Another essay from the Selected works of Mao Zedong- August 1937 

First off, the marxist use of contradiction needs to be understood as ‘opposing natures that are interconnected and interrelated’; not as ‘mutually exclusive statements or states’, as defined in the law of non-contradiction. We use the verb to contradict, as meaning to deny a truth by asserting the opposite, which is closer to the Marxist usage. It is an opposite, but in the sense of a flip side of a coin… maybe that’s a better way to understand it. Mao gives some examples that clarify: advance and retreat during war. One side advances, while the other retreats. Those are both opposite natures, but there is no advance without the other retreating. Now Mao (along with Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, so he claims) insists that this discovery of Marx is the universal truth of everything, so that literally nothing exists without it. The main point is that we aren’t to look at things as static, but constantly in motion.  

Mao lists 6 philosophical problems that need to be clarified in order to come to a fundamental understanding of materialist dialectics. 

1 There are two outlooks: the metaphysical and dialectical conceptions of the world 

The metaphysical outlook is idealist and sees the things as isolated, static, and one-sided. It sees the universe and its components as eternally isolated from each other and immutable. Movement is created from external forces. 

The dialectical materialist conception is to understand a thing in relation to other things, since each thing is interrelated and interacts with the things around it. The fundamental cause of movement isn’t external, but internal contradictions (opposing natures) within the thing. These contradictions are also the fundamental cause of its development. Changes in the nature of the thing are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society. 

2 The universality of contradiction 

There is nothing that does not contain contradiction, and without contradiction, nothing would exist. Life consists precisely and primarily in that a being is at each moment itself, and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves. 

3 The particularity of contradiction 

While all things have contradictions, each form of motion has its particular contradiction. Mao lists several examples: positive and negative numbers in math, action and reaction in physics, dissociation and combination in chemistry, forces of production and relations of production in social sciences, offense and defense in military sciences, etc. The main point is to identify the particular contradictions of the thing studied so that it can be understood. 

4 The principle contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction 

There can be many contradictions in the process of development of a thing, but there will be a principal contradiction whose existence and development determine the influence and existence of the other contradictions. Mao gives the example of capitalist society: the proletariat and bourgeoisie form the principal contradiction. Other contradictions between the remnant feudal class and the bourgeoisie, between the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie, etc are all determined by the principal contradiction. In any complex situation where there are many contradictions, every effort must be made to determine the principal contradiction. Once that is identified, all problems can be readily solved. 

Every contradiction is made up of two contradictory aspects, which are uneven. The nature of a thing is going to be made up primarily of the principal aspect of a contradiction- the aspect which has gained the dominant position. 

5 The identity and struggle of the aspects of a contradiction 

The contradictory aspects  in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other, and are in opposition to one another. But no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation: without the opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. So each is the condition for the other’s existence, and this is the first meaning of identity. The second, and more important meaning is their transformation into each other. 

“Under socialism, private peasant ownership is transformed into the public ownership of socialist agriculture; this has already taken place in the Soviet Union and will take place everywhere else. There is a bridge leading from private property to public property, which in philosophy is called identity, or transformation into each other, or interpenetration. 

“To consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the people is in fact to prepare the conditions for abolishing this dictatorship and advancing to the higher stage when all state systems are eliminated.” 

All contradictory things are interconnected and transform themselves into each other. This is just how things are in objective reality. But the identity of opposites only exists in necessary given conditions. 

6 The place of antagonism in contradiction 

Antagonism is one form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites. Before a bomb explodes, it is a single entity in which the opposites coexist in given conditions. The explosion takes place only when a new condition- ignition, is present. 

“It is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power. Social revolution is not only entirely necessary but also entirely practicable, and the whole history of mankind and the triumph of the Soviet Union have confirmed this scientific truth.” 

Mao writes this: “At present, the contradiction between correct and incorrect thinking in our party does not manifest itself in antagonistic form, and if comrades who have committed mistakes can correct them, it will not develop into antagonism. Therefore the Party must on the one hand wage a serious struggle against erroneous thinking, and on the other give the comrades who have committed errors ample opportunity to wake up.” 

Dave Notes: 

I’m not convinced the Marxist materialist dialectic is all that useful. I feel like Mao’s characterization of its opposite is a caricatured straw-man version in general, and probably inapplicable in many instances. In other words, the opposite side isn’t really so one-sided as is portrayed by the worshippers of Marx. 

But even granting the premises for a moment: they state that contradictions are inherent and nothing exists without contradiction. But then seem to be looking forward to a communist utopia where no contradictions exist. Perhaps I’m reading this incorrectly, but that’s a logical contradiction. 

Also, while Mao occasionally gives some examples of how this works, some of the examples he gives seem like real stretches, and most of his examples are Marx’s assertions about contradictions in capitalist society. 

 But in the last section I note the ominous statements about comrades who have committed incorrect thinking, which if persisted in, would necessitate the Party engaging in a serious struggle against them. 

This runs into one of the core necessities of any totalitarian system: the necessity for one person to decide what exactly counts as orthodoxy. This is NOT a democratic system. Communists don’t vote about what will be official policy. As Mao makes clear, there is right thinking, and the rest is wrong thinking. But given that any two people will disagree over some things, these totalitarian systems always come down to needing one person, or at most, a very small group of people, to make the decision on what exactly is going to count as orthodoxy. The outside opinions are then going to be considered heterodox and wrong thinking. And as we can see from Mao’s writing here: such wrong thinking will have to be seriously purged from the party.