International Relations within the World Socialist System

Studies in the Communitist System

Abstract

Theoretic attempts, based on the historical materialism, to explain the international relations in the world socialist system as a new type of relations that differ from ones in the capitalist system, have positive significance, overcoming the conventional theory of power politics. But on the other hand, they have also weakness that, over-emphasizing the prescribed role of the economic foundation toward the political superstructure, they sometimes fall into the economic determinism, and consequently cannot fully explain real international relations, especially such as the Hungarian event and the Albanian question.
The reporter intends to develop the above-mentioned positive side of these theoretic attempts, with an eye on such weakness of them. Namely, this article will raise two main points. In the first place, there are three factors which determine international relations in the socialist bloc: (1) laws of development of the world socialist system, (2) non-hostile contradictions in the world socialist system, (3) impact from imperialist system. They are correlated each other, but the most fundamental determining factor is the first one. Secondly, among socialist countries are established the principles of socialist internationalism, which are of higher dimension than the general democratic principles of international law. Therefore the international relations among the socialist countries cannot be regulated by the usual principles of peaceful co-existence.