# "Heightening the contradictions" - has it ever worked? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 19, 2019, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058 "2019-01-19T17:04:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![WernhamHogg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@WernhamHogg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WernhamHogg)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/21 "2019-01-21T20:31:30Z")
I knew people who wanted Trump to win because he would bring the whole government come crashing down. Those people were generally unable to express what was so bad about government now that Trump wouldn’t exacerbate or how it would be solved by destroying it. So this phrase, which I’ve never heard before, can be easily misapplied. It’s like, you have to raze a broken down house before you can rebuild. But razing is not rebuilding. And really, the house might be restored instead. I think it comes down to people wanting to have GREAT BIG OPINIONS because having little opinions requires more work. “BURN IT ALL DOWN!” needs no evidence. Actually looking at problems and polciies that might improve things makes you read and think. People hate that. ---
**Author:** ![WernhamHogg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@WernhamHogg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WernhamHogg)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/22 "2019-01-21T20:32:48Z")
I do think that the idea of disruption is important though, as in the Civil Rights Movement. That did “heighten the contradictions,” and it was effective. I don’t know if it pertains to the Marxian meaning of the term, I’m just taking it at face value. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/23 "2019-01-21T20:40:58Z")
> [@WernhamHogg](#): > > I do think that the idea of disruption is important though, as in the Civil Rights Movement. That did “heighten the contradictions,” and it was effective. I don’t know if it pertains to the Marxian meaning of the term, I’m just taking it at face value. There is big a difference between “causing specific disruption and damage to highlight whats wrong with a particular bit of the system so it can be fixed” and “all disruption and damage no matter how much suffering is caused, and how senseless it seems, is fine as it hastens the collapse of the system”. The latter is what Lenin (and lots of other extremists since)was referring to in “heighten the contradictions,”. He didn’t want the system to be fixed, he wanted it to collapse. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/24 "2019-01-21T21:52:54Z")
I’d also add the kind of senseless terrorist attacks favored by Al Qaida, ISIS, and the like, that are basically just attempts to kill as many people as possible without any obvious political or military target are also totally “heightening the contradictions”. Its the same basic idea: Step 1 - Chaos, violence, instability Step 2 - Corrupt governing system collapses because people don’t like chaos, violence, and instability Step 3 - _shrugs_ Step 4 - Islamist/Communist/Whateverist utopia! ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/25 "2019-01-21T23:29:12Z")
> [@WernhamHogg](#): > > I do think that the idea of disruption is important though, as in the Civil Rights Movement. That did “heighten the contradictions,” and it was effective. I don’t know if it pertains to the Marxian meaning of the term, I’m just taking it at face value. No, “heightening the contradictions” would be if the intent of Jim Crow laws had been to cause the Civil Rights Movement. Jim Crow’s intent was to fuck the coloreds; the people who wrote those laws would have been horrified to see Colin Powell. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/26 "2019-01-21T23:58:32Z")
I don’t have examples of successful uses of this strategy. **griffin1977** ’s cite of Al Queda et. al. is the closest I’ve seen in this thread because it includes the all-important component of \*\*rejecting reforms proposed by less-extreme allies \*\*(well, potential allies). Al-Queda was not interested in pursuing peaceful/democratic efforts by fellow Muslims to get the US out of the Middle East etc.; they seem to have wanted to achieve this by provoking us into starting a big old clash of civilizations. (Hey, look: a dialectic and everything!) They weren’t successful, though. The civil rights movement (and Gandhi’s movement) did have the goal of provoking violent action by the state as a means to radical change, but I think it’s clearer to think of them as _dramatizing or drawing attention to_ the contradictions. King et al did reject many reforms as insufficient, but I don’t think they viewed those reforms as worse than letting the status quo continue, let alone intensifying it. (I actually think people like Sarandon probably view themselves as emulating King, not Lenin: exposing the rottenness already inherent in the neoliberal order to gather allies in its overthrow.) Tangent about the origins of the phrase/concept behind a spoiler tag: [spoiler]I was looking for where the phrase came from and I found [this blog post](http://acceleratethecontradictions.blogspot.com/2010/04/accelerate-contradictions-notes-towards.html) showing variants of the phrase “heightening the contradictions” (HtC) over time. One thing that’s striking is that HtC begins in a very ur-Marxist sense as something that _the system_ _does to itself_. It’s automatic and an inevitable feature of capitalism. > [@Karl Marx 1844](#): > > It is therefore another great achievement of modern English political economy to have [turned farming