Page 95 - SELECTED WORKS OF LIU SHAOQI Volume Ⅱ

INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS AND BASIC TASKS 93

against nature and developing production. The steady expansion of
production will make it possible to continually raise the living stand-
ards of the working class and other working people. These are the
basic reasons for the superiority of socialist state factories over capita-
list ones.
It is true that there are no longer any class contradictions in the
state factories, but are there other contradictions? Since everything
is composed of contradictions, the state factory inevitably is a structure
of contradictions, too. What, then, are the basic contradictions in
state factories? They are contradictions between the factory adminis-
tration and the workers, between the public interests and the private
interests. Entirely different from the class antagonisms in capitalist
factories, these contradictions are non-antagonistic in nature and can
and ought to be reconciled or resolved through mediation. Never-
theless, they are undeniable, true contradictions and exist as objective
reality. It will take a long time and serious effort for us to readjust
and cope with these contradictions. The various relations in the state
factories evolving from these contradictions represent completely new
socialist relations of production. As the new relations grow steadily,
a new superstructure in our country and society will take shape.
Since class contradictions and the relationship of exploitation have
been rooted out in China, the state factories don’t have to deal with
them or the problems they cause. Today we have to cope with new
contradictions and relations, that is, contradictions and relations be-
tween the factory administration and the workers as well as various
problems that arise from them. These relations have already come
into existence in China and will continue to grow substantially for
a long time to come. Almost all the problems in our state factories
today have emerged from or are connected with them. If we fail to
deal with this question correctly, we cannot expect to correctly deal
with any other problems in our state factories. However, since these
contradictions and relations are those within the ranks of the work-
ing class and the people, we should deal with them in a spirit of com-
radeship, conciliation and unity.
Thus it can be seen that in general contradictions fall into two
categories: fundamentally antagonistic and therefore irreconcilable
and fundamentally non-antagonistic and therefore reconcilable. In
observing problems we must distinguish between the two types of
contradictions. We cannot regard antagonistic and irreconcilable con-
tradictions as non-antagonistic and reconcilable, and vice versa. Con-