Systems Theory and the Communist System

Abstract

There is now a relatively large and growing literature on the use of systems theory in political science and in international relations. A significant part of that inquiry has concerned the usefulness of systems theory as a tool with which to study regional groupings of states-known also as subordinate systems or as subsystems. Although the Communist system has been studied from the point of view of its organizational characteristics,' no attempts have been made, to this writer's knowledge, to apply systems theory to the study of the Communist system. The purpose of this article is to consider whether there are any gains to be obtained from analyzing what we know of Communist affairs in terms of systems theory. Several characteristics of international Communism make application of systems theory both more interesting and more difficult than is the case with other regional systems. For one thing, there is the problem of whether to focus only on those states whose governments are Communist or, alternatively, to look at all Communist