DEVELOPING RELATIONS OF THE
UNITED STATES WITH THE COMMUNIST WORLD
by Quincy Wright
The term “communist world” is ambiguous. In the theoretical sense it
refers to those people who believe that the ideology of communism (Marx-
ism-Leninism) provides guidelines for the best organization of society. In
the practical sense it refers to those governments and parties that profess to
pursue domestic and foreign policies to realize this ideology. In either sense,
the political importance of communism, or of any other ideology or religion,
is relative to the means employed by its devotees which usually vary with the
time and space in which they expect it to be realized, and the degree of
flexibility with which they interpret it. If either individuals or governments
are ready to use whatever methods they deem necessary to realize a funda-
mentalist interpretation of any ideology within a decade and throughout the
world that ideology is likely to be politically important. On the other hand
if its adherents are willing to use only persuasion and expect to realize their
ideology only in one community or one country, or only in a thousand years,
or are willing to interpret it in adaptation to a great variety of beliefs, cus-
toms, and practices, as do most of the adherents of the great religions today,
the ideology is not likely to be of great political importance. These differ-
ences in time and area of realization and in flexibility of interpretation are
certain to be reflected in the policies, strategies, and tactics of the move-
ment, distinguishing revolution from evolution, coercion from persuasion,
politics from education, violence from peace.
Theoretical Communism. It is difficult to say how many people in the
world believe in communism. The fourteen states that profess communism
have a combined population of 1,106 million or over a third of the world’s
3,172 million people. There are many people in these fourteen states who
do not believe in communism and many outside of them who do, especially
Editor’s Note: Mr. Wright was Visiting Professor of Political Science at Rice Univer-
sity, 1966-1967.
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