course, but it is done (though not in this essay) by 
employing the concept of contradiction. Contradiction 
does not refer to all aggravation that people deal with. 
One may be at home suffering from a terrible disease, 
but it is the absence of medical care that constitutes 
contradiction. There cannot be any contradiction (if we 
understand the term) in reality, or how could the 
empirical sciences be practiced? No, contradiction 
exists only in thought, but category three is related. 
After all, in a universe of pure thought how could there 
be any contradiction committed? According to 
materialist logic the best way to resolve contradiction 
is to begin by recognizing the need to improve our 
knowledge of things; but this is just the beginning in 
the development of a theory of knowledge. "It is in the 
discoveries and progress of science that Marxists can 
expand their understanding of matter and its relation to 
mind and human practice," says NST magazine (233). In 
this way of thinking, existence (a term more extensive 
than "reality") is wrapped up in contradiction which can 
be and must be made worthwhile to attempt to overcome; 
and we see logically that it is not "evil thought" in 
itself which is the culprit. The producers, the 
proletariat, practicing the science of gathering 
sustenance for society, relating to category three in 
their objective situation, need only to have their 
natural class instincts educated to take this 
revolutionary road, according to Marxist thought. 
Herbert Marcuse (77) discusses Hegel and Marx on this 
subject extremely eloquently. 

Incidentally, many discussions seem to fail to 
identify what a thing is. For example, Marx complained 
about how economic theorists identify capital as a 
thing, not recognizing that it is really a "social 
relation." (See Capital, Vol. III, chapter 48.) As we 
go on to analyze peoples' differing stations in life we 
look toward historical fortune rather than psychological 
theories. Certainly at this stage in history we must 
recognize that the continents, the spread of mankind 
over the globe, the successive westward movements of 
centers of power, indicate that geographical features 
are real things that have a profound affect over the 
hapless people. 

The above terms used here --contradiction, reality, 
existence, and the three parts of existence-- are not 
copied from Hegel or anybody else. Stephen Houlgate 
(179) helps to delineate the spirit here above when he 
says: 
Hegel can show that, although physical objects are 
not obviously self-determining since they are subject 
to external mechanical forces, nature as a rational 
whole is a process leading to modes of being which 
are fully self-determining. This is why Hegel 
considers it to be rational that organic life --which 
determines itself to the extent that it has the 
ability to move and reproduce itself-- emerges in 
nature. Life is brought about by natural causes for 
Hegel, not by supernatural intervention. However, 
life is not simply an accident of nature; it is the 
product of the rational tendency within nature itself 
to generate, through natural processes, modes of 
explicitly self-determining existence. Furthermore, 
this also enables Hegel to show that nature as a 
rational whole necessarily leads to consciousness. 

Today the most dismal ideology on a world scale has 
to be 'American exceptionalism.' On its face it is 
imperialistic as it wants to place blame for the 
immiseration of the working class on the outside. Japan, 
for example. But in fact, well, that's capitalism for 
you! At a lesser profit rate, the greater market share 
their companies get is simply the strategy in such a 
natural-resource-poor country as Japan on the world 
market (see Lester Thurow, 129). 

"Capitalism," as another form of social 
relations/production relations systems in history (see 
Marx quote below), "is always ready to reward academics 
and publicists who provide plausible exculpatory 
explanations for its crises, failures, and crimes" 
(Sweezy). "Dominant ideologies are by definition 
conservative: in order to reproduce themselves, all 
forms of social organization must perceive themselves as 
the end of history. However, the first step of 
scientific thought is precisely in seeking to go beyond 
the vision that social systems have of themselves" 
(Amin). This is to say that we know that ideology 
doesn't teach naked self-interest as we analyze modern 
social systems' pretensions against the very problems 
they cause. Group-interest, xenophobia, yes. But inside 
a group? No, familialality is supposed to be aided or 
encouraged. In Adam Smith, individuals pursuing their 
'rational' self-interest indirectly and inadvertently 
promote the collective interest through the "invisible 
hand" of self-regulating civil society's market, where 
the state is to be kept at a distance. In Smith, 
individuals have to be involved in producing something. 
Here too, the value of commodities is measured by the 
labor time involved. How are the non-labor incomes of 
rent and profits justified? You know, we need 
entrepreneurs. The acquisition of ill-gotten treasures 
is undesirable in modern ideology. Naked self-interest 
or egoism of that level could better be related to 
isolation and the broken home. Unemployment is central 
because families are rendered unstable. Then problems 
occur which come to exist under the heading of street 
crime per se. 

