Fundamental Contradictions of Society

Contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production and between the economic foundation and the superstructure. The fundamental contradictions of society are present in all social formations, permeate the process of development of society from beginning to end, determine the basic nature of social formations and the basic trend of development of society, and are the fundamental driving force of development of society.

Marx put forth the theory of contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production and between the economic foundation and the superstructure in his research on the development of human society, especially on the fundamental contradictions within the capitalist society. In 1959, in Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx made a complete expression of this theory. He explained the basic categories of productive forces and relations of production, economic foundation and superstructure and their relationship, pointing out that, at a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. No social form will ever perish until all the productive forces it can accommodate are brought into full play; and new and higher relations of production will never arise until their material conditions of existence mature in the embryo of the old society. In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels put forth the concept of the “fundamental contradiction” of the capitalist society, and in elaborating the contradiction between the socialization of production and the capitalist private property in the means of production, he pointed out: fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present-day society moves. In his analysis of the capitalist economic crisis, Lenin also referred to the contradiction “between the social nature of production and the private nature of appropriation” as the “fundamental contradiction”. In On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Mao Zedong clearly summarized the contradictions between the relations of production and the productive forces and between the superstructure and the economic foundation as the fundamental contradictions of society, including those in the socialist society, and pointed out that in socialist society the fundamental contradictions are still those between the relations of production and the productive forces and between the superstructure and the economic base.

The contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production and between the economic foundation and the superstructure are the fundamental contradictions of society because the productive forces, the relations of production (economic foundation) and the superstructure permeate all basic fields of social life, economically, politically, and intellectually, etc., forming the fundamental structure of the whole society and determining the nature and the image of each social formation. This pair of contradictions is present in all social formations and permeates each social formation from beginning to end. It is the fundamental driving force of development of society, and determines the supersession of social formations and pushes forward the development of human society from the lower to the higher. This pair of contradictions is the root of other contradictions of society, and determines and affects the existence and development of other contradictions of society. The law that the relations of production have to be appropriate to the state of the productive forces and that the superstructure has to be appropriate to the state of the economic foundation is the most universal and most fundamental law of development of society. To grasp the contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production and between the economic foundation and the superstructure is to fundamentally grasp the universal law of development of society. There can be no scientific knowledge of social phenomena and of social development apart from this pair of contradictions.

This pair of contradictions among the fundamental contradictions of society are interconnected and interact with each other. The contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production is the most fundamental and dominant one, as it determines and conditions the contradiction between the economic foundation and the superstructure; the resolution of the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production is once again inseparable from the resolution of the contradiction between the economic foundation and the superstructure. The productive forces determine the relations of production. The totality of the relations of production constitutes the economic foundation of society. The economic foundation determines the superstructure. The superstructure reacts upon the economic foundation, and the relations of production react upon the productive forces. The interaction between the productive forces and the relations of production on the basis that the productive forces play the ultimately determining part constitutes the fundamental contradictory movement of society and pushes forward the development of society.

In class society, the fundamental contradictions of society manifest themselves as class contradictions, and have an antagonistic nature. It is only through a social revolution that a revolutionary class can revolutionize the old relations of production and the old superstructure and resolve the fundamental contradictions of society. The fundamental contradictions of socialist society are of a nature fundamentally different from those of class society; they are non-antagonistic and can be resolved constantly through the reform and adjustment of the socialist system itself. This is the superiority of the socialist system. The development of the fundamental contradictions of society will inevitably lead to the abolition of private property and classes, but the fundamental contradictions of society will still exist, and the contradictions between the relations of production and the productive forces and between the superstructure and the economic foundation, will still be the fundamental driving force of development of society, only that the nature of the contradictions and the manner in which they are resolved will change.

The theory of the fundamental contradictions of society has essentially revealed the objective laws of development of the history of society and refuted the idealist conception of history. Lenin said that only the reduction of social relations to relations of production and of the latter to the level of the productive forces, provided a firm basis for the conception that the development of formations of society is a process of natural history. The theory of the fundamental contradictions of society provided a scientific basis for proletarian political parties in formulating their basic lines, guidelines and policies.