Workers World, Vol. 2 No. 9
Soon the eyes of the world will be focused on the Summit Conference to be held in Paris May 15th. The paramount fact that stands out above all others is the exclusion of Communist China from this meeting.
It is incredible that the Soviet leaders should have agreed to meet with the imperialist powers without the representatives of Communist China. To have conceded in the first place to even sit on the UN Security Council alongside Nationalist China – or rather the remnants of the quisling Chiang Kai Shek regime – was bad enough. But to agree to meet with the primary imperialist powers for an overall settlement of world issues, more than 10 years after the victorious Chinese Revolution – without the inclusion of the Soviet Union’s biggest state ally, is much worse.
How can Khrushchev justify this in the eyes of the world working class?
In the middle of November 1957, representatives of twelve Communist Parties met in Moscow for the purpose of celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution. They adopted a resolution, the avowed purpose of which was to serve as a “guide for proletarian internationalism.”
According to the text of the declaration, the parties pledged themselves to the “strengthening of the unity and fraternal cooperation of the Socialist countries.”
“The Socialist countries,” the text went on to declare, “are united in a single community by the fact that they are taking the common Socialist road – and by the requirements of mutual aid and support.” The declaration when on further to state that they were bound by an “identity of interests and aims in the struggle against imperialism and for the victory of socialism and communism.”
Now the question that arises in the minds of countless hundreds of thousands of Communists throughout the world is whether this “identity” of class interests is being faithfully pursued by Khrushchev in relation to Communist China. It is not hard for any worker, let alone a Communist, to see that Communist China, as the authentic representative of virtually one quarter of the human race, should be represented at all councils of the Big Powers which concern themselves with world affairs.
The projected conference in Paris is, by Khrushchev’s own repeated admissions, to concern itself not only with Berlin, but with almost all the most critical world questions. How, then, can China, admittedly a great world power, be excluded from such a conference? And how does it contribute to “strengthening the unity of the Socialist camp”?
The failure of Khrushchev to demand a place for China at the Summit Conference, even if it were only for the record – could not have escaped the attention of the imperialists.
The political motivation behind Khrushchev’s position, while it may offend the sensibilities of his apologists, can nevertheless be explained in political terms. But we will return to this later.
For almost a year now, the U.S. ruling class has been slowly but surely gravitating toward a new conception of its global strategy. This can be summed up in three words, “containment of China.” The paradox of this policy is that it envisages the passive – if not active – collaboration of none other than Khrushchev himself. And the Summit Conference is the vehicle for it.
“In the years to come, the main issue of global politics will be the containment of China.” These words were penned by Walter Lippman, the well-known syndicated columnist, in an ominous front page article in the New York Herald Tribune of last December 10th.
This formidable task can be undertaken, explained Mr. Lippman, because “Russia has the principal interest in the containment of China.”
It should be remembered that the development of this new strategy comes more than thirteen years after the birth of the old, but by no means discarded strategy designed for “the containment of Russia.”
Now, Lippman is not just another foreign affairs analyst. Far from it. He is now, and has been for many years, an authoritative spokesman for a substantial section of the ruling class, and as occasion warrants, unofficial spokesman for the State Department.
His value lies chiefly in the fact that he is usually associated in the popular mind with a policy of “moderation,” “restraint” and recognition of the realities of the “new posture” of American imperialism. It is precisely Lippman, the erstwhile spokesman of sweet reasonableness in U.S. foreign relations, who is perhaps most useful and most qualified to put across the new “containment” policy of the State Department against revolutionary China.
Like in 1947, Lippman today is merely giving voice to the thoughts of his masters. Only now he is speaking for the more substantial section of the finance capitalists who run the government. They have need of this kind of approach at this juncture of history. The fanfare, bluff, and bluster of the McCarthy-Dulles period is now unsuitable.
This is the time when the military balance of power – if not the over-all balance of power – has at least temporarily shifted to the side of the Soviet bloc. Hence the necessity for the “soft-sell” – the quiet, soft-spoken manner, the radiant smile and glad hand in foreign policy – while all the time shoring up to the limit military appropriations for the mightiest imperialist armada.
With this in view, Mr. Lippman completed a tour of the USSR, undoubtedly upon assignment by the State Department, for the purpose of obtaining a fresh appraisal of the situation in the Soviet Union. He interviewed Khrushchev and other high ranking Soviet officials, and undoubtedly made a full report to his superiors, which helped shape their new policy and their plans for the Summit Conference.
Mr. Lippman considered the theme which the State Department handed him for his articles so delicate a matter, that he even ventured to admonish “Senators and Presidential candidates and other addicts to speechmaking like (Army) Secretary Brucker and some of our more fluent generals (to) leave this subject alone. Otherwise they will put Mr. K. on the spot where he must reaffirm loudly his alliance with Peiping against Western anti-Communists. It is a risk even for journalists to talk about this delicate matter. But they at least can be ignored or disavowed.”
