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{{Short description|Variant of Marxism–Leninism}}
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{{redirect|Maoist|the novel by Roopesh|Vasanthathile Poomarangal{{!}}''Maoist'' (novel)}}
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{{distinguish|Marxism–Leninism–Maoism}}
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{{Infobox Chinese
| title = Mao Zedong Thought
| image = Mao Zedong in 1959 (cropped).jpg
| caption = ], for whom the ideology is named
| t = 毛澤東思想
| s = 毛泽东思想
| p = Máo Zédōng sīxiǎng
| w = {{Tone superscript|Mao2 Tse2-tung1 ssu1-hsiang3}}
| mi = {{IPAc-cmn|m|ao|2|-|z|e|2|.|d|ong|1|-|s|^|1|.|x|iang|3}}
| bpmf = ㄇㄠˊ ㄗㄜˊ ㄉㄨㄥ ㄙ ㄒㄧㄤˇ
| j = Mo4 Zaak6-dung1 si1 soeng2
| y = Mòh Jaahk-dūng sī séung
| ci = {{IPAc-yue|m|o|4|-|z|aak|6|.|d|ung|1|-|s|i|1|-|s|oeng|2}}
| altname =
| order = st
}}
{{Maoism sidebar}}
{{Mao Zedong series}}
{{Communism sidebar}}


'''Maoism''', officially '''Mao Zedong Thought''',{{efn|The term "Maoism" is a creation of Mao's supporters; Mao himself always rejected it and preferred the use of the term "Mao Zedong Thought".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wittfogel |first=Karl A. |date=1960 |title=The Legend of 'Maoism' |journal=The China Quarterly |issue=1 |pages=72–86 |doi=10.1017/S0305741000022712 |issn=0305-7410 |jstor=763346 |s2cid=153676792}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Chen |first=Jin |date=1 July 2016 |script-title=zh:毛泽东眼里的"毛泽东" |url=http://dangshi.people.com.cn/n1/2016/0701/c85037-28514409-2.html |access-date=25 March 2023 |work=People's Daily |trans-quote=Mao Zedong disagreed with the term 'Maoism' and preferred the term 'Mao Zedong thought' as he thought of himself as a student of Marx and Lenin hesitated to place himself alongside them. Moreover, at that time, he believed that his thoughts had not matured into a complete system. |script-quote=zh:毛泽东不同意叫“主义”，而接受“思想”的说法，按他的意思，他是马克思、列宁的学生，不敢和他们并列，再说那时他认为自己的思想作为一种“体系”还没有成熟。 |lang=zh}}</ref>}} is a variety of ] that ] developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the ] and later the ]. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a ] of progressive forces in class society would lead the ] in pre-industrial societies<ref>Mao, Zedong. . Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Retrieved 11 April 2023.</ref> rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary ] is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as ] to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.<ref name="World History 2000. p. 769">Lenman, B.P.; Anderson, T., eds. (2000). ''Chambers Dictionary of World History''. p. 769.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Moufawad-Paul |first=J. |author-link=J. Moufawad-Paul |title=Continuity and Rupture: Philosophy in the Maoist Terrain |title-link=Continuity and Rupture: Philosophy in the Maoist Terrain |publisher=Zero Books |year=2016 |isbn=978-1785354762 |location=New York City}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Lovell |first=Julia |author-link=Julia Lovell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kx1-DwAAQBAJ |title=Maoism: A Global History |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |year=2019 |isbn=978-0-525-65605-0 |access-date=2020-05-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200805201555/https://books.google.com/books?id=kx1-DwAAQBAJ |archive-date=2020-08-05 |url-status=live}}</ref>
'''Maoism''', also known as '''Mao Zedong Thought ''' ({{zh|t=毛澤東思想|s=毛泽东思想|p=Máozédōng sīxiǎng}}), is a ] theory derived from the teachings of the ] political leader ] (1893–1976). Its followers, known as '''Maoists''', consider it as an ] form of ]. Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding ideology of the ] (CPC). It fell into disfavour in China in 1978, when ] introduced ].


From the 1950s until the ]s of ] in the late 1970s, Maoism was the political and military ideology of the ] and Maoist revolutionary movements worldwide.<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal |last=Meisner |first=Maurice |author-link=Maurice Meisner |date=Jan–Mar 1971 |title=Leninism and Maoism: Some Populist Perspectives on Marxism-Leninism in China |journal=] |volume=45 |issue=45 |pages=2–36 |doi=10.1017/S0305741000010407 |jstor=651881 |s2cid=154407265}}</ref> After the ] of the 1960s, the Chinese Communist Party and the ] each claimed to be the sole heir and successor to ] concerning the correct interpretation of Marxism–Leninism and the ideological leader of ].<ref name="World History 2000. p. 769" />
Maoism is also used to refer to Mao's belief in the mobilization of the masses, particularly in large-scale political movements; it can also refer to the ] that was seen during Mao's era as opposed to the free-market ideology of ]; some scholars additionally define ]s and political sloganeering as "Maoist" practices. Contemporary Maoists in China criticize the social inequalities created by a capitalist and "revisionist" Communist party.


