The fundamental contradiction of capitalism is between the socialization of production and the privatization of ownership; that is, everyone must work to produce but only a few people (the bourgeoisie) receive the fruits of that labor (profit/surplus value). All other contradictions under capitalism stem from this fundamental one.

A good example of this is the contradiction between universal suffrage and private property. If the vast majority of propertyless citizens were given the right to vote (which was not the case in capitalism's early stages), they would democratically take control of the means of production. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, felon disenfranchisement, and (most importantly) the ideological functioning of mainstream media are all efforts to suppress this contradiction in the imperial core (in the global south the CIA will just coup your ass).

For theory I'd recommend starting with On Contradiction by Mao, it's fairly brief and lays out the basic theory of contradiction not just under capitalism but universally.

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There are some that are really intuitive and easy to grasp and can be used to radicalise people like overproduction. Capitalism is the only economic system in which having to many products is bad, because then the value (and surplus value) can not be realised. Like too many people buy a home (somewhat of a good thing), but actually they can't pay the mortages and the global economy takes a nosedive because of this. The medieval peasant might starve because the harvest was bad, but the modern agrarian corporation might face ruin because the harvest was too good.

The most important contradiction is that between socialised production and private ownership. All production is highly specialised and done for consumption by others, but this production is not direct like it would be with a societal plan for production, but mediated by money and markets, leading to huge inefficiencies like:

• usefull goods being worthless as commodities because there are no buyers who can afford them leading to devaluation of capital, people losing their job, people being less able to afford commodities...

• usefull production not taking place because at least short term it's not profitable (think combating climate change)

• Research facilities not cooperating because they are owned by competing companies (think vaccines for example)

• advances in technology leading to parts of the population being laid of and desolate while the rest often becomes even more overworked/stressed out.

• usefull projects not taking place because while there is an interest in it and ressources and free labour it lacks funding. (this is closely tied to point , but also think about public housing or public transport).

A lot of the contradictions can be boiled down pretty simply. Essentially, capitalism needs to do a thing (or, many things) to survive, but the process of doing those things leads to the collapse of that thing.

Just consider basic middle school economics for an easy example. For capitalism to function, widgets need to be sold, and someone needs to buy those widgets. Capitalism demands that those widgets be sold at the absolutely highest profit margins possible. This means cutting costs wherever possible, leading to lower quality widgets that need to be bought more often AND lower paid employees that can buy less widgets. Now imagine a basic society where the entire working class is making that same widget. As wages to make that widget goes down, less widgets can be bought. In order for this system to sustain itself, costs must continue to be cut. Workers are paid less, less widgets can be bought, and we're now in a negative feedback loop. Eventually nobody can afford to buy widgets, so the factory owner cannot buy materials to buy more widgets, and the entire system collapses.

All of the contradictions are like this. A thing happens so that another thing happens, but the second thing happening makes it harder for the first thing to happen, which makes it harder for the second, etc. Capitalism is one giant negative feedback loop that contradicts its own existence. It will eventually collapse; we need to make sure it collapses into socialism instead of fascism.

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David Harvey

The communist manifesto might be a good place to start iirc. That's definitely what I remember as my first education concerning class antagonism

https://www.amazon.com/Seventeen-Contradictions-Capitalism-David-Harvey/dp/0190230851

we are scared that we're gonna lose all our jobs to ai when we could be happy we could sustain our lives with less work. that's a big one for me. private ownership makes little sense in the long run.

I always think about how capitalism requires perpetual exponential growth in order to maintain the status quo. For anyone who knows anything about exponential growth, this is a laughably impossible thing. You might as well be asking a hundred thousand angels to break dance on the head of a pin. Like unbounded exponential growth is what happens when a fissile mass of radioactive material goes hypercritical. You don't keep that growth up forever, and when it runs out you realize you have a gigantic BOOM on your hands.

I enjoyed Wolfgang Streeck's How Will Capitalism End which is about the crises caused by capitalism's contradictions.

Also I heard/read good reviews about Corona crash by Grace Blakeley. This one is no doubt more timely but I haven't read it yet. Blakeley and Varoufakis have written articles n stuff which is in the public domain if you don't want to fork out for the books mentioned above. For me the Eurozone crisis was a really clarifying moment (that went on and on and on) and there's loads of articles about that out there you can get if you're interested.

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