The Laws of Development
Maurice Cornforth
8. The Laws of Development
To understand development we must understand the distinction between quantitative change—increase and decrease—and qualitative change—the passing into a new state, the emergence of something new.
Quantitative change always leads at a certain critical point to qualitative change. And similarly qualitative differences and qualitative changes always rest on quantitative differences and quantitative changes.
Development must be understood, therefore, not as a simple process of growth but as a process which passes from quantitative changes to open, fundamental qualitative changes.
Further, this transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes takes place as a result of the conflict or struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of the contradictions inherent in all things and processes.
The Marxist dialectical method, therefore, teaches us to understand processes of development in terms of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes, and to seek the grounds and the explanation of such development in the unity and struggle of opposites.
What Do We Mean by “Development”?
In stressing the need to study real processes in their movement and in all their interconnections, Stalin pointed out that in the processes of nature and history there is always “renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing and something always disintegrating and dying away.”[51] When that which is arising and developing comes to fruition, and that which is disintegrating and dying away finally disappears, there emerges something new.
For as we saw in criticizing mechanistic materialism, processes do not always keep repeating the same cycle of changes, but advance from stage to stage as something new continually emerges.
This is the real meaning of the word “development.” We speak of “development” where stage by stage something new keeps emerging.
Thus there is a difference between mere change and development. Development is change proceeding according to its own internal laws from stage to stage.
And there is equally a difference between growth and development. This difference is familiar to biologists, for example. Thus growth means getting bigger-—merely quantitative change. But development means, not getting bigger, but passing into a qualitatively new stage, becoming qualitatively different. For example, a caterpillar grows longer and fatter; then it spins itself a cocoon, and finally emerges as a butterfly. This is development. A caterpillar grows into a bigger caterpillar; it develops into a butterfly.
Processes of nature and history exemplify, not merely change, not merely growth, but development. Can we, then, reach any conclusions about the general laws of development? This is the further task of materialist dialectics—to find what general laws are manifested in all development, and to give us, therefore, the method of approach for understanding, explaining and controlling development.
Quantity and Quality: The Law of the Transformation of Quantitative into Qualitative Changes
To understand development we must understand the distinction between quantitative change—increase and decrease—and qualitative change—the passing into a new state, the emergence of something new.
Quantitative change always leads at a certain critical point to qualitative change. And similarly qualitative differences and qualitative changes always rest on quantitative differences and quantitative changes.
Development must be understood, therefore, not as a simple process of growth but as a process which passes from quantitative changes to open, fundamental qualitative changes.
Further, this transformation of quantitative into qualitative changes takes place as a result of the conflict or struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of the contradictions inherent in all things and processes.
What Do We Mean by “Development”?
In stressing the need to study real processes in their movement and in all their interconnections, Stalin pointed out that in the processes of nature and history there is always “renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing and something always disintegrating and dying away.”[51] When that which is arising and developing comes to fruition, and that which is disintegrating and dying away finally disappears, there emerges something new.
For as we saw in criticizing mechanistic materialism, processes do not always keep repeating the same cycle of changes, but advance from stage to stage as something new continually emerges.
This is the real meaning of the word “development.” We speak of “development” where stage by stage something new keeps emerging.
Thus there is a difference between mere change and development. Development is change proceeding according to its own internal laws from stage to stage.
And there is equally a difference between growth and development. This difference is familiar to biologists, for example. Thus growth means getting bigger-—merely quantitative change. But development means, not getting bigger, but passing into a qualitatively new stage, becoming qualitatively different. For example, a caterpillar grows longer and fatter; then it spins itself a cocoon, and finally emerges as a butterfly. This is development. A caterpillar grows into a bigger caterpillar; it develops into a butterfly.
Processes of nature and history exemplify, not merely change, not merely growth, but development. Can we, then, reach any conclusions about the general laws of development? This is the further task of materialist dialectics—to find what general laws are manifested in all development, and to give us, therefore, the method of approach for understanding, explaining and controlling development.
Quantity and Quality: The Law of the Transformation of Quantitative into Qualitative Changes
This brings us to the two latter features of the Marxist dialectical method, as explained by Stalin. The first of these may be called “the law of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change.” What does this mean?
