the principal contradiction

by torkil lauesen, kersplebedeb 2020

1: the roots of dialectical materialism
  • how does the world 'act'? this is the question dialectical materialism asks.
  • how do we know how the world 'acts'? knowledge about the world gleaned from practice, plus abstraction from this to general laws.
  • where does marx enter the picture? dialectics had existed in philosphy in greece, india and china from the time of the earliest written records of philosphy. hegel employed a 'mystical' type of dialectics that marx turned to his own purposes. for marx dialectical materialism is history as motion, change and interconnection. he never wrote a guide to dialectical materialism, but his work, capital in particular, is an example of its application to the study of history.
  • sources lauesen mentions: "the order of things" by foucault, "historical materialism" by bukharin, "history and class consciousness" by lukacs, mao on the hunan peasant movement, marx's capital, ai siqi.
2: the world according to dialectical materialism
  • knowledge about the world comes from different types of practice.
  • immediate observation accumulates and makes a leap into knowledge of concepts. these concepts in turn must be tested by practice, collectively.
  • to the materialist worldview, 'matter' is anything that exists independent of human consciousness, including concepts and relationships, such as 'value' and 'exploitation.'
  • practice happens on the basis of our udnerstanding of the world - 'the world in itself' vs 'the world for us.' dialectical materialism is one way among many of trying ot make our mental copy of the world sharper and closer to the way it actually is.
  • 'the conditions under which we live and work impact the way we think'
  • as a science of social change and human agency, dialectics implies a relationship between structures and individual acts, subjective and objective. both interact with one another to produce change.
  • matter (see the earlier definition) evolves according to laws, and dialectical materialism summarizes these laws, but dialectics cannot replace these fields by itself. its just a way of looking at things.
  • what is it as a way of looking at things, specifically? what are the methodological rules for dialectical materialism? lauesen presents four
    1. all things are connected, everything has and is cause and effect. the contradictions of a thing are the basis for its development, and external factors interact with internal ones. using the example of an ecomomy, global factors (commodity prices, technological change, political shifts) interact with local ones, and must be understood in order to grasp local development.
    2. matter is in constant motion, and development of things can and must be studied. there are laws which can be discovered which explain the development of phenomena with precision.
    3. historical change happens in qualitative leaps following quantitative changes.
    4. development of matter originates in contradictions internal to itself, not relationships with other matter. 'a thing is defined by its contradictions.'
  • contradiction has two aspects, which exclude and require one another. use value and exchange value, or forces and relations of production are examples from capital.
  • the outcome of social contradictions can never be determined in advance. (hmm)
  • the struggle and unity of the aspects of a contradiction define its form.
  • particular contradictions must be analyzed in detail and related to others in order to be well understood. practice aimed at overcoming contradictions must follow and expand the investigation of those contradictions.
  • for every contradiction we must study which aspect is on the offensive, how the mutual dependency of the aspects of the contradiction is expressed, etc.
  • lauesen introduces the idea of the 'principal contradiction' here. at any given time in the history of global capitalism, one contradiction in particular influences all the others, and in turn is influenced to a lesser extent by other contradictions etc. since 1500 several principal contradictions have succeeded one another.
  • lauesen makes the point that there is only one principal contradiction and its not inevitable that we figure out what it is or make the right decisions once we do. to demonstrate what happens when you draw the wrong conclusions and mis-identify the primary contradiction, he discusses the sino-soviet split and the dramatic mistakes different communist parties/states made after making one mistake or another relating to the split. page 46 in the book.
  • in investigating a contradiction, we have to figure out what the two aspects of the contradiction are and which one is dominant, and how they are united with one another and how they struggle against one another. analysis includes and mainly relies on activity, attempts to understand and change the world as we know it.
  • lauesen also discusses warfare, and how clausewitz and mao present a theory of warfare as a working out of contradictions - politics by other means.
III: the principal contradiction in the world
  • lauesen presents a brief history of global capitalism as a series of succeeding contradictions
  • capitalism is a worldwide system with an international division of labor, and a single contradiction pushing its development forward at any one time.
  • what are these past contradictions?
  • capitalism becan in NW europe, building on prior systems of exchange and production pioneered in the mediterranean.
  • brutal medievel warfare prepared european societies to conquer others and pillage them, which provided infusions of wealth that made greater levels of investment possible.
  • during this time europe went from a peripheral part of the world system to its center.
  • england, as the first capitalist/industrial nation, faced an underconsumption crisis and a crisis of profitability after its initial stage of industrialization. colonialism, to secure new markets, new sources of investment, and defuse class tensions over property at home, was the solution.
  • within the system of colonialism, new contradictions emerged; those between colonial powers and colonized people, and between settlers and metropoles.
  • a social compact between labor and capital emerged in england/the west generally but the compact depended on profits from colonial exploitation
  • the scramble for colonies created new contradictions, which resulted in wars as predicted by lenin and others. the bolshevik revolution and the emergence of the CPC were enabled in part by these contradictions.
  • 68-82, discussion of contradictions prior to the end of ww2
  • 82-99, us contradictions with the rest of the world following ww2, including the imperialism-anti imperialism contradiction which dominated the postwar period.
  • 99-112 contradiction emerges between capital and the state in the late 70's. capital has always needed the state but hates regulations and welfare (unified with respect to force, struggling with respect to regulation, the need for social peace to guarantee production etc). the 30's-50's welfare era begins unraveling in the late 70s.
  • the neoliberal era also saw capitalism re-establish itself by integrating third world and socialist economies into itself again. establishment of global value chains as well.
  • 103 "the principal contradiction in neoliberalism is that between transnational capital and the nation-state" and 108 "the contradiction between neoliberalism and nationalist governments has been the worlds principal contradiction since the financial crisis of 2008"
  • resistance to neoliberalism in the global north, the other side of the contradiction, was left-wing but is now mostly right-wing, and tied to anti-immigrant sentiment. trump, orban, le pen, johnson etc.
  • this reaction creates problems for the smooth functioning of capitalism at a global level, like the deeply stupid trade war between china and the us, or the knee-jerk drive to relocate production back in the us.
  • 111 kind of extraordinary claim: "both right-wing and left-wing populism are in opposition to neoliberalism, global production chains, and transntaional institutions"
  • other contradictions are present and rising, like the contradiction between the whole system of production and the climate, or the contradiction between china and the us.
  • sources: wallerstein "the modern world system"
IV: strategy
  • there is no predetermined outcome. dialectics urges us to focus on contradictions, but how effeciently we intervene in something is another question entirely.
  • the goal of dialectical materialist analysis is to identify the principal contradiction and the progressive side within it.
  • lauesen lays out how his own group evaluated the world in the 70s and made their political decisions based on identifying imperialism and anti-imperialism as the principal contradiction, and then acted on it by supporting anti-imperialist movements.
  • his group missed the emergence of neoliberalism and did not anticipate the end of the anti-imperialist movement in the 80s.
  • "the conflict between capital and the national working classes is far from over." any struggle in the core has to be fought with ..... The Global Perspective
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Pub: 21 Oct 2020 04:45 UTC
Views: 838