[Conscript]

Homes and health care are obviously necessary for the most fundamental means of production: human labor.

Will you go on to claim that my body and my life are collectively owned as well?

Labor is a commodity, not means of production.

[The Immortal Goon]

TIG - I am sure we are all grateful for the history lessons but it puts me in mind of listening to a news report, everything is bad, murders, robberies, corruption, economic meltdown, etc. Good news isn't news at all and mostly goes unreported and history is just old news, so I wonder if for every evil industrialist who lobbies government to crush the workers who then gets dutifully documented by scientific materialists there are not a thousand of perfectly ordinary businessmen, traders and entrepreneurs who lead entirely blameless lives at work and at home and are therefore too boring to be included in a denouncement of the evils of a market economy. When I consider the capitalists I know in my everyday life, which perhaps technically includes myself, none of them are killers of indians or slavers of africans. Their business activities are not intrinsically or inevitably harmful and generally they are making a positive contribution to society.

The issue here is the material system, not what some individual does or doesn't do. Further, as I have pointed out many times in this thread alone, Marxists like the revolutionary aspect of new systems—and capitalism was one of them.

So, sure, there probably have been businessmen or factory owners that were really nice. Engels himself was a factory owner. Lenin was a lawyer, Che was a doctor, and on and on. However, that does not mean that the means of production is any different because there are nice people here and there.

Most 'workers', even the ones without shares, I know complain much more about the robbing and incompetent government than they do about the share-holders of HMV, the landlord of their local pub or the CEO of VW. Are the workers just lacking class consciousness? There are lots of ways we can catagorise people in a society besides whether or not they own equity shares in a business. Some people think ethnic divisions are more significant, others gender, or religion, academic accomplishments, commitment to fashion or a good time. However we catagorise people everyone is more or less an individual and the catagories you put them in obscure more of their real nature than they reveal. We can certainly find people in history who definitely qualify as both capitalist and evil, but the same can also be said of feudalists, socialists, fundamentalists. British imperialists, business and the state pushed opium on the chinese, yes but what did ghengis khan do in China when he conquored it? Was that capitalism? There were heaps of bodies then too.

The government is not any more separate from the means of production than the individuals in it. The way we see the world is based on how we interact with it. If a worker doesn't like the government, good on them. How many Marxists do you know that snuggle up next to Uncle Sam? We just realize that the government, gender, religion, academia, fashion, and whatnot is the superstructure stemming from the base of society.

You, again, are looking for the heart of individuals in a relation to "good" or "bad" based on a universal idea. We would reject this and say that morals and all of these things stem from how we interact with the material world and our production from it.

Ghengis Khan (who did not actually complete a conquest of China) was alive under feudalism. Though he's an interesting case as a pastoral person moving into places with feudal relations. Regardless, he can hardly be said to be capitalist as there was no such thing as capitalism.

Do you object to market economies in general, or just specifically state-capitalism? How can there be an economy at all without a market?

I reject capitalism as a means of production. Its done its part and its time to move on. Grappling on with trying to make it work with "state-capitalism" or some imaginary form of it is trying to reconcile what cannot be reconciled.

[Rothbardian]

Labor is a commodity, not means of production.

So labor doesn't produce?

[teflsecretagent]

So labor doesn't produce?

No, it doesn't.

I am still interested in the ideas and opinions of other communists regarding how we will 'achieve it'.

What ideas do people have nowadays?

[SolarCross]

TIG - When you say you are reject the capitalist means of production could you clarify exactly which elements you reject? A little bit about why you reject each element would be appreaciated in order to understand your position.

Defined property rights? yea or nay
Market economy? yea or nay
Fiat currency? yea or nay
Cronyism with the state? yea or nay
Forced monopolies via the state? yea or nay
Decentralised production? yea or nay
Free enterprise? yea or nay
Waged labour? yea or nay
Corporate welfare / subsidy? yea or nay

[The Immortal Goon]

TIG - When you say you are reject the capitalist means of production could you clarify exactly which elements you reject? A little bit about why you reject each element would be appreaciated in order to understand your position.