All change has a quantitative aspect, that is, an aspect of mere increase or decrease which does not alter the nature of that which changes. But quantitative change, increase or decrease, cannot go on indefinitely. At a certain point it always leads to a qualitative change; and at that critical point (or “nodal point,” as Hegel called it) the qualitative change takes place relatively suddenly, by a leap, as it were.
For example, if water is being heated, it does not go on getting hotter and hotter indefinitely; at a certain critical temperature, it begins to turn into steam, undergoing a qualitative change from liquid to gas. A cord used to lift a weight may have a greater and greater load attached to it, but no cord can lift a load indefinitely great: at a certain point, the cord is bound to break. A boiler may withstand a greater and greater pressure of steam—up to the point where it bursts. A variety of plant may be subjected to a series of changes in its conditions of growth for a number of generations—for instance, to colder temperatures; the variety continues unchanged, until a point is reached when suddenly a qualitative change is induced, a change in the heredity of the plant. In this way spring wheats have been transformed into winter wheats, and vice versa, as a result of the accumulation of a series of quantitative changes.
This law of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change is also met with in society. Thus before the system of industrial capitalism comes into being there takes place a process of the accumulation of wealth in money form in a few private hands (largely by colonial plunder), and of the formation of a propertyless proletariat (by enclosures and the driving of peasants off the land). At a certain point in this process, when enough money is accumulated to provide capital for industrial undertakings, when enough people have been proletarianized to provide the labor required, the conditions have matured for the development of industrial capitalism. At this point an accumulation of quantitative changes gives rise to a new qualitative stage in the development of society.
In general, qualitative changes happen with relative suddenness—by a leap. Something new is suddenly born, though its potentiality was already contained in the gradual evolutionary process of continuous quantitative change which went before.
Thus we find that continuous, gradual quantitative change leads at a certain point to discontinuous, sudden qualitative change. We have already remarked in an earlier chapter that most of those who have considered the laws of development in nature and society have conceived of this development only in its continuous aspect. This means that they have considered it only from the aspect of a process of growth, of quantitative change, and have not considered its qualitative aspect, the fact that at a certain point in the gradual process of growth a new quality suddenly arises, a transformation takes place.
Yet this is what always happens. If you are boiling a kettle, the water suddenly begins to boil when boiling point is reached. If you are scrambling eggs, the mixture in the pan suddenly “scrambles.” And it is the same if you are engaged in changing society. We will only change capitalist society into socialist society when the rule of one class is replaced by the rule of another class—and this is a radical transformation, a leap to a new state of society, a revolution.
If, on the other hand, we consider quality itself, then qualitative change always arises as a result of an accumulation of quantitative changes, and differences in quality have their basis in differences of quantity.
Thus just as quantitative change must at a certain point give rise to qualitative change, so if we wish to bring about qualitative change we must study its quantitative basis, and know what must be increased and what diminished if the required change is to be brought about.
Natural science teaches us how purely quantitative difference—addition or subtraction—makes a qualitative difference in nature. For example, the addition of one proton in the nucleus of an atom makes the transition from one element to another.[52] The atoms of all the elements are formed out of combinations of the same protons and electrons, but a purely quantitative difference between the numbers combined in the atom gives different kinds of atoms, atoms of different elements with different chemical properties. Thus an atom consisting of one proton and one electron is a hydrogen atom, but if another proton and another electron are added it is an atom of helium, and so on. Similarly in chemical compounds, the addition of one atom to a molecule makes the difference between substances with different chemical properties. In general, different qualities have their basis in quantitative difference.
As Engels put it:
“In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion....
“All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned.”[53]
This feature of the dialectical law connecting quality and quantity is familiar to readers of the popular literature about atomic bombs. To make a uranium bomb it is necessary to have the isotope, uranium-235; the more common isotope, uranium-238, will not do. The difference between these two is merely quantitative, a difference in atomic weight, depending on the number of neutrons present in each case. But this quantitative difference of atomic weight, 235 and 238, makes the qualitative difference between a substance with the properties required for the bomb and a substance without those properties. Further, having got a quantity of uranium-235, a certain “critical mass” of it is required before it will explode. If there is not enough, the chain reaction which constitutes the explosion will not occur; when the “critical mass” is reached, the reaction does occur.
