Feel like I've been hearing this more and more over the last year; I tried to read a piece on it but I could only really halfway get to understanding... Anyone have any good resources to learn more about these in-depth? Or examples from the last year of those contradictions in action would be helpful too.
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).