I reject it as a base of society as its progressive role in history has long since passed. The problem with your question is that a binary of "yea" or "nay" about supposedly (?) universal aspects doesn't exist. The base of society, capitalism, determines what these things mean:



For instance, let us say I'm in ancient Rome, where the means of production is large-scale slavery.

Defined property rights? yea or nay

Yes! These rights include slaves, and are defined by the character of the person's family in determining what can be owned as property.

Market economy? yea or nay

Yes! I should be able to sell the products my slaves make.

Fiat currency? yea or nay

Sure! The government must stamp coins caesar, or else there would be chaos and we'd be prone.

Cronyism with the state? yea or nay

No. The senate and caesar should act with virtue.

Forced monopolies via the state? yea or nay

No, not forced. Depending on the monopoly, maybe there's some leeway. How else would you get salt if not a major government operation?

Decentralised production? yea or nay

Of course! How else would it be done?

Free enterprise? yea or nay

Naturally freemen have the freedom to do what they want.

Waged labour? yea or nay

Of course I should be paid for my work.

Corporate welfare / subsidy? yea or nay

Only when absolutely required for the good of Rome!

---

Or with feudalism:

Defined property rights? yea or nay

Yes! All of society should be based on property rights. How else would you know if someone is a serf? Who is a lord?

Market economy? yea or nay

Yes! Otherwise the socage would collapse altogether!

Fiat currency? yea or nay

Yes, luxury goods from the Middle East need to come to the castle in some manner.

Cronyism with the state? yea or nay

No. The king should act with Christ's will.

Forced monopolies via the state? yea or nay

No, not forced. It is the responsibility of the lord to serve his king in exchange for his fief.

Decentralised production? yea or nay

Of course! How else would it be done? The king cannot do everything, only the king of kings can do that.

Free enterprise? yea or nay

Naturally freemen have the freedom to do what they want.

Waged labour? yea or nay

Of course I should be paid for my work.

Corporate welfare / subsidy? yea or nay

No. Obligation for caring for the king's land should be its own reward.

--

The same answers and justifications can be given for any system, because they're not actually talking about the same things at all. "Freedom" is an abstract concept that cannot be divorced from our relationship with the material—thus asking about "free enterprise" means literally nothing if you deliberately remove the means of production from the equation.

The concept of wages doesn't even make sense since the context of what a person's relationship with the world is removed. A Roman would certainly believe in wages, but be oblivious to the capitalist connotation of it. Same with a feudal person.

This goes even deeper with concepts like "rights," which have no inherent meaning without a context.

So in a capitalist society do I believe in property rights? Sure, they certainly exist as an abstract value that we agree upon. Do I think that this extension is a universal that must be held in exactly the same way most middle class white Americans hold them as of today? No, that would be ridiculous. As ridiculous as Columbus asking the Native Americans what they think about property rights and assuming they'll believe what the Spaniards think.

Or today asking Columbus what property rights are and assuming it will apply perfectly with our concept of it.

[Nunt]

Yes! These rights include slaves, and are defined by the character of the person's family in determining what can be owned as property.

When people say: "property rights" you can add in your head: "universal" in front of that so that you get "universal property rights". If you don't then the term property rights becomes totally useless in differentiating between societies. For example: A society with one God-King and this King owns everything and everyone inside his country could also be considered as one with property rights. Namely: everything and everyone is part of the God-Kings property. Of course, it does not take much intellect to realize that when people are talking about property rights, they are not talking about the God-Kings property.

You are talking about property rights as to mean: "To have sufficient power to command over people and goods". Well then even your communist society has private property rights.

So when people talk about (universal) private property rights they mean: There is a set of rules which proscribes how something can become property and this rule applies to the whole society. Evidently, slavery is not property rights as there is no universal set of rules which applies equally to both slave and slave owner.

[The Immortal Goon]

So when people talk about (universal) private property rights they mean: There is a set of rules which proscribes how something can become property and this rule applies to the whole society. Evidently, slavery is not property rights as there is no universal set of rules which applies equally to both slave and slave owner.

The idea of "universal" anything, so far as an abstract non-material thing goes, is absurd.

