The question of the struggle of opposites includes the question of what is antagonism. Our answer is that contradiction exists in all processes from beginning to end, and that there is a struggle between the two sides of a contradiction from start to finish. Antagonism is one form of struggle, but not all contradictions have it;[4-618]when certain contradictions in a certain process of development adopt a form in which force becomes overt and there is mutual conflict, the struggle of contradictions manifests itself as antagonism. Antagonism is[4-619] a particular manifestation of the struggle of opposites.
For instance, consider the contradiction between the exploiting and the exploited classes. Such contradictory classes coexist for a long time in the same society, be it slave society, feudal society, or capitalist society, and they struggle with each other, but it is not until the contradiction between the two classes develops to a certain stage that it assumes the form of open antagonism, and it is then that society ruptures and revolution and war are engendered.[4-620]
The explosion of a bomb, the hatching of a chicken from its egg, and animal regeneration
In the peaceful coexistence between countries, included in which is that between socialist and capitalist states, contradiction and struggle exist without ceasing; only at a certain stage in development does war emerge.[4-622]
In the Soviet Union, the New Economic Policy permitted a considerable development of capitalist elements. Lenin considered that at that time there was a possibility of utilizing state capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat; that is to say, the utilization of certain bourgeois elements to develop the forces of production, simultaneous with their control by Soviet laws, following which they could be limited [p. 277] and prohibited. At this time the two contradictions of socialism and capitalism coexisted within socialist society in mutual struggle and interconnection; it was only after the task of eliminating the rich peasantry and capitalist remnants had been raised that the existence of both elements became an impossibility, and a life and death struggle of overtly antagonistic form emerged.
The first united front between the Guomindang and the Communist Party was also like this.
However, the contradictions in many processes, phenomena, and things do not develop into antagonistic ones.
For instance, the contradictions between correct and incorrect ideas in the Communist Party, between the advanced and the backward in culture, between town and country in economics, between the forces and relations of production, between production and consumption, between exchange value and use value, between the various technical divisions of labour, between workers and peasants in class relations, between life and death in nature, between heredity and mutation, between cold and hot, between day and night; none has an antagonistic condition of existence.[4-623]
Bukharin regarded contradiction and antagonism as one and the same thing. He therefore considered that in a society in which socialism had been accomplished there were neither antagonisms nor contradiction. Lenin said: “This is extremely incorrect, antagonism and contradiction are not at all one and the same. Under socialism, the first will disappear, the second will remain”.[4-624]Bukharin is an advocate of the theory of equilibrium which refuses to recognize that the development of a thing is due to the movement of internal contradictions, and which considers that society will continue to develop even though there are no contradictions under socialism.