Workers World, Vol. 2 No. 24
It would be foolish in the extreme to regard the Moscow Manifesto as a departure from the recent policies pursued by the world Communist movement.
To be sure, the language employed throughout the long text is considerably more militant in some parts than is the Moscow Declaration of 1957. But in its overall aspects, it does not reveal any substantial change in orientation or tactics for the immediate future.
The world bourgeoisie, which had been looking hopefully for a split between China and the Soviet Union, has been sadly disappointed.
If the Manifesto can be regarded as revealing anything new at all, it lies perhaps in the fact that it has evinced a determination on the part both of China and the Soviet Union to avoid a disastrous break. That is all to the good.
But this does not at all mean that the differences between the Soviet and Chinese leadership have in any way been narrowed or reconciled. Nor is it in the interest of the world proletariat or the colonial people of the world that they should have been.
On the contrary, it would have been a far greater service if the Conference had held an open discussion on the political divergences, rather than to have covered them up with sanctimonious revolutionary phrases. After all, who is deceived by the concealment of the differences? Certainly not the imperialist bourgeoisie!
The capitalist press throughout the world has misrepresented from the very beginning the real nature of the differences. They have made it appear that the Chinese CP is for war, whereas the Soviet leadership opposes it, and advocates a course whereby Communism will triumph simply by peaceful competition between the two antagonistic world social systems.
The truth of course is that neither China nor the Soviet Union have any reason whatever to be for war, as the capitalists know very well.
The real point of difference is the divergent attitudes towards imperialism. The Chinese have made it amply clear in innumerable authoritative articles in their official press, and more importantly by their deeds, that they are far more irreconcilable towards imperialism than is the present leading stratum in the Soviet Union.
Those who view the ideological struggle as merely a difference in emphasis or a difference in appraisal of the dynamics of imperialism and its inherent drive toward war are taking a superficial view of the matter.
After all, Lenin’s teaching on the nature of monopoly capitalism and the social contradictions which inevitably impel it towards imperialist war and colonial conquest have been state doctrine in both China and the Soviet Union, and required reading even in the secondary schools.
If all that was involved was a mere theoretical dispute arising out of different appraisals of the trends in imperialist society and the foreign policy of the ruling classes, it would scarcely cause a ripple on the scene of world politics.
The stubborn fact, however, is that these theoretical and political divergences stem from deep-going social causes, as do all serious political disputes. The ruling group in the Soviet Union is characterized by conservatism which has its roots in tremendous social privileges and emoluments. These it has arrogated to itself on the basis of Russia’s past backwardness and isolation, and the abandonment of the revolutionary norms set by the early Bolshevik leaders.
The tremendous technological and social progress of the Soviet Union and the enormous increase of the standard of living of the masses as a whole have unfortunately developed side by side with increasing social inequality between the upper and lower strata of Soviet society.
The class conscious workers throughout the world, staunch defenders of the Soviet Union and vanguard elements of the world communist movement can close their eyes to this indubitable phenomenon only at the greatest peril.
It is this phenomenon which accounts for the conciliatory attitude of the Soviet leadership to world imperialism. This, of course, is not to deny that in any armed conflict unleashed by the imperialist powers, that the Soviet leadership stands ready to defend the Soviet Union. And we expect it to stand by China in case of imperialist attack.
But this does not at all negate the existence of the social characteristics of the Soviet ruling group as an innately conservative – not merely cautious – hierarchy, which tends far more to conciliation with imperialism in the interest of not upsetting its own privileges, than to struggle in the interests of the oppressed of the world.
It is otherwise with the Chinese. The revolution is still young, and moving leftward. Social inequality is not fostered. The ruling groups are not encrusted with material privilege and the gap between them and the mass of the people, from all evidence obtainable in the West, is negligible.
Furthermore, the accumulation of material privileges is distinctly discouraged, and the links to the broad mass of the workers and peasants, on the basis of common effort and sacrifice, is consistently on the rise.
These are the social roots of the continuing ideological struggle between the Soviet and Chinese leaderships. And it is only in this context that one can arrive at an appreciation of the recent Manifesto and the long weeks which it took to frame it in order to present a unified front to the world.
Last updated: 11 May 2026