For one, how do you have rights for property if you don't have property? A poor Indian in a slum with nothing certainly isn't part of this "universal" right. Nor, as the argument goes, should he be. Thus, the "universal" right is restricted only to those that have the power to have it. While the current epoch empowers more people than ever before, it certainly is not "universal." For the Indian in the slum, he might as well be living under one God-King. The rights are equally as "universal."

On a broader plain, the "universal" part of it changes and has never been universally agreed upon. When (for example) the British came to Ireland for the fist time, they had to conquer each Hibernian tribe individually and then give the land back to the local Chief-of-the-Name. Why take it all in order to give it right back? Because the local Irish didn't determine the "universal" private property as the same way that the British did. But by abstracting it and giving it to one individual, the idea could be followed by force of arms, but accepted as being held by the Irish still.

So instead of measuring land by how many cows can live upon it, it was now measured by physical size. Instead of a king being chosen by consent, it was by who held the family land.

Keep in mind, these are two islands right next to each other on the same continent that had totally different concepts of this "universal" private property rights.

Once Europe in general was forced to accept the "universal" property rights, it was spread via guns, trickery, rape, and plunder to every other person on the planet that had no idea there were "universal" property rights.

And this is my point. The "universal" property rights is only "universal" in the sense that it's abstract (the poor Indian doesn't get them as he has no property with which to have rights); and it was something that 99% of the planet didn't recognize until capitalism spread across the planet a few hundred years ago. Even now, people deep in the Amazon would have no idea what these "universal" rights they have are. In fact, they would find them incredibly stupid and oppressive.

Ergo, trying to argue that saying they're universal makes a lot more sense only underlines the point that a Roman and feudal French baron would legitimately have no problem defining "universal" property rights, but you would certainly disagree with both of them.

[Nunt]

You seem to have misunderstood what I meant with the word "universal". By universal I meant that rules towards obtaining property rights should apply to all men in the same way. That is, if one person undertakes an action through which he can legitimately own property, then an another person undertaking an identical action should have an identical effect.

[SolarCross]

TIG - that was an interesting answer but an evasive one; I am still none the wiser as to what exactly you object to in this thing we are to call 'capitalist mode of production'. I didn't ask you to roleplay objections or affirmations of feudalism and Rome but for your personal opinion on Capitalism.

The only sensible objection that I can see to capitalism in the sense of property rights and property rights exchange is where property rights are acquired by violence or deceit. However that is not an intrinsic feature of capitalism where even in stamokap the bulk of property rights are acquired by means of creative work and voluntary exchange. Coerced property rights are much more intrinsic to the other economic systems you mentioned such as feudalism, Roman style slave economy and perhaps soviet-style state monopolism.

You should like freemarket capitalism because it is a system that allows anything to happen that people desire including communism.. If people desire communal property and gift exchange they can do it providing the property they acquire for pooling is obtained without theft or fraud and they don't force anyone to participate against their will. Where communists will get themselves into trouble with free market capitalism is when they attempt to take property by coercive means. Some communists especially marxist communists seem to have the dotty and highly imperialistic idea that their preferred economic system should be imposed on everyone in the world whether they like it or not. I like the idea of communal property and gift exchange but I strongly oppose turning this mode of production into an imperialistic crusade against the 'heathen' capitalists.

[The Immortal Goon]

You seem to have misunderstood what I meant with the word "universal". By universal I meant that rules towards obtaining property rights should apply to all men in the same way.

How foolish of me to have understood "universal" to mean, "universal," when I should have said, "What you think the rules obtaining property should be for everyone, regardless of what they want or what the vast majority of history has been."

That is, if one person undertakes an action through which he can legitimately own property, then an another person undertaking an identical action should have an identical effect.

So under feudalism or in the period of Rome, when you had people take by right of conquest and this was agreed upon, this was an acceptable "universal"?

TIG - that was an interesting answer but an evasive one; I am still none the wiser as to what exactly you object to in this thing we are to call 'capitalist mode of production'. I didn't ask you to roleplay objections or affirmations of feudalism and Rome but for your personal opinion on Capitalism.

Does it matter what my "personal opinion" is? Why can't we just look at the system that exists in an historical context and draw conclusions based upon this?

