The Meaning of Identity and Struggle in Relation to Contradictions

Mao explains that opposites exclude each other by their very nature, but that they also rely on each other in order to have meaning in the first place. The individual aspect of contradictions cannot exist on their own. In a given contradiction, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite. So identity derived from transformation of one into the other is precisely what we want to achieve by building socialism.