into yet another capitalist venture] and thus simplif[ied] and s**harpen[ed] the contradiction** [between capital and labor] and hasten[ed] its resolution. The earliest example our blogger finds of HtC mentioned as a \*deliberate \*strategy of revolutionaries is Lenin: > [@Lenin](#): > > [The revolutionary] believes in the present course of social development, because he sees the only earnest hope of a better future in **the full development of these contradictions**. [Revolutionaries] therefore strive to\*\* support, accelerate, facilitate development along the present path\*\*, to remove all obstacles which hamper this development and retard it. I’ll point out that as stated here it’s a fairly modest tactic. I’d paraphrase it as “encourage things to continue as they are” or “don’t encourage incremental reform,” not “deliberately make things much worse.”[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/27 "2019-01-22T00:26:52Z")
I guess another non-successful example would be premillenialist Christians who are trying to hasten the Second Coming by breeding an all-red heifer or blindly supporting Israel or whatever. This is a very extreme example – they’re trying to _bring on the end of the world_, ferchrissakes (ha) – but it’ll be totally worth it! ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/28 "2019-01-22T02:04:33Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > One clear example, I think, was al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack provoking a U.S. counter-attack. Although U.S. military might prevailed in the short term, radical Islamists and secular Iraqis flocked together to oppose the American giant. Bush’s misadventure strengthened radical Islam. Yeah, and Japan upped their war effort after Pearl Harbor. So what? Radical Islamists were already willing to fly planes into buildings, ending their own lives and thousands of civilians. Their cause is already irrational. They don’t need “facts on the ground” to motivate their base. Their base will believe lies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I don’t believe Bush ever claimed that it did. Iraq War was bad for many reasons. But you have to walk through your unsubstantiated claim that Iraq War was a big recruitment tool for radical Islam. Did the secular Iraqui approve of Saddam’s attacking Kuwait? Approve of Saddam in general? Didn’t care for Saddam (a dictator) but think “he’s our business?” You are attempting to project outside rationality on beliefs which are based on irrationality. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/29 "2019-01-22T10:01:42Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#): > > Yeah, and Japan upped their war effort after Pearl Harbor. So what? > > Radical Islamists were already willing to fly planes into buildings, ending their own lives and thousands of civilians. Their cause is already irrational. They don’t need “facts on the ground” to motivate their base. Their base will believe lies. > > Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I don’t believe Bush ever claimed that it did. Iraq War was bad for many reasons. But you have to walk through your unsubstantiated claim that Iraq War was a big recruitment tool for radical Islam. Did the secular Iraqui approve of Saddam’s attacking Kuwait? Approve of Saddam in general? Didn’t care for Saddam (a dictator) but think “he’s our business?” > > You are attempting to project outside rationality on beliefs which are based on irrationality. AFAICT you have completely misunderstood my claim. As a result of U.S. military actions that could be represented (whether rightly or not) as “against Islam” in the early 2000’s _it became easier for radical Islamists to recruit_ — true or false? The radical Islamists preached _opposition_ to such U.S. action but _deliberately provoked_ it to “heighten the contradiction.” This is a textbook example of what OP was looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Chad\_Sudan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chad_sudan/32/4509_2.png) [@Chad\_Sudan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chad_Sudan)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/30 "2019-01-22T16:19:04Z")
OP here. Yes, the concept of “heightening the contradictions” may well be too specific. There’s a closely related notion that could be called the “cleansing storm.” This is a conviction that a given country needs to undergo chaos before it can truly get its house in order again. Once again, Peter J. North on a no-deal Brexit: “Should we leave without a deal, we are looking at long-term economic and political instability, and a slide in living standards. Part of me suspects this might well be necessary since our politics is too broken to limp on, and _ **such a period of turmoil might very well go some way toward repairing the cultural malaise Britain has experienced over the last thirty years** _. That, though, is a massive gamble. It would be the ultimate revolutionary act - and there is nothing at all predictable about revolutions of that magnitude.” ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/31 "2019-01-22T21:23:09Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/32 "2019-01-22T21:42:03Z")