The "roleplay" was set up to point out that the base (including, most importantly, the means of production) is what dictates how we interact with concepts needed to answer the questions.

The only sensible objection that I can see to capitalism in the sense of property rights and property rights exchange is where property rights are acquired by violence or deceit. However that is not an intrinsic feature of capitalism where even in stamokap the bulk of property rights are acquired by means of creative work and voluntary exchange. Coerced property rights are much more intrinsic to the other economic systems you mentioned such as feudalism, Roman style slave economy and perhaps soviet-style state monopolism.

As repeated often through this thread, I do not object to the rise of capitalism and its progressive role in the history of mankind. Pointing out that it has acquired "universal" rights through violence and deceit is to underline one of the contradictions within the system that will eventually break it.

To say that it is not, "not an intrinsic feature of capitalism" is to ignore the history of capitalism; to compare it to feudalism or slavery as if each existed in a vacuum is to not understand history. Slavery had contradictions within the system (for example, as things became more efficient, slaves became less efficient; you eventually reached a point where you were producing more but gaining less as more went to the upkeep and procurement of slaves) that led it to collapse, and from those ashes feudalism was born. Feudalism had contradictions within its system (for instance, an economy based upon the social relation to land was increasingly reliant upon imports unrelated to land) that led it to collapse, and from those ashes capitalism was born. Capitalism has contradictions within its system (the protection of property rights it promotes, for instance, are not compatible with the actual practice of property rights) that are leading it to collapse. From that, we can judge from looking at the other systems, another system will rise.

I have no real objections to capitalism in theory, but theories promoting capitalism are figments in the sky. I look at the world and the movement of material history and see no reason to come up with excuses for a system that is better than former systems, but not perfect anyway.

Everything else in your post rises from a complete misunderstanding of the above. And, moreover, what capitalism is—when not redefined every other word with Newspeak.

[SolarCross]

Well I think I agree that stamokap is in its deaththrows and that a new system will emerge. However that new system I think will be closer to the an-cap vision than the marxist. In the far future maybe the entire human race will voluntarily join together to practice global communism but we have a long ways to go before that happens.

[The Immortal Goon]

In the far future maybe the entire human race will voluntarily join together to practice global communism but we have a long ways to go before that happens.

Please, there will be nothing voluntary about the rich and the elite smiling and handing over the reigns of the planet to the soiled masses.

Marx continued:

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."

Marx bases this conclusion on an analysis of the role played by the proletariat in modern capitalist society, on the data concerning the development of this society, and on the irreconcilability of the antagonistic interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

Previously the question was put as follows: to achieve its emancipation, the proletariat must overthrow the bourgeoisie, win political power and establish its revolutionary dictatorship.

Now the question is put somewhat differently: the transition from capitalist society--which is developing towards communism--to communist society is impossible without a "political transition period", and the state in this period can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

...Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

But from this capitalist democracy--that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through--forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards "greater and greater democracy", as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way.

And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.

We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration. In this we agree with the Cadets, with Breshkovskaya, and with Tsereteli. We differ, however, from these citizens in that we demand an immediate break with the prejudiced view that only the rich, or officials chosen from rich families, are capable of administering the state, of performing the ordinary, everyday work of administration. We demand that training in the work of state administration be conducted by class-conscious workers and soldiers and that this training be begun at once, i.e., that a beginning be made at once in training all the working people, all the poor, for this work.

...It goes without saying that this new apparatus is bound to make mistakes in taking its first steps. But did not the peasants make mistakes when they emerged from serfdom and began to manage their own affairs? Is there any way other than practice by which the people can learn to govern themselves and to avoid mistakes? Is there any way other than by proceeding immediately to genuine self-government by the people? The chief thing now is to abandon the prejudiced bourgeois-intellectualist view that only special officials, who by their very social position are entirely dependent upon capital, can administer the state. The chief thing is to put an end to the state of affairs in which bourgeois officials and "socialist" ministers are trying to govern in the old way, but are incapable of doing so and, after seven months, are faced with a peasant revolt in a peasant country! The chief thing is to imbue the oppressed and the working people with confidence in their own strength, to prove to them in practice that they can and must themselves ensure the proper, most strictly regulated and organised distribution of bread, all kinds of food, milk, clothing, housing, etc., in the interests of the poor.

