The Main Aspect of the Main Contradiction here ♦ Another Comrade Comments here ♦
October 1–Nearly 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) are on strike against US East and Gulf Coast ports, choking off the flow of many of America’s imports and exports in what could become the country’s most disruptive work stoppage in decades.
The Main Aspect of the Main Contradiction
The last Red Flag said that the main contradiction driving world events is inter-imperialist rivalry, especially the sharpening fight between the US/NATO vs China-Russia-Iran.
This is true, but one-sided. It’s more accurate to say that the main aspect of the main contradiction that is driving events is the rivalry between the imperialists. The main (or fundamental) contradiction in capitalism is the contradiction between the workers and the bosses. Now, the fight between the imperialist bosses over the exploitation of workers is driving events.
But we must understand the relationship between the inter-imperialist rivalry and the exploitation of the working class. Workers, especially industrial workers, are at the very heart of the contradiction between the imperialist bosses and the masses.
The Boeing strike makes this clear. Is our message to Boeing strikers and other workers that they should oppose the genocidal war in Gaza? That’s part of it. Or is our message that we need to end wage slavery with communist revolution? That’s part of it.
What is the source of imperialism and imperialist war and genocide? It is deadly competition for maximum profit—inherent in capitalism. But maximum profits are only extracted from the working class—through wage slavery. The wage system is the source of exploitation and profit. As the rulers unleash their imperialist wars, they must attack the working class harder.
We cannot and should not separate Boeing the Warmaker and Boeing the Exploiter. They go together. We aren’t liberals calling on workers to demand a cease fire in Gaza. We are communists mobilizing the workers and broad masses, including students and teachers, for communist revolution to end capitalism with its imperialism and wage slavery.
That’s why I think it’s much more useful to say that the main contradiction in the world is between the workers and the bosses, and the main aspect of that contradiction today is the inter imperialist rivalry.
The old communist movement (including Marx himself) backed away from Marx’s goal, “Abolish the Wage System.” They fought for socialism, which kept wages, money and banks. We need to put the fight to abolish the wage system front and center and show that only communism, eliminating wage slavery and commodity production, can free the masses.
The fight to eliminate the wage system and imperialist war is the same fight for communism. Imperialist war is an attack on the working class. It sharpens all other attacks on the working class.
The communist working class and communist soldiers, in the heart of this contradiction, are key to giving leadership to the masses to bury capitalism with communist revolution and to build communism.
It’s no accident that the two major revolutions took place either during or after world wars, when the inter-imperialist rivalry was sharpest, the attack on the masses was sharpest, and their revolutionary mobilization was at its high point. So, it’s more accurate to talk about the main aspect of the main contradiction. We are fighting to turn the main aspect of the main contradiction to that between the workers and the bosses. And to resolve it by destroying the bosses’ rule for good.
I know there is disagreement with this in the party. I welcome the discussion.
—A Comrade
Comments on the “Main Aspect of the Main Contradiction”
Inter-imperialist rivalry is a network of overlapping contradictions, and the two sides of each of them are imperialist powers. The network tends to simplify to a single contradiction by various players making alliances.
The current alliances seem to be US, UK, EU, Israel, Japan, Australia, and minor players versus China, Russia, Iran, and minor players. Each side of this big contradiction could be called an aspect of it but calling them sides is simpler.
Most contradictions have a dominant side, and that side can shift over time. In Mao Zedong’s terminology, the dominant side is called the main aspect. The main aspect is a side of a contradiction, not a contradiction itself. I think the US side is the side which is currently dominant.
The main contradiction is the one that currently has the biggest effect. In my opinion, the contradiction that currently has the biggest effect in the world capitalist system is the contradiction between the two groups of imperial powers mentioned above.
Besides this current main contradiction, capitalism always has an active contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class. That fundamental contradiction is part of the nature of capitalism.
The distinction between the main contradiction and other contradictions is important. The danger in focusing on the main contradiction is that people may ignore the other contradictions. Some of these may be powerful or growing in strength.
For years I have heard people describe sexism as a secondary contradiction among the masses—compared to racism—and then decide that sexism can be ignored. This is especially wrong because sexism and racism are tangled up with each other. It is vital to pay attention to all contradictions that can affect what you are trying to understand and to change.
The fundamental contradiction between the working class and the capitalists is now having large and growing effects, including effects on the main inter-imperialist contradiction. In several countries there are vocal movements against arming Israel. But these movements are not currently strong enough to have much effect. Thus they are not part of the main contradiction, although they have some effect on it.
The slogan “We cannot and should not separate Boeing the Warmaker and Boeing the Exploiter” makes the point that the fundamental contradiction of capitalism should be an important theme of our work around the Boeing strike. This is political preparation for a future in which the working class is strong enough to make the main contradiction shift from imperial rivalry to working class versus capitalist class. We are now quite a way from that shift, in my view.
I think it’s right to try to bring out the relevance of communist revolution to the strike by emphasizing both Boeing’s role in the imperialist contradiction and in the fundamental contradiction. But the struggle of the imperialists is still the main contradiction for now.
—Another comrade
Read more about the communist philosophy of dialectical materialism here