concept, the correct one must be one or the other, for it is not possible for both to be incorrect, or to rush to a third as the correct meaning. Its formula is “A is equal to B, or not equal to B, but cannot be equal to C”. They do not realize that things and concepts are developing, and in the process of development of things and concepts, not only are their internal contradictory elements made manifest, but these contradictory elements can be removed, negated, and resolved to become a third thing which is not-A and not-B, change to become a new and higher thing or concept. Correct thought should not exclude the third factor, should not exclude the law of the negation of the negation.
According to the law of the excluded middle, in the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the correct one is either the former or the latter. It cannot be a society without classes. However, it is a fine thing that the process of social evolution does not stop at class [p. 246] struggle, but progresses towards a proletarian society. China and Japanese imperialism are in a state of contradiction. We oppose the invasion of Japanese imperialism, but we do not agree that a post-independence China must remain forever in a state of hostility with Japan. We advocate that through national revolution and a revolution within Japan, the two nations will reach a stage of free association. The same applies to the opposition between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy; a higher stage to both of them will be the epoch in which there will be no states and no governments, and this will be arrived at through proletarian democracy. The law of excluded middle in formal logic also supplements its law of identity, which only recognizes the fixed condition of a concept, and which opposes its development, opposes revolutionary leaps, and opposes the principle of the negation of the negation.
It can, therefore, be seen that all the laws of formal logic oppose contradictoriness and advocate the characteristic of identity, oppose development and change of concepts and things, and advocate their solidification and immobility. This is in direct opposition to dialectics.
Why do formal logicians advocate these things? Because they observe things separate from their continual mutual function and interconnections; that is, they observe things at rest rather than in movement, and as separate rather than in connection. Therefore it is not possible for them to consider and acknowledge the importance of contradictoriness and the negation of the negation within things and concepts, and so they advocate the rigid and inflexible law of identity.
Dialectics on the other hand observes things in movement and in connection, and is in direct opposition to the law of identity of formal logic, advocating rather the revolutionary law of contradiction.
Dialectics considers that the contradictions in thought are none other than the reflection of objective external contradictions. Dialectics does not ritualistically adhere to two principles which appear externally to be in a state of mutual conflict (for example, the many antinomies raised by Kant in his four contradictory principles and to which I referred above), but sees through to a thing’s internal essence. The task of dialecticians is to perform the task that those formal logicians have not carried out – study of an object – to concentrate attention on finding out the strength of its contradictions, the tendency of the contradictions, the aspects of the contradictions, and the fixity of the contradictions’ internal relations. The external world and man’s thought are both in motion and are dialectical; they are not static and metaphysical. For this reason, the revolutionary law of contradiction (namely the principle of the unity of contradictions) therefore occupies the principal [p. 247] position in dialectics.
The entirety of formal logic has only one nucleus, and that is the reactionary law of identity. The entirety of dialectics also has only one nucleus, and that is the revolutionary law of contradiction.