[Rothbardian]

No, it doesn't.

That's funny. I would imagine that if the human beings of the world decided to stop applying their labor to property, there would be no production.

[SolarCross]

TIG - Well I agree that stamokapists likely will not be brought down to size willingly. However any communism worth the name will not emerge unless people voluntarily want it. So in a way Lenin is right about the need for a 'transitional period' however at this time it is plain that such a transitional period cannot be a statist one even if it is a so-called dictatorship of the proletariat. The transitional period needs to be libertarianism, market anarchism, voluntaryism call it what you will. It needs to be because libertarianism addresses and offers immediate practical remedy to the central complaint against stamokap which is monopoly imposed by force. Lenin's proposed statist transitional period, however well intentioned, merely perpetuates and even increases the problems and complaints stemming from monopoly imposed by force. History has shown that approach does not work just as the 19th century anarchists such as Bakunin warned.

Bakunin - We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.

The libertarian transitional period will work very well and it may last as long as the stamokap period or even longer, so if you want global communism you should be patient. However libertarianism certainly permits communism so you can be a practicing communist providing you only do it with those that actually want to do it and do it with you. Actually you can do this even now under stamokap to some limited extent, as the folks at Twin Oaks have shown.

[The Immortal Goon]

So in a way Lenin is right about the need for a 'transitional period' however at this time it is plain that such a transitional period cannot be a statist one even if it is a so-called dictatorship of the proletariat. The transitional period needs to be libertarianism, market anarchism, voluntaryism call it what you will. It needs to be because libertarianism addresses and offers immediate practical remedy to the central complaint against stamokap which is monopoly imposed by force. Lenin's proposed statist transitional period, however well intentioned, merely perpetuates and even increases the problems and complaints stemming from monopoly imposed by force. History has shown that approach does not work just as the 19th century anarchists such as Bakunin warned.

And we're back at the nature of this libertarian paradise when implemented in the past-piles and piles of the dead, the world's largest concentration of people hooked onto opium, and starvation at home.

More broadly, there seems to be this attitude that these societal bases exist in a vacuum. That you can choose one as easily as one chooses the color of socks one will wear. History, the universe in general, doesn't work like that. After a star collapses, you can't make that star and the system around it again. As much as the Dhali Llama would like to go back to feudal Tibet, even if he got the country and government back, it would be a capitalist constitutional monarchy at best for him. The basis of his old rule has gone, history has moved, nobody can do anything about it.

Libertarianism doesn't offer anything as we are already the long term future of libertarian society. It worked well as a transitional program from a late stage of Manchester capitalism into monopoly capitalism.

The system in which we exist, and this includes the government, is a reflection of this basic fact.

Not in every branch of industry are there large-scale enterprises; and moreover, a very important feature of capitalism in its highest stage of development is so-called combination of production, that is to say, the grouping in a single enterprise of different branches of industry, which either represent the consecutive stages in the processing of raw materials (for example, the smelting of iron ore into pig-iron, the conversion of pig-iron into steel, and then, perhaps, the manufacture of steel goods)—or are auxiliary to one another (for example, the utilisation of scrap, or of by-products, the manufacture of packing materials, etc.).

...Half a century ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition appeared to the overwhelming majority of economists to be a “natural law”. Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that “Marxism is refuted”. But facts are stubborn things, as the English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the rise of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism.

Trying to disassociate the state with the society that created the state to protect said society won't work either. It cannot be a sacrificial leg heaped upon when it's only part of the lamb.

In the same way Tibet's social character has been altered in a way that it can never have feudalism, capitalism transformed feudal Britain into a capitalist state. Thought the US, UK, and Germany all had completely dissimilar theoretical considerations, goals, and histories in the creation of a state, the states ended up being pretty much the same as they all reflected the same base-capitalism.

[Eran]

Libertarianism doesn't offer anything as we are already the long term future of libertarian society.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Is does seem like you are underestimating the difference between modern mixed-capitalist societies and the libertarian society taxizen, Nunt and I advocate.

