Claim. Against Hegel and Marx, Unification Thought holds that development never occurs through contradiction or struggle but only through harmonious give-and-receive action between correlative subject and object centered on a common purpose.
Elaboration. Hegel made contradiction ‘the root of all movement and vitality,’ construing development as the three stages of in-itself / for-itself / in-and-for-itself, or thesis / antithesis / synthesis. Marx reversed Hegel materialistically and codified three laws of dialectic via Engels: transformation of quantity into quality, unity-and-struggle of opposites, and negation of negation, with Lenin pushing struggle to absoluteness (‘development is the struggle of opposites’) (Hegel).
Lee’s counter-proposal is point-by-point. Against ‘transformation of quantity into quality’ he offers the ‘law of the balanced development of quality and quantity’ — quality and quantity stand in sungsang and hyungsang relation and change simultaneously, gradually, and stage by stage, not in sudden qualitative leaps from quantitative accumulation. Against ‘unity and struggle of opposites’ he offers the ‘law of give and receive action between correlatives’ — ‘A struggle of opposites gives rise only to destruction and ruin, and never brings about development.’ Against ‘negation of the negation’ he offers the ‘law of affirmative development’ — development proceeds through harmonious give-and-receive between subject and object, manifested in circular motion (inorganic) and spiral motion (living beings) (Marx).
Hegel specifically misread development: an Idea does not develop through inner contradiction; thinking proceeds as inner Sungsang (intellect, emotion, will) acts upon inner Hyungsang (ideas, concepts), forming new ideas in spiral development. Hegel mistook give-and-receive between correlatives for interaction between opposing elements.
The stakes are political as well as metaphysical. Lee notes that Engels studied natural science for eight years to prove ‘nature is the proof of dialectics’ — but examined carefully, natural phenomena prove the law of give-and-receive instead. Critics typically engage on whether ‘struggle’ in real biological, economic, or historical systems can be redescribed without remainder as ‘harmonious give-and-receive centered on purpose.’ Worth a thread once a counter atomic exists.
See also. give-and-receive-is-harmonious-not-struggle, ut-correlatives-vs-opposites, heraclitus-and-zeno-grasped-only-one-aspect