreciate the concise presentation!

[michaelross]

This series is really helpful, thanks so much!

[naheanzaman]

Some other comrades gave great answers already, but I’d like to give you some concrete examples of contradictions within capitalism to help you understand. Here’s two:

1. Contradiction between the unlimited nature of profit and a limited environment.

Under capitalism, a profit must be had in order for firms to survive and to keep the system alive. The rate of profit tends to fall, as Marx proved. To combat this, since the dawn of neoliberalism, capitalists have tried to continually increase efficiency/production while keeping wages low as possible. For this to sustain itself, there must be ceaseless production and unlimited exploitation of resources. Oil must continually be pumped out, trees must continually be cut down, and at ever-increasing rates.

As it has been shown by insurmountable science, this process is killing the planet. We also have a limited amount of certain resources on this planet (many of which are being used in military equipment). These opposing truths (profit vs environment) form a contradiction. A limited environment can not withstand unlimited exploitation. All contradictions tend toward resolution. It’s just matter of how.

2. Contradiction between the socialized means of production and private ownership.

When capitalism was brought forth, it did do some good things. One of these was to socialize the means of production, which is to bring multiple workers around the means of production for a common goal. From a labor standpoint, this was the democratization of the means of production — multiple sources of labor-value coming together to produce commodities.

Private ownership dictates that one person or a small group controls these socialized means of production and the commodities produced. While the workers produce commodities and input their labor-power into production, these parties often do not. What results is the anarchy of production, where capitalists get to decide what happens with the commodities. Couple this with the market system, and this results in crises, like overproduction, underproduction, underconsumption, and more, because there are no democratic inputs from the rest of society (due to private ownership and the poor resource allocation methods of the free market). This is a contradiction.

So, there you go. Two examples to chew on.

[johnercek]

I was hoping for more concrete examples of contradictions in our current economic existence so that the intangible could be more easily be acknowledged as tangible. IE the NAIRU is probably the best example of this and I'm hoping someone can identify others (deflation perhaps)

[ashtongraves]

Hi Paul, love the videos and I think this series is a super useful resource I can share with my friends who want to learn more about socialism. I do have one question though, isn't the process of reform antagonistic in that the working class is still organizing, striking, holding protests etc? Or how exactly does a ml perspective account for how the working class was able to grow in power through Social Democratic movements in the west?

[tathagatsingh]

So meta yet so concrete (a contradiction?) at the same time. Really needed to see this video. Thank you, Paul❤️.

[alex_graham]

This series is awesome! Can't wait to show it off to my friends!

[scottishproletarian]

Sure why not I'll leave a comment

[ChipsNsalsita]

For the algorithm! I'll leave a better comment after I've watched😁

[thomasgalvao]

You never disappoint. Such a great source of inspiration and knowledge. Thanks for that! :)