• @roastpotatothief
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    12 years ago

    I’m not a Maoist. But it’s always interesting to learn new perspectives. What’s a dialectical contradiction?

    • @donaloc
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      12 years ago

      It’s very hard to explain in even a long comment. There are also different ways of conceiving them - basically and extremely TLDR they are fundamental (material/social) contradictions in a process of self-development. Mao wrote a book ‘on contradiction’ which is worth reading but his dialectics has certainly been subject to criticism as it can be quite mechanical and also his explanation of development involving contradictions is quite simplistic - it has been said that he was influenced by the historic Chinese dialectical tradition. The classic texts on idealistic dialectics (not counting Aristotle) would be by Hegel (most obviously the Phenomenologie der Geist or Logik but anything of his is full of it). These are not the right place to start however, and I would suggedt reading but not relying upon an introductory text before checking out Lenin who wrote some great stuff on it too. Perhaps the best materialistic dialectical book is Kapital vol 1 by Marx. There’s a huge amount more I could say here but will end it now.

      • @roastpotatothief
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        22 years ago

        From some quick research this seems to be the kernel

        Something is either A or not A; there is no third. sweet, not sweet? green, not green? The determination should lead to determinateness, but in this triviality it leads to nothing.

        it is said that there is no third. There is a third in this thesis itself. A itself is the third, for A can be both + A and - A.

        Every concrete thing, every concrete something, stands in multifarious and often contradictory relations to everything else, ergo it is itself and some other.

        Is that it, or close enough?