Development is the “ struggle ” of opposites.

Development is the “ struggle ” of opposites.

Lenin : On the Question of Dialectics

1.   The identity of opposites . . .  is the recognition ( discovery ) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature . . .  .

2.   The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their “ self-movement ,” in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites.

3.  Development is the “ struggle ” of opposites.

The two basic . . .  conceptions of development ( evolution ) are: [i] development as decrease and increase, as repetition,

and [ii] development as a unity of opposites ( the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation ) .

In the first conception of motion, self - movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade ( or this source is made external — God, subject, etc. ).

In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of  “ self  ” - movement.

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4.  The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry.

The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the “ self-movement ” of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to “ leaps ,” to the “ break in continuity ,”   to the “ transformation into the opposite ,” to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.

5.   The unity ( coincidence,  identity,  equal action ) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.

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6.   Human knowledge is not ( or does not follow ) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral.

Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed  ( transformed one-sidedly ) into an independent, complete, straight line, . . .

Lenin : On the Question of Dialectics
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/misc/x02.htm