Thus we see that quantitative changes are transformed at a certain point into qualitative changes, and qualitative differences rest on quantitative differences. This is a universal feature of development. What makes such development happen?
Development Takes Place Through the Unity and Struggle of Opposites
In general, the reason why in any particular case a quantitative change leads to a qualitative change lies in the very nature, in the content, of the particular processes involved. Therefore in each case we can, if we only know enough, explain just why a qualitative change is inevitable, and why it takes place at the point it does.
To explain this we have to study the facts of the case. We cannot invent an explanation with the aid of dialectics alone; where an understanding of dialectics helps is that it gives us the clue as to where to look. In a particular case we may not yet know how and why the change takes place. In that case we have the task of finding out, by investigating the facts of the case. For there is nothing unknowable, no essential mystery or secret of development, of the emergence of the qualitatively new.
Let us consider, for example, the case of the qualitative change which takes place when water boils.
When heat is applied to a mass of water contained in a kettle, then the effect is to increase the motion of the molecules composing the water. So long as the water remains in its liquid state, the forces of attraction between the molecules are sufficient to insure that, though some of the surface molecules are continually escaping, the whole mass coheres together as a mass of water inside the kettle. At boiling point, however, the motion of the molecules has become sufficiently violent for large numbers of them to begin jumping clear of the mass. A qualitative change is therefore observed. The water begins to bubble and the whole mass is rapidly transformed into steam. This change evidently occurs as a result of the oppositions operating within the mass of water—the tendency of the molecules to move apart and jump free versus the forces of attraction between them. The former tendency is reinforced to the point where it overcomes the latter as a result, in this case, of the external application of heat.
Another example we have considered is that of a cord which breaks when its load becomes too great. Here again, the qualitative change takes place as a result of the opposition set up between the tensile strength of the cord and the pull of the load. Again, when a spring wheat is transformed into a winter wheat, this is a result of the opposition between the plant’s “conservatism” and the changing conditions of growth and development to which it is subjected; at a certain point, the influence of the latter overcomes the former.
These examples prepare us for the general conclusion that, as Stalin puts it, “the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes” consists in the struggle of opposites—opposite tendencies, opposite forces—within the things and process concerned.
Thus the law that quantitative changes are transformed into qualitative changes, and that differences in quality are based on differences in quantity, leads us to the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.
Here is the way Stalin formulates this law of dialectics.
“Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes.
“The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a ‘struggle’ of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.”[54]
To understand development, to understand how and why quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, to understand how and why the transition takes place from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, we have to understand the contradictions inherent in each thing and process we are considering, and how a “struggle” of opposite tendencies arises on the basis of these contradictions.
We have to understand this concretely, in each case, bearing in mind Lenin’s warning that “the fundamental thesis of dialectics is: truth is always concrete.” We cannot deduce the laws of development in the concrete case from the general principles of dialectics: we have to discover them by actual investigation in each case. But dialectics tells us what to look for.
Dialectics of Social Development—The Contradictions of Capitalism
The dialectics of development—the unity and struggle of opposites—has been most thoroughly worked out in the Marxist science of society. Here, from the standpoint of the working-class struggle, on the basis of working-class experience, we can work out the dialectic of the contradictions of capitalism and of their development very exactly.
But the principles involved in the development of society are not opposed to but are in essence the same as those involved in the development of nature, though different in their form of manifestation in each case. Thus Engels said:
“I was not in doubt—that amid the welter of innumerable changes taking place in nature the same dialectical laws of motion are in operation as those which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events.”[55]
How Marxism understands the contradictions of capitalism and their development, this crowning triumph of the dialectical method, was explained in general terms by Engels.
The basic contradiction of capitalism is not simply the conflict of two classes, which confront one another as two external forces which come into conflict. No, it is the contradiction within the social system itself, on the basis of which the class conflict arises and operates.
