Cross posted at Attytood:
Supposedly, the term "heighten the contradictions" has its origin in the writings of Marx (Karl, not Groucho) and some of his later 20th Century acolytes who believed that the contradictions of capitalism would become so obvious that the West's primary economic system would collapse of its own accord .That's something that didn't happen (although in fairness I haven't looked outside the window in the last couple of hours.)
I only became aware of the phrase "heighten the contradictions" only about six years ago, as I read author Rick Perlstein's masterful political history of the late 1960s and early 1970s, "Nixonland" (which is not to be confused with his current masterful bestseller about the mid-1970s, "The Invisible Bridge"). He notes that student protesters and other radicals often spoke of actions that would "heighten the contradictions" raised by Vietnam and other questionable U.S. actions of that era. Protests that drew a massive police response, even violence, would be a positive for the movement in the long run because average citizens would be won over by the sight of realities of an unfair society. Ditto the election of the very unprogressive Richard Nixon in 1969. In hindsight, there's no doubt that the contradictions were present for all to see, although what citizens did with that info wasn't always what we progressives had hoped for.