 Elster outlines two variants of social contradiction: “counterfinality” and “suboptimality”. Only the former is discussed here. Broadly speaking, counterfinality refers to the discrepancy between individual intentions and actual results which obtains when each individual acts upon non-universalizable beliefs about the behaviour of others (see Van Parijs 1982, 592). In what Elster calls “condensed jargon”, counterfinality can be described as “the embodiment of the fallacy of composition” (1985: 44). Consider the following example of the contradictory character of capitalist behaviour. In response, say, to some exogenously induced fall in demand, each individual capitalist reduces their own workers’ wages in order to maintain profits. The aggregative result, contrary to that intention, is a further reduction of workers’ buying power (and thus a further reduction also of profits). Any capitalist might have succeeded were they the only one to act, but when they all act in this way they fail (Elster 1985: 46). These desires taken together are contradictory, in the sense that there is no possible world in which all capitalists can have that desire satisfied. Given certain structural contexts, those social contradictions can cause social change; for instance, in certain cases, generating collective action (perhaps including state intervention) designed to overcome or mitigate those contradictions.