Capitalism brought about:
“The concentration of the means of production in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into means of production which were in fact social. But the social means of production and the social products were treated as if they were still, as they had been before, the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had appropriated the product because it was as a rule his own product, the auxiliary labor of other persons being the exception; now, the owner of the instruments of production continued to appropriate the product, although it was no longer his product, but exclusively the product of others’ labor. Thus, therefore, the products, now socially produced, were not appropriated by those who had really set the means of production in motion and really produced the products, but by the capitalists.”[56]
The basic contradiction of capitalism is, therefore, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation. It is on the basis of this contradiction that the struggle between the classes develops.
“In this contradiction... the whole conflict of today is already present in germ.... The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation became manifest as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.”[57]
And the contradiction can only be resolved by the victory of the working class, when the working class sets up its own dictatorship and initiates social ownership and appropriation to correspond to social production.
This example very exactly illustrates the point of what Stalin said about “struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.” The class struggle exists and operates on the basis of the contradictions inherent in the social system itself.
It is from the struggle of opposite tendencies, opposing forces, arising on the basis of the contradictions inherent in the social system, that social transformation, the leap to a qualitatively new stage of social development, takes place.
This process has its quantitative aspect. The working class increases in numbers and organization. Capital becomes more concentrated, more centralized.
“Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital... grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.”[58]
With this quantitative process of increase and decrease, the basic contradiction of socialized labor and private appropriation becomes intensified—for the social character of labor is magnified while capital accumulates and is concentrated in the hands of a diminishing number of great “magnates of capital”—and the tension between the opposing forces becomes intensified, too. At length quantitative change gives rise to qualitative change.
“Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds.
“The expropriators are expropriated.”[59]
In this way the laws of dialectical development, summarized in the principles of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change and of the unity and struggle of opposites, are found at work in the development of society; this development is to be understood in terms of the operation of those laws; and this dialectical understanding, once it has become the theoretical possession of the working class, serves as an indispensable instrument of the working class in carrying into effect the socialist transformation of society.
All change has a quantitative aspect, that is, an aspect of mere increase or decrease which does not alter the nature of that which changes. But quantitative change, increase or decrease, cannot go on indefinitely. At a certain point it always leads to a qualitative change; and at that critical point (or “nodal point,” as Hegel called it) the qualitative change takes place relatively suddenly, by a leap, as it were.
For example, if water is being heated, it does not go on getting hotter and hotter indefinitely; at a certain critical temperature, it begins to turn into steam, undergoing a qualitative change from liquid to gas. A cord used to lift a weight may have a greater and greater load attached to it, but no cord can lift a load indefinitely great: at a certain point, the cord is bound to break. A boiler may withstand a greater and greater pressure of steam—up to the point where it bursts. A variety of plant may be subjected to a series of changes in its conditions of growth for a number of generations—for instance, to colder temperatures; the variety continues unchanged, until a point is reached when suddenly a qualitative change is induced, a change in the heredity of the plant. In this way spring wheats have been transformed into winter wheats, and vice versa, as a result of the accumulation of a series of quantitative changes.
This law of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change is also met with in society. Thus before the system of industrial capitalism comes into being there takes place a process of the accumulation of wealth in money form in a few private hands (largely by colonial plunder), and of the formation of a propertyless proletariat (by enclosures and the driving of peasants off the land). At a certain point in this process, when enough money is accumulated to provide capital for industrial undertakings, when enough people have been proletarianized to provide the labor required, the conditions have matured for the development of industrial capitalism. At this point an accumulation of quantitative changes gives rise to a new qualitative stage in the development of society.
In general, qualitative changes happen with relative suddenness—by a leap. Something new is suddenly born, though its potentiality was already contained in the gradual evolutionary process of continuous quantitative change which went before.
Thus we find that continuous, gradual quantitative change leads at a certain point to discontinuous, sudden qualitative change. We have already remarked in an earlier chapter that most of those who have considered the laws of development in nature and society have conceived of this development only in its continuous aspect. This means that they have considered it only from the aspect of a process of growth, of quantitative change, and have not considered its qualitative aspect, the fact that at a certain point in the gradual process of growth a new quality suddenly arises, a transformation takes place.
