III. THE PARTICULARITY OF CONTRADICTION - 7
Marx and Engels were the first to provide us with excellent models
of such concrete analysis.
When Marx and Engels applied the law of contradiction in things to
the study of the socio-historical process, they discovered the contradiction
between the productive forces and the relations of production, they discovered
the contradiction between the exploiting and exploited classes and also the
resultant contradiction between the economic base and its superstructure
(politics, ideology, etc.), and they discovered how these contradictions
inevitably lead to different kinds of social revolution in different kinds of
class society.
When Marx applied this law to the study of the economic structure
of capitalist society, he discovered that the basic contradiction of this
society is the contradiction between the social character of production and the
private character of ownership. This contradiction manifests itself in the
contradiction between the organized character of production in individual
enterprises and the anarchic character of production in society as a whole. In
terms of class relations, it manifests itself in the contradiction between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Because the range of things is vast and there is no limit to their
development, what is universal in one context becomes particular in another.
Conversely, what is particular in one context becomes universal in another. The
contradiction in the capitalist system between the social character of
production and the private ownership of the means of production is common to
all countries where capitalism exists and develops; as far as capitalism is
concerned, this constitutes the universality of contradiction. But this
contradiction of capitalism belongs only to a certain historical stage in the
general development of class society; as far as the contradiction between the
productive forces and the relations of production in class society as a whole
is concerned, it constitutes the particularity of contradiction. However, in
the course of dissecting the particularity of all these contradictions in
capitalist society, Marx gave a still more profound, more adequate and more
complete elucidation of the universality of the contradiction between the
productive forces and the relations of production in class society in general.
Since the particular is united with the universal and since the
universality as well as the particularity of contradiction is inherent in
everything, universality residing in particularity, we should, when studying an
object, try to discover both the particular and the universal and their
interconnection, to discover both particularity and universality and also their
interconnection within the object itself, and to discover the interconnections
of this object with the many objects outside it. When Stalin explained the
historical roots of Leninism in his famous work, The Foundations of
Leninism, he analysed the international situation in which
Leninism arose, analysed those contradictions of capitalism which reached their
culmination under imperialism, and showed how these contradictions made
proletarian revolution a matter for immediate action and created favourable
conditions for a direct onslaught on capitalism. What is more, he analysed the
reasons why Russia became the cradle of Leninism, why tsarist Russia became the
focus of all the contradictions of imperialism, and why it was possible for the
Russian proletariat to become the vanguard of the international revolutionary
proletariat. Thus, Stalin analysed the universality of contradiction in
imperialism, showing why Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and
proletarian revolution, and at the same time analysed the particularity of
tsarist Russian imperialism within this general contradiction, showing why
Russia became the birthplace of the theory and tactics of proletarian
revolution and how the universality of contradiction is contained in this
particularity. Stalin's analysis provides us with a model for understanding the
particularity and the universality of contradiction and their interconnection.
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