 The third, and most promising, of the three dialectical strands is a theory of social contradictions. Elster sees Marx as a pioneer in the study of “real contradictions”; that is, situations in (psychological or social) reality which can only be described in terms of logical contradiction. The core idea here involves a contrast between the local and the global, between what is possible for a particular social agent and what is possible for all agents in that social position. This core idea is judged both clear (impervious to some standard “analytical” objections to dialectical talk) and fertile (operationalizable and capable of generating substantive social scientific results).