Yet this is what always happens. If you are boiling a kettle, the water suddenly begins to boil when boiling point is reached. If you are scrambling eggs, the mixture in the pan suddenly “scrambles.” And it is the same if you are engaged in changing society. We will only change capitalist society into socialist society when the rule of one class is replaced by the rule of another class—and this is a radical transformation, a leap to a new state of society, a revolution.
If, on the other hand, we consider quality itself, then qualitative change always arises as a result of an accumulation of quantitative changes, and differences in quality have their basis in differences of quantity.
Thus just as quantitative change must at a certain point give rise to qualitative change, so if we wish to bring about qualitative change we must study its quantitative basis, and know what must be increased and what diminished if the required change is to be brought about.
Natural science teaches us how purely quantitative difference—addition or subtraction—makes a qualitative difference in nature. For example, the addition of one proton in the nucleus of an atom makes the transition from one element to another.[52] The atoms of all the elements are formed out of combinations of the same protons and electrons, but a purely quantitative difference between the numbers combined in the atom gives different kinds of atoms, atoms of different elements with different chemical properties. Thus an atom consisting of one proton and one electron is a hydrogen atom, but if another proton and another electron are added it is an atom of helium, and so on. Similarly in chemical compounds, the addition of one atom to a molecule makes the difference between substances with different chemical properties. In general, different qualities have their basis in quantitative difference.
As Engels put it:
“In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion....
“All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned.”[53]
This feature of the dialectical law connecting quality and quantity is familiar to readers of the popular literature about atomic bombs. To make a uranium bomb it is necessary to have the isotope, uranium-235; the more common isotope, uranium-238, will not do. The difference between these two is merely quantitative, a difference in atomic weight, depending on the number of neutrons present in each case. But this quantitative difference of atomic weight, 235 and 238, makes the qualitative difference between a substance with the properties required for the bomb and a substance without those properties. Further, having got a quantity of uranium-235, a certain “critical mass” of it is required before it will explode. If there is not enough, the chain reaction which constitutes the explosion will not occur; when the “critical mass” is reached, the reaction does occur.
Thus we see that quantitative changes are transformed at a certain point into qualitative changes, and qualitative differences rest on quantitative differences. This is a universal feature of development. What makes such development happen?
Development Takes Place Through the Unity and Struggle of Opposites
In general, the reason why in any particular case a quantitative change leads to a qualitative change lies in the very nature, in the content, of the particular processes involved. Therefore in each case we can, if we only know enough, explain just why a qualitative change is inevitable, and why it takes place at the point it does.
To explain this we have to study the facts of the case. We cannot invent an explanation with the aid of dialectics alone; where an understanding of dialectics helps is that it gives us the clue as to where to look. In a particular case we may not yet know how and why the change takes place. In that case we have the task of finding out, by investigating the facts of the case. For there is nothing unknowable, no essential mystery or secret of development, of the emergence of the qualitatively new.
Let us consider, for example, the case of the qualitative change which takes place when water boils.
When heat is applied to a mass of water contained in a kettle, then the effect is to increase the motion of the molecules composing the water. So long as the water remains in its liquid state, the forces of attraction between the molecules are sufficient to insure that, though some of the surface molecules are continually escaping, the whole mass coheres together as a mass of water inside the kettle. At boiling point, however, the motion of the molecules has become sufficiently violent for large numbers of them to begin jumping clear of the mass. A qualitative change is therefore observed. The water begins to bubble and the whole mass is rapidly transformed into steam. This change evidently occurs as a result of the oppositions operating within the mass of water—the tendency of the molecules to move apart and jump free versus the forces of attraction between them. The former tendency is reinforced to the point where it overcomes the latter as a result, in this case, of the external application of heat.
Another example we have considered is that of a cord which breaks when its load becomes too great. Here again, the qualitative change takes place as a result of the opposition set up between the tensile strength of the cord and the pull of the load. Again, when a spring wheat is transformed into a winter wheat, this is a result of the opposition between the plant’s “conservatism” and the changing conditions of growth and development to which it is subjected; at a certain point, the influence of the latter overcomes the former.
These examples prepare us for the general conclusion that, as Stalin puts it, “the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes” consists in the struggle of opposites—opposite tendencies, opposite forces—within the things and process concerned.
