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.
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.