I've only read the first few pages of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It's really good. For anyone who struggles with basic theory, Freire writes with a pretty incredible clarity and succinctness. To me it reads almost like a rehashing of The Communist Manifesto, just without the words "proletariat," "bourgeoisie," "workers," etc.: oppressed people around the world must organize to overthrow their oppressors. All Freire seems to add is that they shouldn't be dickheads when they finally succeed. (He also throws some shade at philanthropy.) In contrast to modern Hegelians like Todd McGowan, Freire believes that contradiction can be overcome, that we can really build a fucking sweet new world free of oppression and dehumanization.
Anyway, this is my question. I've worked for many years as a teacher although I've actually never received any formal training or gone to teacher's college or anything like that. (I worked as an ESL teacher abroad and as a sub in Amerikkka.) I've heard that Pedagogy of the Oppressed is basically required reading if you intend to become a professional teacher in the USA. Yet we all know that nearly all American teachers are either libs or chuds. (I will say however in their defense that the average American teacher is probably way more open to human liberation than the average American.) But still: how the fuck can you read this shit and then basically lick the boots of the pigs on patrol in the hallways of the school you work at? How do you read Pedagogy of the Oppressed and then teach an American history class where you say that the founding fathers were guided by the ideal of liberty rather than their thirst for human blood?i
Edit: lol okay as it turns out I am completely wrong about this book being assigned reading in the USA.
Class contradiction, by eliminating class. The only way to not have class contradiction is to not have class.
Look at the USSR, the proletariat and peasants allied, but being different classes they had differing material interests, which led to contradiction, often with pretty devasting consequences.
I think Mao lays this out best in on contradiction.
The way Mao would describe the peasant/proletariat contradiction is that of a non-antagonistic contradiction. As opposed to the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeois, which is an antagonistic contradiction.
Not all contradiction is created equal, and identifying the character of a contradiction is essential to understanding the best approach for dealing with those contradictions.
Mao touches on these ideas more in "On the correct handling of contradiction among the people."
Yeah, petty and big bourgeoisie, labour aristocracy bourgeoisie. These are non antagonistic contradictions. Still contrdictions though. You can see maga republicans as a reputure between big and petty bourgeoisie leading to increasingly antagonistic contradiction.
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Ok, well that's going to open a whole Buddhist can of worms lol.
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I guess dialectically speaking. The contradiction between the individual and the universal leads to the belief in self, which leads to desire and aversion, which leads to constant disequilibrium known as dukha, suffering, unease, discomfort. The only way to end dukha is to cut out the root by understanding non self, i guess you could say belief in self is the principal contradiction.
Not really an expert, but that would be my best Buddhist dialectical understanding of the arising of suffering.
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I think this basically stems from a secularized version of christian guilt/ christian conception of free will at least in NA context. I think Beyond Good and Evil kind of discusses this stuff.