Why study economic history? This is regarded as the 
classic statement by Marx, defining the terrain of 
Historical Materialism: 
In the social production of their life, men enter 
into definite relations that are indispensable and 
independent of their will, relations of production 
which correspond to a definite stage of development 
of their material productive forces. The sum total of 
these relations of production constitutes the 
economic structure of society, the real foundation, 
on which rises a legal and political superstructure 
and to which correspond definite forms of social 
consciousness. The mode of production of material 
life conditions the social, political, and 
intellectual life process in general. (The Preface, A 
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.) 
Scientists can possess the theoretical tools to 
witness the reciprocal relations between things in 
reality but deny the existence of contradiction 
(scientism). This leads them to explain social disarray 
with a rather dreary and static concept (as these 
theories in 'normal' science, as opposed to 
'revolutionary' science, tend to be static) of 
psychological repression of the individual as a 
component of human nature in general. Religious people 
acknowledge contradiction but leap over the material 
things which need to be studied. Thus both deny the 
revolutionary road to promote full individuality, 
realizable only through social unity and the collective 
control of nature as envisioned by Marxism. 

We were discussing supply and demand in an advanced 
capitalist society. In the post-colonial era, for many 
years in the Marxist theory of foreign trade, we 
conceptualize, as Lenin did in his book on imperialism, 
the difference in wage rates around the world as the 
major conduit supporting the "unequal exchange" between 
the "North" and the "South" in the global capitalist 
system. Supply and demand works best for the rich 
countries who still have a monopoly of technology; the 
"scarcity value" of capital is still in history a major 
feature. The goods that the poor countries specialize in 
producing, in full recognition of the fact that they are 
produced in the most efficient manner possible, 
nevertheless suffer discrimination in the manner that 
their value or price level is underestimated in the 
world market. In this way the demand for products by 
workers in the central countries of the system is 
arguably elevated, but this cannot lead to a developed 
world. Our above concept of the "standardization of the 
profit rate" plus the element of low wages provides one 
paradigm. Here is the opportunity to help the peoples' 
economic understanding to note that in a poor Third 
World country that goes socialist and economically 
independent --if practice follows theory-- advantage can 
actually be taken of low wages in order to accumulate 
more capital. They have a planning board to regulate 
wages and prices of consumer goods so that the 
population absorbs all of these goods produced while 
capital grows for its own sake. Politics is in command 
of the length of time that people are willing to abstain 
from a level of current consumption to reach "industrial 
take-off." In the same vein (politics), in a developed 
society, if one should ever go socialist, the mass of 
savings would not have a subduing effect on the economy. 
All the workers would be able to save some of their 
income and expect an award later in the form of 
interest, and possess the assurance that their savings 
are invested for posterity. The way it is now, if the 
large numbers of people below the upper brackets were to 
gain income and start saving, then the capitalists would 
find out about it and price inflation would result. 
To trade everything may be historically outmoded, 
but let us frame the matter in history. We must not 
forget to consider primitive relations such as barter. 
In this case there is no "double counting" because all 
walk away from the exchange with a good deal. A 
discussion about such fond social relations uncovered 
from some pre-capitalist history evokes in us the desire 
for the project of communism to help the producers 
become "reunited with their means of production, but on 
a different basis." (Also see "alienation" in 
Bottomore.)

We indicated above what our method was going to be. 
In this table we choose to aggregate the wages and 
profits as we go back in this series of stages, making 
capital vanish into wages and profits. We have thus 
answered the question of the "exploitation of labor": 
why should the workers be entitled to dispose of all the 
profit they produce if they use capital that does not 
belong to them? This method also leads us to the germ of 
truth in Say's Law, which Marx criticized very much. Say 
said that there cannot be unemployment getting worse 
because the production of every good generates enough 
incomes to buy back its entire value --supply 
automatically creates its own demand ("supply-side" 
again). This is the same as saying that the production 
of the finished product in the table generates 360 
monetary units of various peoples' income. We have seen 
how this value is divided so that the workers' and 
capitalists' shares are 66.7% and 33.3% respectively. 
Without calculus to solve the table we simply note the 
ratio of profit per unit of labor, what Marx called the 
rate of surplus value and identified as the true rate of 
exploitation. (See, profit per unit of labor in 
Robinson, above.) This ratio shows that there is plenty 
of room to raise wages. Wage led economic growth or 
stagnation are the only choices we have. 
(Be sure that these stages make a genuine geometric 
series with really huge profits because all of the 
output in each step must go into the next step, or some 
unemployment will occur. In the table the various ratios 
are the same throughout. This is not the case in 
reality, but the differences in various industries can 
be said to deviate around a standard as we conceptualize 
this in terms of capital and labor used and the 
magnitude of value added in each step. There is much 
discussion of this matter in the literature, but it 
would be a digression here.)