Negotiated Contradictions

Abstract

One of the great achievements of Marxist thinking lies in identifying the class struggle as the principal contradiction of the capitalist system, which the dominant forces who benefit from it are the first to want to hide. It was not the mere existence of class struggle, which was hardly new to capitalism, but rather the nature of the class struggle within capitalism, its potential to not only be its 'gravedigger', but the midwife of a classless social order, that Marx insisted was significant. But the significance of class struggle for Marx was not, in fact, limited to its transformative potential alone. Indeed, when Marx identified as contradictions the imbalances, incoherencies and inconsistencies between means and mediations in the capitalist system, he identified them in terms of their being expressed in and through class struggles--including struggles that took place within, as well as between, classes. Contradictions seem more humane when they are considered as struggles, since when they are only seen as imbalances, incoherencies or inconsistencies, they almost always evoke natural or technical determinations. Protagonists, and social actors generally, stand out more clearly in the perspective of struggles, whereas to speak of contradictions without this is to suggest reified forces, whether expressed as currents and flows, or as factors and variables. But it is also very important to be able to distinguish between those struggles/contradictions that are system transforming and those that are not. Especially given the proven capacity of capitalism, from Marx's time to ours, to reproduce itself with a greater degree of viability than is recognized by any voluntarist or determinist theory of change, we need to retain the notion of contradiction to understand, not only the crises, but also the dynamics of capitalist reproduction and extension (including through crises), and the way these are expressed in class struggles that do not necessarily entail the end of the system, much less its desirable transition into a classless society, as a probable or imminent event.