I was recently in a conversation with a self-described MagaCommunist who held the position that the primary contradiction in the USA was that the financial owning class owned all of the means of production and that the contradictions of settler colonialism were secondary and could only be resolved through a workers’ state.
I realized that I hold the position that settler colonialism is the primary contradiction in the USA, but I also found that I struggled to articulate it effectively. I’m looking for your own thoughts or writings that I can study to learn more on this topic.
I don’t understand the word ‘contradiction’, doesn’t that mean something is impossible?
Not really.
It means there’s two opposite sides to an issue. If I destroy one side, the contradiction goes away. E.g. I take the monarchy and lop their heads off -> feudalism gone.
In this context it is a reference to dialectical thinking, specifically dialectical materialism, where we say there are two opposing forces in order to understand a situation. If we are right that these forces are in opposition and struggle against one another, our insights from this framing will be more correct. For example, imagine an ice cube in a freezer. If we open the door of the freezer, the ice cube might stary to melt, but this really depends on the dynamics of opposing forces: those tending to heat the cube, namely the ambient air, and those tending to cool the cube, namely the compressor and how active it is. If the room is nearly at freezing already (tendency to heat is weak) and the compressor fairly strong, the ice cube won’t melt. But we can imagine other scenarios where it might start melting. This is the usefulness of dialectical thinking, you can think of situations in terms of how they are changing based on where they are now and how they function.
Socialists are concerned with dialectical situations like class struggle or imperialism.
For primary vs. secondary, this isn’t much more thsn just saying one of the dialectical situations is the most important, it has so much more impact tjat if even determines the others. This is not always a useful way of thinking, but you can think of it as thinking of the dialectics between dialectical situations.
The ice cube metaphor is good, but better framed as follows:
I want ice. to get ice I need to reduce the temp. To reduce the temp, I need a compressor. To run the compressor I need to raise the temp.
To lower the temp I need to raise the temp is a contradiction. That contradiction, on the larger scale plays out in global warming. I need lower temps. So I run AC, which raises the temp, generating more demand for ACs to lower the temp which raises the temp. A contradiction.
In both cases, you can’t solve your issue by continuing to invest in the contradiction, you have to break out of the contradiction.
That’s a good framing for diamat, since it involves social action constrained by material forces. Mine was more of dialectics that happens to have a materialist situation.
In terms of breaking the contradiction, what we are usually after is a negation of the contradiction in favor of our desired outcome, done by positioning ourselves on one side of the opposition between bourgeoisie and proletariat (or global north vs south, etc).
Struggling to figure out if you’re running into the 2-into-1 vs 1-into-2 debate. Are you saying the 2 things in the contradiction resolve when one destroys the other?
There are often two negations considered. One is when one of the opposing elements seemingly “wins”, but we must acknowledge that elements of the other remain. The other is when the other has effectively been erased. In terms of socialist thought we can see examples of the first in revolution, dotp, the ruled becoming rulers, etc, but capitalist aspects will of course remain. Socialism negates capitalism in the first sense. The second kind would result from longer struggle, e.g. achieving communism. They are very similar in concept, but useful to think about.
The 1-to-2 and 2-to-1 concepts are very relevant but I was just referring to dialectics’ version of a resolution of contradiction - though of course it is less of a resolution than a transformation.
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Contradiction let me know if it helps because if it doesn’t it means we need to rewrite it
Contradictions are “impossible” in combinatorial logic. In combinatorial logic, the output of a logical formula is determined entirely by the inputs. For example
True = (false) OR (true)
In such a formula, the output of a “contradiction” is always false, regardless of the input. The classical example of a contradiction is
(A) and (not A)
Which always outputs false, in combinatorial logic. Combinatorial logic is not the most advanced form of logic available in maths. It is infact the most basic with the least computing power, and virtually every computation ever performed is at the bare minimum a sequential logic.
In sequential logic, we introduce memory, or time. In sequential logic, contradictions are not only “possible”, but extensively used. The most famous such contradiction is
0 = 1
Which in sequential logic produces a square wave oscillation. Basically, if you were to create an electrical circuit to compute 0=1, the circuit would oscillate between 1 and 0, thereby creating an oscillator. This is infact how digital clocks are created!
This is very similar to how contradictions are used in dialectics. They act as “motors” which produce a time or progression effect. Basically, a society without contradictions will have no movement. In human societies, class contradictions are the primary contradictions which dominate the progression of the society.
You should note that Marx and Engels were not aware of sequential logic, so they would have explained things differently.
Wow thanks that makes perfect sense!!