Page 335 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume I.indd

ON CONTRADICTION 329

this society is the contradiction between the social character of
production and the private character of ownership. This contradiction
manifests itself in the contradiction between the organized character
of production in individual enterprises and the anarchic character of
production in society as a whole. In terms of class relations, it
manifests itself in the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat.
Because the range of things is vast and there is no limit to their
development, what is universal in one context becomes particular
in another. Conversely, what is particular in one context becomes
universal in another. The contradiction in the capitalist system be-
tween the social character of production and the private ownership of
the means of production is common to all countries where capitalism
exists and develops; as far as capitalism is concerned, this constitutes
the universality of contradiction. But this contradiction of capitalism
belongs only to a certain historical stage in the general development
of class society; as far as the contradiction between the productive
forces and the relations of production in class society as a whole is
concerned, it constitutes the particularity of contradiction. However,
in the course of dissecting the particularity of all these contradictions
in capitalist society, Marx gave a still more profound, more adequate
and more complete elucidation of the universality of the contradiction
between the productive forces and the relations of production in
class society in general.
Since the particular is united with the universal and since the uni-
versality as well as the particularity of contradiction is inherent in
everything, universality residing in particularity, we should, when
studying an object, try to discover both the particular and the universal
and their interconnection, to discover both particularity and uni-
versality and also their interconnection within the object itself, and
to discover the interconnections of this object with the many objects
outside it. When Stalin explained the historical roots of Leninism in
his famous work, The Foundations of Leninism, he analysed the
international situation in which Leninism arose, analysed those con-
tradictions of capitalism which reached their culmination under
imperialism, and showed how these contradictions made proletarian
revolution a matter for immediate action and created favourable
conditions for a direct onslaught on capitalism. What is more, he
analysed the reasons why Russia became the cradle of Leninism, why