> [@Chad\_Sudan](#): > > OP here. Yes, the concept of “heightening the contradictions” may well be too specific. There’s a closely related notion that could be called the “cleansing storm.” This is a conviction that a given country needs to undergo chaos before it can truly get its house in order again. > > Once again, Peter J. North on a no-deal Brexit: > > “Should we leave without a deal, we are looking at long-term economic and political instability, and a slide in living standards. Part of me suspects this might well be necessary since our politics is too broken to limp on, and _ **such a period of turmoil might very well go some way toward repairing the cultural malaise Britain has experienced over the last thirty years** _. That, though, is a massive gamble. It would be the ultimate revolutionary act - and there is nothing at all predictable about revolutions of that magnitude.” It is a fundamentally flawed concept. There is nothing “cleansing” about the storm, it just knocks shit down! There is no magic mechanism which makes things better afterwards, everything is just broken. This kind of thing is advocated by people living comfortable lives, supported by “the system”, and have no experience of what actually happens when it breaks down. Unless you are talking about some unspeakable authoritarian regime (and often even then, i.e. Syria) what follows is inevitably far worse than the worst excesses of the system it was meant to “cleanse”. In a democracy, even a corrupt dysfunctional one, the side of compromise and moderation tends to win out, for better or worse. In a violent revolution it is the most extreme side (or extreme cunning and well organised) side that usually wins out. The result is cycle of worse and worse violence (which also inevitably eats up the revolutionaries who started it all) ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2019, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/33 "2019-01-23T20:43:23Z")
> [@Chad\_Sudan](#): > > OP here. Yes, the concept of “heightening the contradictions” may well be too specific. There’s a closely related notion that could be called the “cleansing storm.” This is a conviction that a given country needs to undergo chaos before it can truly get its house in order again. > > Once again, Peter J. North on a no-deal Brexit … But can the people who created chaos just take credit when the chaos eventually goes away? Even if we strip out the ideology, what “heightening the contradictions” provides is a testable hypothesis: **if we let A happen, the result will be this fairly specific result B, which is better. (Consequently, we should oppose efforts to delay/defer A, and possibly try to hasten it.)** I’m skeptical that this has proven itself as a deliberate strategy. And if we’re counting examples where people just start shit and then things get better eventually – that’s just a huge percentage of world history, right? > [@griffin1977](#): > > It is a fundamentally flawed concept. There is nothing “cleansing” about the storm, it just knocks shit down! There is no magic mechanism which makes things better afterwards, everything is just broken. > > This kind of thing is advocated by people living comfortable lives, supported by “the system”, and have no experience of what actually happens when it breaks down. Glenn Greenwald and Susan Sarandon vehemently disagree from their million-dollar compounds. You neoliberal shill/sheeple dupe. (PS: I’m being hyperbolic – I don’t know if Sarandon actually has a compound, or what it costs if she does, and I suspect Greenwald’s Brazilian compound is a _multi_-million-dollar one. Also, just in case: red text is sarcastic.) ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2019, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/34 "2019-01-23T20:49:20Z")
The “cleansing storm” concept is very popular in fiction, isn’t it? Basically the one-fourth or so of supervillains who want to cleanse the Earth and rebuild. (Hugo Drax, Ultron, etc.) Dan Brown is one of my guiltiest pleasures. In his novel _Inferno_, he lays out a super-villain plot to sterilize one-third (?) of the world population for weird Malthusian reasons. And the plot succeeds. Brown doesn’t tell us the consequences – well, maybe he does in later books I haven’t read – but this would be a rare example of the supervillain plot succeeding and everything being cool. A “cleansing fire,” as it were.) ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058/35 "2019-01-24T08:12:57Z")
> [@Chad\_Sudan](#): > > In the context of Brexit, Trump, etc., some commentators have expressed the notion that the only way to make things better in the long term is to deliberately make them worse in the short term. For instance… > > On Brexit: > “For sure, leaving [the EU] and leaving without a deal is going to be an ugly business, but it is at least politically constructive. From there we can rebuild and reform.” - Peter J. North > > On Trump: > “Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in. Then things will really explode.” - Susan Sarandon, 2016 > > This is "the old Leninist idea of ‘heightening the contradictions,’ which holds that social conditions need to get worse in order to inspire the revolution that will make them better. > > “In this way of thinking, the real enemy of progress is incremental reform that would render the status quo tolerable.” [[Slate.com](http://Slate.com)] > > So historically, has “heightening the contradictions” ever worked in politics? > > It’s a highly ideological concept, but are there historical examples of its success that might convince the non-ideologues among us? ISTR reading somewhere that the French Revolution broke out after Louis XVI took actions that marginally AMELIORATED the misery of the peasantry. It was several decades ago that I read this, and I never did any follow-up research on the claim, so take that for what it’s worth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heightening-the-contradictions-has-it-ever-worked/828058.md?page=1)