[The Immortal Goon]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Is does seem like you are underestimating the difference between modern mixed-capitalist societies and the libertarian society taxizen, Nunt and I advocate.

And you certainly underestimate the fact that century long projects to create the libertarian society taxizen, Nunt, and you advocate end up collapsing into their own contradictions in which we currently live.

It's not even that this makes it a "bad" system, but a system that exists. Stars are destroyed by their contradictions—either the gravity that they create, or the massive amounts of energy that they create. Flaws inherent in any system work in a dialectic and physical way. It's the same with this libertarian capitalism that has been tried repeatedly for centuries at a time and never are perfect.

[lucky]

Stars are destroyed by their contradictions—either the gravity that they create, or the massive amounts of energy that they create.

Stars, gravity, or large energies are not contradictory. You're using a wrong word. If something is contradictory, it can't exist.

Also, stars do not create energy, they release energy.

[The Immortal Goon]

Stars, gravity, or large energies are not contradictory. You're using a wrong word. If something is contradictory, it can't exist.

This view hasn't been universally true in philosophy since at least 500BC. In fact, Aristotle, who was the one who came up with the idea that you're advancing, came up with it as a means to try and undermine the standard Heraclitus view of thought by adding Plato's logic (which, as I've covered at least once in this thread, is a form of idealism, which we marxists‚—as materialists—reject). So, again, the materialists believed in the unity of opposites for a long time—the idealists came up with explanations having to do with the spirit and other things after that.

Aristotle carried the torch for a lot of western thought, but—as I noted earlier and I think libertarians will say this is true judging from your reaction to being called idealists—materialism came back into fashion in the 19th Century:

Within the modern philosophical canon, Hegel has often been seen as the echt LNC-skeptic, well before his reputed deathbed lament, “Only one man ever understood me, and he didn't understand me.” Hegel saw himself as picking up where Heraclitus left off—“There is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my logic”—and indeed the Heraclitean view of a world shaped by the unity of opposites through strife and resolution does seem to foreshadow Hegelian dialectic. In fact, however, an unresolved contradiction was a sign of error for Hegel. The contradiction between thesis and antithesis results in the dialectical resolution or superseding of the contradiction between opposites as a higher-level synthesis through the process of Aufhebung (from aufheben, a verb simultaneously interpretable as 'preserve, cancel, lift up'). Rather than repudiating LNC, Hegel's dialectic rests upon it. In Marxist theory, too, contradictories do not simply cancel out but are dynamically resolved (aufgehoben) at a higher level in a way that both preserves and supersedes the contradiction, motivating the historical dialectic.

This is true, after Hegel, for many philosophers of the modern era. The unity of opposites has been said to be so fundamental, in the internet age, that there's a project showing that even children can grasp the concept.

Also, stars do not create energy, they release energy.

See! I thought you'd understand the contradictions in a given system!

Dust and gas create energy for the protostar, and when there's enough mass, hydrogen starts to fuse into helium and energy is released.

In time, the core begins nuclear fusion; photons carry energy away from the core; and convection currents bring energy toward the surface.

Given more time, the star will either begin large and its own gravity will crush the core, causing the star to explode into massive amounts of energy—creating elements in the process.

Smaller stars, without the gravity problem, will continue to expand and produce helium until a helium flash occurs and a center remains while the energy the rest of the star is producing leaves into space, also creating elements and whatnot in the process.

So you're right, stars create energy (as much as anything in the universe can) and they release energy!

If you want to be a stickler, I suppose there's a finite amount of energy in the universe—but he would truly have no argument and be relying on the most base form of semantics to argue that point in order to try and undermine Marxism of all things. So I'll assume you weren't doing that.

Regardless, stars are physical, and like any other system (including systems we create) the same contradictions occur that will lead to new synthesis. You could say the British feudal system continued to expand out of feudalism and eventually succumbed to its contradictions, flashed, and equalized to the material universe around it by becoming a capitalist government (the same way a small star goes into a helium flash). French feudalism was bigger and stronger and, like the system within a large star, was crushed by its own expansion and exploded—like the British system—it reconciled to material reality around it.