Negation of the Contradiction

 “The Principal Contradiction,” by Torkil Lauesen, 2020

If you thought this book is about dialectics or dialectical materialism, you’d be wrong.  While nodding to some of the terms and a bit of their history, it is mostly a repetition of various Maoist positions or an attempted extension of Mao’s ideas in his work “On Contradiction.’ 

The 1927 slaughter of Communists in Shanghai by the nationalists in the Kuomintang followed the USSR’s order to Mao that he form an alliance with the Kuomintang.  The Kuomintang was even inducted into the Comintern!  Instead after this disaster Mao oriented towards the massive Chinese peasantry.  Lauesen explains that the ‘principal contradiction’ in China changed to being between the peasants and landlords, according to Mao, not between workers and capitalists.  The Chinese bourgeoisie became a ‘secondary contradiction,’ though prior to this it was the main 'contradiction' to the working-class.  We know Mao supported ‘new democracy’ in 1949 – a popular front block with a wing of the Chinese bourgeoisie.  Lauesen doesn't say when that stopped being the ‘secondary contradiction.'  The word ‘contradiction’ used in this sense seems to be a fancy way of saying ‘opposing enemies’ or historical conflicts between two discrete things.

This is one of the problems in the book.  Mao’s denunciation of the USSR in 1964 as ‘capitalist’ and his 1971 block with U.S. imperialism against the USSR is never explained in the book, although now Lauesen realizes this was a vast mistake.  How did the Helmsman get it so wrong?  This was the largest split in the global class war in history, a foolish and pro-imperialist version of Lenin's split with patriotic Social Democracy in 1914. Lauesen goes on to state that Engels was wrong as to the applicability of dialectics to natural phenomena, a position also taken by Lukacs.  Yet Marx understood the connection between capital and its degrading effects on nature, as humans are part of nature.  This conflict is internal to human existence.  Lauesen's position is contradicted by Lauesen’s and Mao’s own use of natural examples of dialectics.  Lauesen even cites Niels Bohr on his use of dialectics.   Or as Engels put it:

"Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst..."

Lauesen’s description of Mao’s work On Contradiction is opaque, except for praise, so there is no light shed there.  Lauesen never explains how struggle against a ruling clique in a post-revolutionary society is ‘class’ struggle, not an anti-bureaucratic struggle.  How did a new capitalist ruling class suddenly emerge? When was the counter-revolution?  A 1956 Khrushchev speech?  A 1979 Deng speech? How did a new phase of capital – state capitalism (a new contradiction?) suddenly appear unbeknownst to Marx, Engels or Lenin?  Is this ‘dialectics’ or something else?  Lauesen states it as a fact only.

Many writers have pointed out that Mao’s idea of dialectics is not Marx or Hegel’s.  Dialectics is the scientific and essential logic of development, not a political program or practical or theoretical advice, not just a description of opposing sides.  ‘Contradiction’ in this sense is within a ‘thing’ or process.  For instance a commodity under capitalism has both use-value and exchange-value, but it is merely an apparition in a store window until it realizes its exchange value when sold.  The contradiction exists within it.  Just as capital is socially produced but privately appropriated - internal to the process. Or humanity is part of nature, not outside it.  Or the Chinese Communist Party before 1949 when it ostensibly represented the working-class.  But it was overwhelmingly based on the peasantry, included a nascent bureaucracy and in alliance with a ‘patriotic bourgeoisie.’ The CCP itself contained contradictions!   

The triad 'thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis' is not used by Lauesen in this context.  This triad is not derived from Hegel but was used occasionally by Marx.  These terms usually refer to a combat of ideas, though if used to describe historical conflict or class conflict, this might unsettle the winner! See this essay on the difference between the dialectical use and the more common use of words like ‘contradiction’:  A. Wolf Compares Marx-Hegel to Mao on Dialectics

So what is the mysterious ‘principal contradiction’ now, according to Lauesen?  It is ‘catastrophes’ - war, including nuclear war; environmental destruction and pandemics.  How this conclusion is about dialectics is beyond me.  These seem to be obvious problems created by the capital system, though he left out growing fascism, economic contraction and inequality.  You don’t have to be a dialectician to come up with this.  Lauesen goes on describing capitalist history, war and the present conditions of U.S. global hegemony.  None of this seems new.  Like Samir Amin, he thinks that ‘nationalism’ will restrain imperial corporate capital and a new Bandung will arise. The few states opposing the U.S. might wish that but the reality is that imperialism’s reach is far broader now than in 1955 or 1961. 

At any rate, at best a basic practical guide on how Mao thought politically, but not about Marxist dialectics. 

Prior blog reviews on this subject:  “Maoism and the Chinese Revolution,” “China’s New Red Guards,” “The Communist Necessity,” “Reason in Revolt.”  

P.S. – I urge readers to become a follower of this blog, so you’ll be able to read reviews as they happen.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

October 27, 2020