Motive Force of Socialist Social Development

Marxist philosophy holds that the law of unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the universe. Between the opposites in a contradiction there is at once both unity and struggle, and it is this that impels things to move and change. Socialist society is no exception. In May 1920, Lenin read Bukharin's "Politics and Economy in the Transitional Period” and made a marginal note "Under socialist conditions, antagonism will be eliminated but contradictions will still exist.” However, as Lenin's socialist practice in the Soviet Union lasted only six years, he could not fully discuss the contradictions in socialist society.

Stalin led the socialist construction of the Soviet Union for more than 30 years, but he did not admit that there were contradictions in the socialist society for a long time. He argued that when analyzing the domestic contradictions within the Soviet society, foreign imperialism (the enemy) must be taken as one aspect of any contradiction. This kind of understanding led him to confuse two kinds of contradictions of different nature in the political life of the country for a long time and confused various contradictions among the people with the contradictions between ourselves and the enemy.

It was not until the year before his death (1952) when he wrote “Economic Problems of Socialism in U.S.S.R.” that he talked about the contradiction between the relations of production and the productive forces under the socialist system, saying that if the policies were not right and the adjustments were not good, there would be problems. However, he still did not conceive the contradiction between the relations of production and the productive forces, the contradiction between the superstructure and the economic base under the socialist system as a comprehensive problem or did not conceive that these contradictions promoted the development of socialist society.

In December 1956, Mao Zedong pointed out in his letter to Huang Yanpei: "Society is always full of contradictions. This is true even for socialist and communist societies, but the nature of contradictions within socialist and communist societies are different from that of class societies.” He emphasized that “since there are contradictions, it is necessary to expose and solve them.” Otherwise, falling into passivity and making mistakes would be inevitable.

In his article "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People", published in 1957, Mao Zedong further emphasized that we must use the law of unity of opposites to observe and study socialist society and its historical development. He wrote: failure to recognize that there are still contradictions in socialist society would lead to serious consequences. That is to say, on the one hand, because who deny that there are contradictions in the socialist society will not completely face the reality, cannot actively understand and solve the contradictions, and consciously promote the development of the socialist society. In fact, such people deny that socialist society still needs constant reform, progress and development. On the other hand, once such people encounter contradictions that are not anticipated in advance but unavoidable in reality, they may fall into a state of confusion and bewilderment, and even make wrong judgments and handling, such as dealing with the contradictions between the enemy and ourselves and dealing with the internal spears and shields of the people. This will "make such people irresolute and passive when confronted with social contradictions; they do not understand that socialist society grows more united and consolidated through the ceaseless process of correctly handling and resolving contradictions,” which is quite unfavorable to develop the cause of socialism.

Mao Zedong repeatedly said, “Without contradiction, there can be no motion. Society always develops by motion. In the socialist era, contradiction is still the driving force for the development of social movements.” It is for this reason that “we need to explain things to our people, and to our cadres in the first place, so as to help them understand the contradictions in the socialist society and help them learn to use correct methods in handling them.”