The Challenge Of Muscovite Revisionism

Mr. Coser’s burial of the world Communist movement was a bit premature, thanks in part to recent American tactics in Vietnam which gave the discordant Communist powers no alternative save to rally round the slogans of proletarian solidarity a little while longer. This turn of events could be put aside, however, as one of the “temporary accommodations” between Russia and China that Coser saw as “possible, even probable.” Fundamentally there is little reason to doubt that the Communist movement is splitting permanently into two—at least two—very different and hostile political forces.

Mr. Coser has rightly diagnosed the fundamental causes of the schism in Communism. They reside first of all in natio...