An explanation of Antagonism as contradiction
Introduction
(Please skip the Introduction if you have an aversion to ideology and go to Presentation)
The concept of antagonism in contradictions remains perhaps the most difficult of Marx and Engels conception of social development and process evolution. My personal introduction to materialist dialectic was through the writings of Frederick Engels beginning with Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical Germany Philosophy and later his "Anti-Durhing." The first book by Marx I ever read was "Poverty of Philosophy" at perhaps age 19 - 30 years ago.
The best exposition on materialist dialectics - for beginners, I have every read is Stalin's presentation although I am extremely familiar with Chairman Mao's Four Essays On Philosophy and as a young man had committed "On Practice" and "On Contradiction" to memory while working on the assembly line in auto (it helped pass the time away).
Stalin's exposition is contained in History of the Communist Party Soviet Union (Bolshevik) Short course, 1939, beginning on page 105. What makes it the best basic exposition is his generous usage of material as quotes from Marx, Engels and Lenin's various writings on contradiction within - not between, things as process development.
Engels wrote that, "materialism must change its form with every epoch making discovery." The time in which we live out our activity is one of epoch making discovery in the sciences - on all fronts. Thus all "old" expositions on materialist dialectics are dated and the forms of presentations appear more and more absurd - inverted, because of the advance in science and general human understanding of process development. I am incapable of advancing the nexus on the basic of the current advances in science. It is obvious that where Marxist once spoke of understanding the world and processes in their interconnection, this form of exposition is obsolete. The world today is to be understood in its interactivity, flux and morphing from one thing into another of the basis of internal compulsion.
This internal compulsion proceeds on the basis of the unity and strife of the basic component in which a given process embraces.
Capital has evolved on the basis of the human connection through exchange of the products of social labor on the part of private scattered producers; to a system of production connected on the basis of a growing infrastructure; to an interconnected world system whose further development led to a strong interconnection between various imperial centers and imperial centers and colonies; to an interactive system of productive laboring. At each successive stage - boundary, and phase (transition within a given boundary) the form - external mode, peculiar to a given stage and phase was cast off - sublated (or transformed), as the process development that allows for growth.
Our understanding and presentation of materialist dialectics can only be advanced as exposition on the basis of the development of science or what is the same - the productive forces. In this regard Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" - a wonderful exposition, needs to be sublated, as does Stalin's brilliant exposition for beginners. Comrade Mao expositions are historically spent, although his singular role in history is forever. "Long live the spirit of the Chairman."
It is - in my opinion, the question of antagonism as a form of process development and emergence of a new qualitative feature - definition, which distinguishes why one form of exposition is historically spent and the other is in need of sublation.
Presentation
I believe that Scott captured the point of delineation in antagonism by pinpointing the word hostility and going beyond the standard definition of the word.
Antagonism is understood in the English language to mean violence and we experience violence in our everyday lives on various levels of being. Antagonism most certainly embraces a violent resolution in process development but this does not explain the "mechanics" (I admitted being "obsolete" and "mechanics" is most certainly in need of sublation) of how the resolution takes place. It is exactly the question of "how a resolution takes place" that distinguishes an antagonistic contradiction from a non-antagonistic contradiction.
"How a resolution takes place" gives definition to the words violent resolution. Contradiction as movement fundamentally means the unity and strife within the totality of a process and not between "things" as such.
Those contradictions (carefully distinguished by Marx and Engels in their analysis of the complex forms of development of class society) are antagonistic, in which the struggle of indissolubly connected and interactive opposites proceed in the form of their external collisions, which are directed on the part of the dominant opposite so as to preserve the subordination of its opposite - to the destruction of the dominant opposite and of t
