The Communist Manifesto Engels in their youth—that he opposed for its violent Blanquist tendencies, and later "mature" Marxism that he supported. This latter form refers to Marx in his later life acknowledging that socialism could be achieved through peaceful means through legislative reform in democratic societies. Bernstein declared that the massive and homogeneous working-class claimed in the "Communist Manifesto" did not exist, and that contrary to claims of a proletarian majority emerging, the middle-class was growing under capitalism and not disappearing as Marx had claimed. Bernstein noted that the working-class was not homogeneous but heterogeneous, with divisions and factions within it, including socialist
The Christian Manifesto signatories can be interpreted in two ways: a relatively high number of signatories testifies to the success of Wu and the campaign to accommodate to the communist government. Conversely, the number of people who did not sign the manifesto count as people who did not want the Chinese church to sever its links with foreigners. It was feared that the NCC, which had facilitated cooperation between Chinese Protestants and foreign missionaries since 1922, would lose its independence. Most appear to have signed the document out of patriotic sentiments, not because of fundamental agreement with the actual provisions of the manifesto: