Necessity and Chance

A pair of categories that reveals the distinct tendencies of generation, development, and passing away of things. Necessity refers to the unalterable trend of the connection and development of objective things in conformity with laws, and has inevitability and certainty under certain conditions. If you sow melons, you will reap melons, if you sow beans, you will reap beans, friction generates heat, the four seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter take turns, socialist society replaces capitalist society, socialist society transitions to communist society, etc. are all a definite trend of things to be connected and develop as they must and cannot be altered, i.e., have necessity. Contrary to necessity, chance refers to some kind of swaying and deviation presented in the process of development, an indefinite trend that can occur in one way or another. For example, how many melons can be produced from a melon vine, how many pods can be grown from a bean seedling, on what day and at what time a certain factory’s annual plan will be completed, on what concrete time will socialism win in a certain country, and so on, all bear a chance.

Necessity and chance play different roles in interconnection and development of things. Necessity is determined by the fundamental contradiction of things, is dominant in the process of development, and embodies the essential connection and the prospects of development; chance is caused by the non-fundamental contradiction of things and external conditions, and plays an accelerating or retarding role in the development of things. But due to the extremely large scope of things and the infinity of development, the difference between necessity and chance and their impacts are not fixed either. For example, the same phenomenon that is necessary for one process may be accidental for another, and the reverse is also true. Necessity and chance are a unity of opposites, and they exist in connection with each other. Necessity resides in chance, and necessity is hidden behind chance. There is no necessity apart from chance, and there is no chance apart from necessity. They are interdependent, interpenetrating and indissoluble, and they can transition and transform into each other under certain conditions. As things develop, some phenomena that appear by chance can develop into necessary trends, and some trends with necessity can evolve into phenomena that appear by chance.

In practical work, we must pay attention to the necessary trend of development of things, and we must not ignore the part played by chance. We should be good at discovering the necessary in the accidental and grasp the opportunities that are conducive to the development of things. Both mechanical determinism, theological teleology and fatalism which one-sidedly exaggerate the part played by necessity, and idealistic non-determinism and voluntarism which exaggerate chance and deny necessity must be opposed.