It is mistaken. The so-called universality of contradictions exists not only within all processes, but at each stage of development of every process. This is the revolutionary law of contradictions of Marxism. According to the Deborin school,[4-418] contradiction appears not at the inception of a process, but only when it has developed to a certain stage: if this were the case, then the cause of the development of the process before that stage would be external and not internal. Deborin thus reverts to the metaphysical theories of external causality and of mechanism. Applying this view in the analysis of concrete problems, the Deborin school sees only differences but not contradictions between the workers and the peasants[4-419]under existing conditions in the Soviet Union, thus entirely agreeing with Bukharin. In analyzing the French Revolution, it holds that before the Revolution there were likewise only differences but not contradictions within the Third Estate, which was composed of the workers, the peasants, and the bourgeoisie (Gorev’s explanation).[4-420] This school does not understand that each and every difference already contains contradictions and that difference itself is contradiction. Labour and capital have been in contradiction” ever since the two classes came into being, [p. 251] only at first the contradiction had not become intense. Even under the conditions[4-421] existing in the Soviet Union, the difference between workers and peasants is a contradiction, although, unlike the contradiction between labour and capital, it will not become intensified into antagonism or assume the form of class struggle.[4-422] The question is one of different kinds of contradiction, not of the presence or absence of contradiction. Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.[4-423] What is meant by the emergence of a new process? The old unity with its constituent opposites yields to a new unity with its constituent opposites; a new process emerges to replace the old.[4-424] The new process contains new contradictions and begins its own history of the development of contradictions.
As Lenin pointed out, Marx in his