Lippman, to date, has not been disavowed either in Washington or Moscow.
But if Moscow and Washington have thus far kept a discreet silence, Peking certainly has not – not for those who can read between the lines. Within the limits of maintaining her indispensable alliance with the Soviet Union, China has been, with increasing tempo, expanding her divergences from Khrushchev’s interpretation of “peaceful co-existence,” almost to the extent of open repudiation.
Virtually on the eve of the Summit Conference, China sounded the alarm. Tearing away the image of the “spirit of Camp David,” which Khrushchev and his cohorts have been so diligently painting up, Hong Chi (theoretical organ of the Chinese CP) on April 2nd charged, “while juggling with peace, Eisenhower is making actual preparations for war.” (NY Times, April 3) And stepping up its exposure, two weeks later Peking declared, “The Chinese people have made a timely exposure of the fact that the government of the United States, headed by Eisenhower, is ... still continuing to carry out actively arms expansion and war preparations and enlarging its aggression.”
Such accusations, made on the eve of the Summit, and specifically singling out Eisenhower, have long, long been absent from the pages of Pravda and Izvestia. If these newspapers were to level the same charges against Eisenhower, let us say tomorrow, the imperialists would end the Summit Conference before it even starts!
For an implied condition for their attendance at the conference is Khrushchev’s vouching before the eyes of the world that Eisenhower (the political personification of predatory U.S. finance-capital) – “is sincere in his desire for the establishment of peace.”
And now let us return to the paradox of the new global strategy of American finance capital: the “Russia will contain China” theory.
Does the Soviet Union really have “the principal interest” – or any interest in containing China, as Lippman asserts?
No, Mr. Learned Foreign Affairs Expert. You know that is a damned lie. It is a barefaced historical and sociological falsification, calculated to mislead the people at home and sow confusion abroad.
The Soviet Union, as a workers’ state, has absolutely no reason whatever to contain or in any way quarrel with its mighty revolutionary friend and neighbor.
Half a century ago, Mr. Learned Foreign Affairs Expert, when you were twenty years old and an ardent socialist, you knew that two countries which have a planned economy based on the socialization of the means of production, and the absence of a capitalist class, have every reason to live in peace and friendly cooperation.
What then is it that you, Mr. Lippman, and your imperialist masters seek on which to pin your hopes for the Soviet Union to help the West “contain China”? There must be some material basis for it. But one will look in vain for a clue to this in your series in the Herald Tribune during December 1959.
However, just after you toured the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1958, almost a year before your “contain China” thesis, you also wrote a series for the Herald Tribune. At that time, you rather obliquely mentioned that many of the people you interview in the Soviet Union were either “awed” or “anxious” about the “faster rate of development of China towards communism,” as you put it.
But this amazing juxtaposition of words needs to be properly translated into the language of Marxism. Contemporary Soviet society reflects two as yet not clearly identifiable, but nonetheless existent political currents, reflection two diametrically opposed class interests.
One current is Communist in its aspirations. It is indeed “awed,” inspired and excited by the incredible achievements of the Chinese Revolution – by the self-sacrifice and heroic devotion of the Chinese masses to the Revolution – by their active participation in all phases of political life. The Chinese Revolution is still young, and the pendulum there is still moving in a leftward direction.
This first current, the current that is “awed,” Mr. Lippman, reflects the historic interests of the socialist proletariat in the USSR. It searches for a way out of the bureaucratic absolutist vise in which all Soviet society is held. It searches for a way out against the mounting privileges and ever-growing inequality which Stalin so sedulously cultivated, and which Khrushchev has deepened. This current is internationalist in its proletarian orientation. It sees the Chinese Revolution as an ally in its domestic struggle against the Soviet bureaucracy. And the Chinese Revolution sees in it a tremendous ally to get out of the vise of global containment.
The second current, the current that you, Mr. Lippman, characterize as “anxious,” views the Chinese Revolution with alarm and hostility. It sees in it a danger to the privileges and emoluments which the bureaucracy has accumulated in decades of continuous expropriation of the fruits of the labor of the masses. This current is the transmission belt for the class interests of the world-wide imperialist bourgeoisie, and their hopes for the Summit.
It is on this current, on this social strata, that you, Mr. Lippman, and your co-thinkers and confederates in the State Department pin their hopes.
Khrushchev, as you well know, is its leader and spokesman. When and if he attends that Conference, he will be there in a dual role; both as representative of the mighty working class fortress, which is the USSR – and also as representative of that social strata you know so well, and upon which you and your masters are counting. But Khrushchev better not disregard that “other current” – the current which represents the revolutionary proletariat in the USSR, that current which through all the trials and tribulations – through imperialist war, civil war and Stalinist repression – has survived and grown stronger with each new development.
It is that current which is the wave of the socialist future of mankind.
Last updated: 11 May 2026