Thus the law that quantitative changes are transformed into qualitative changes, and that differences in quality are based on differences in quantity, leads us to the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.
Here is the way Stalin formulates this law of dialectics.
“Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes.
“The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a ‘struggle’ of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.”[54]
To understand development, to understand how and why quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, to understand how and why the transition takes place from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state, we have to understand the contradictions inherent in each thing and process we are considering, and how a “struggle” of opposite tendencies arises on the basis of these contradictions.
We have to understand this concretely, in each case, bearing in mind Lenin’s warning that “the fundamental thesis of dialectics is: truth is always concrete.” We cannot deduce the laws of development in the concrete case from the general principles of dialectics: we have to discover them by actual investigation in each case. But dialectics tells us what to look for.
Dialectics of Social Development—The Contradictions of Capitalism
The dialectics of development—the unity and struggle of opposites—has been most thoroughly worked out in the Marxist science of society. Here, from the standpoint of the working-class struggle, on the basis of working-class experience, we can work out the dialectic of the contradictions of capitalism and of their development very exactly.
But the principles involved in the development of society are not opposed to but are in essence the same as those involved in the development of nature, though different in their form of manifestation in each case. Thus Engels said:
“I was not in doubt—that amid the welter of innumerable changes taking place in nature the same dialectical laws of motion are in operation as those which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events.”[55]
How Marxism understands the contradictions of capitalism and their development, this crowning triumph of the dialectical method, was explained in general terms by Engels.
The basic contradiction of capitalism is not simply the conflict of two classes, which confront one another as two external forces which come into conflict. No, it is the contradiction within the social system itself, on the basis of which the class conflict arises and operates.
Capitalism brought about:
“The concentration of the means of production in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into means of production which were in fact social. But the social means of production and the social products were treated as if they were still, as they had been before, the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had appropriated the product because it was as a rule his own product, the auxiliary labor of other persons being the exception; now, the owner of the instruments of production continued to appropriate the product, although it was no longer his product, but exclusively the product of others’ labor. Thus, therefore, the products, now socially produced, were not appropriated by those who had really set the means of production in motion and really produced the products, but by the capitalists.”[56]
The basic contradiction of capitalism is, therefore, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation. It is on the basis of this contradiction that the struggle between the classes develops.
“In this contradiction... the whole conflict of today is already present in germ.... The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation became manifest as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.”[57]
And the contradiction can only be resolved by the victory of the working class, when the working class sets up its own dictatorship and initiates social ownership and appropriation to correspond to social production.
This example very exactly illustrates the point of what Stalin said about “struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.” The class struggle exists and operates on the basis of the contradictions inherent in the social system itself.
It is from the struggle of opposite tendencies, opposing forces, arising on the basis of the contradictions inherent in the social system, that social transformation, the leap to a qualitatively new stage of social development, takes place.
This process has its quantitative aspect. The working class increases in numbers and organization. Capital becomes more concentrated, more centralized.
“Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital... grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.”[58]
With this quantitative process of increase and decrease, the basic contradiction of socialized labor and private appropriation becomes intensified—for the social character of labor is magnified while capital accumulates and is concentrated in the hands of a diminishing number of great “magnates of capital”—and the tension between the opposing forces becomes intensified, too. At length quantitative change gives rise to qualitative change.
“Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds.
“The expropriators are expropriated.”[59]
In this way the laws of dialectical development, summarized in the principles of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change and of the unity and struggle of opposites, are found at work in the development of society; this development is to be understood in terms of the operation of those laws; and this dialectical understanding, once it has become the theoretical possession of the working class, serves as an indispensable instrument of the working class in carrying into effect the socialist transformation of society.
[51] Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
[52] For a simple account of the physical phenomena referred to in this and in our next example see The Challenge of Atomic Energy, by E. H. S. Burhop, London, 1951.
[53] Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Chapter II.
[54] Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
[55] Engels, Anti-Dühring, Preface.
[56] Engels, Anti-Dühring, Part III, Chapter II; or Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Chapter III, N. Y., 1935.
[57] Ibid.
[58] Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Chapter XXXII.
[59] Ibid.
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