One Divides into Two; Two Does Not Unite into One

[Citizen]

Can someone explain this concept to me? I saw it being debated (or rather just brought up) in a forum on Facebook as a major difference between Marxist Leninist Maoists and Marxist Leninists – to which point I think someone else said Mao Zedong Thought is not Marxism Leninism Maoism... at which point I began to wonder, how much of this theory is really relevant to guiding work of revolutionaries in countries like mine, the U.S.? I have a loose grasp of MLM from the blog of a fellow in Canada, Joshua Moufawad Paul (I can't link things yet) and some other lay-readable texts, and I have always admired the very strong position and active work of MLM groups I know of... but with the recent high visibility of so many reactionary problems in the U.S. – from the white college students to Donald Trump to the reaction against Syria – I wonder how much the left really is isolating itself...

I dunno. Kind of in a puddle right now and this seemed like a question that might help to shed light -- since it seems to me at least directly connected to sectarianism, the well-known fractured left.

[Guardia Rossa]

Ugh, dogmatic "dialetics"
The misticized golden recipe that uses nothing to make nothing...

EDIT: Actually, it uses nothing to make ANYTHING.

[Citizen]

I'm still really confused about how most of this history can be tied to what happens in the "centers" of capitalism… specifically, what people are supposed to do.

[Comrade #138672]

It is just an attempt to sound profound without saying anything meaningful. I have not seen it before, but it is probably nonsensical.

[John Nada]

"One divides into two" is about the unity of opposites and contradictions present in everything, ie. the proletariat and bourgeoisie in capitalism, with the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie and negating classes altogether under socialism. "Two unites into one" was a theory that the two opposites can combined and this is supposedly the same as dividing one into two. The right-wing capitalist restorationists of the CCP put forth the "two combines into one" theory to back the infamous "theory of productive forces"(it's basically to make China and Russia like they are now). They claimed that the contradiction between workers and capitalists meant uniting the workers and capitalist due to some "common interests", so helping develop capitalism, develops productive forces and "helps" workers. Developing technology and increasing productivity was supposed to "naturally" grow into socialism, a claim going back to the reformist Bernstein, later picked up by Khrushchev and Deng.
According to the concept one divides into two, there are contradictions in everything. The two aspects of a contradiction depend on and struggle with each other, and this determines the life of all things. The natural world, society and man's thinking, far from "combining two into one," are full of contradictions and struggles. Without contradiction, there would not be the natural world, society, and man's thinking; nothing would exist. Contradictions are present in all processes of things and permeate all processes from beginning to end, and it is this that promotes the development of things. The constant emerging and resolving of contradictions -- this is the universal law of the development of things.
The core of the theory "combine two into one" lies in merging contradictions, liquidating struggle, opposing revolution, "combining" the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, "combining" Marxism with revisionism, "combining" socialism with imperialism and social-imperialism. This out-and-out reactionary bourgeois idealist and metaphysical world outlook is diametrically opposed to the world outlook of one divides into two.http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/TMS73.html#s3

[Tim Cornelis]

Juan Moreno's post is the only 'learning forum' worthy post in this thread. Keep this in mind.