== History ==
Internationally, Maoist organizations mainly draw upon Mao's ideology of the ], mobilizing large parts of rural populations to revolt against established institutions by engaging in ]. Notable Maoist organizations and armed groups currently exist in several countries, most notably the ] in ], ] in ], and the ]; the latter of which is the only current Maoist party ] through a democratic process.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.india-defence.com/reports-2361 |title=Maoist groups split in Nepal, violence feared |publisher=India Defence |date= |accessdate=2011年11月10日}}</ref>
{{politics of China}}
{{further|Ideology of the Chinese Communist Party}}


=== Chinese intellectual tradition ===
==Origins==
At the turn of the 19th century, the contemporary ] tradition was defined by two central concepts: ] and ].<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|pages=12–16}}


==== Iconoclastic revolution and anti-Confucianism ====
Although often described as an evolution of Marxism/Leninism, Maoism is defined more by its theoretical and ideological departures from orthodox Marxism or Leninism than by its similarities to the Western versions of modern socialism. Thus, the origins of Maoism cannot be found in Marxist writings alone, but also in the modern Chinese intellectual tradition in which he was raised.
By the turn of the 20th century, a proportionately small yet socially significant cross-section of China's traditional elite (i.e., landlords and bureaucrats) found themselves increasingly sceptical of the efficacy and even the moral validity of ].<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=10}} These skeptical iconoclasts formed a new segment of Chinese society, a modern intelligentsia whose arrival—or as the historian of China ] would label it, their defection—heralded the beginning of the destruction of the ] as a social class in China.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=11}}


The ] of the ] in 1911 marked the final failure of the Confucian moral order, and it did much to make Confucianism synonymous with political and ] in the minds of Chinese intellectuals. This association of conservatism and Confucianism lent to the iconoclastic nature of Chinese intellectual thought during the first decades of the 20th century.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=14}}
===The modern Chinese intellectual tradition===


Chinese iconoclasm was expressed most clearly and vociferously by ] during the ], which occurred between 1915 and 1919.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=14}} Proposing the "total destruction of the traditions and values of the past", the New Culture Movement, spearheaded by the '']'', a periodical published by Chen Duxiu, profoundly influenced the young Mao Zedong, whose first published work appeared in the magazine's pages.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=14}}
The modern Chinese intellectual tradition of the turn of the twentieth century is defined by two central concepts, ] and ].<ref>Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Pages 12-16.</ref>


==== Nationalism and the appeal of Marxism ====
====Iconoclastic revolution/anti-Confucianism====
Along with iconoclasm, radical ] dominated the Chinese intellectual tradition and slowly evolved into a fierce nationalist fervor which influenced Mao's philosophy immensely and was crucial in adapting Marxism to the Chinese model.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44">{{Cite book |last=Meisner |first=Maurice |author-link=Maurice Meisner |title=Mao's China and After |title-link=Mao's China and After |date=1999 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-684-85635-3 |pages= |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=44}} Vital to understanding Chinese nationalist sentiments of the time is the ], which was signed in 1919. The Treaty aroused a wave of bitter nationalist resentment in Chinese intellectuals as lands formerly ceded to Germany in ] were—without consultation with the Chinese—transferred to Japanese control rather than returned to Chinese sovereignty.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=17}}
By the turn of the twentieth century, a proportionately small yet socially significant cross-section of China's traditional elite (i.e. landlords and bureaucrats), found themselves increasingly skeptical of the efficacy and even the moral validity of Confucianism.<ref>Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 10.</ref> These skeptical iconoclasts formed a new segment of Chinese society, a modern intelligensia, whose arrival, or as lauded historian of China ] would label it, their defection, heralded the beginning of the destruction of the gentry as a social class in China.<ref>Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 11.</ref> The fall of the last Chinese imperial dynasty in 1911 marked the final failure of the Confucian moral order, and did much to make Confucianism synonymous with political and ] in the minds of Chinese intellectuals. It was this association of conservatism and Confucianism which lent to the iconoclastic nature of Chinese intellectual thought during the first decades of the Twentieth century.<ref>Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 14.</ref>


The adverse reaction culminated in the ] in 1919, during which a protest began with 3,000 students in Beijing displaying their anger at the announcement of the Versailles Treaty's concessions to Japan. The protest turned violent as protesters began attacking the homes and offices of ministers who were seen as cooperating with or being in the direct pay of the Japanese.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=17}} The popular movement which followed "catalyzed the political awakening of a society which had long seemed inert and dormant."<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=17}}
Chinese iconoclasm was expressed most clearly and vociferously by Chen Duxiu during the New Culture Movement which occurred between 1915 and 1919.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Pages 14">Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Pages 14.</ref> Proposing the, "total destruction of the traditions and values of the past," the New Culture Movement was spearheaded by the ''New Youth'', a periodical which was published by Chen Duxiu and which was profoundly influential on a young Mao Zedong whose first published work appeared on the magazine's pages.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Pages 14"/>


Another international event would have a significant impact not only on Mao but also on the Chinese intelligentsia. The ] elicited great interest among Chinese intellectuals, although the socialist revolution in China was not considered a viable option until after the 4 May Incident.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=18}} Afterward, "o become a Marxist was one way for a Chinese intellectual to reject both the traditions of the Chinese past and Western domination of the Chinese present."<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=18}}
====Nationalism and the appeal of Marxism====
Along with iconoclasm, radical anti-imperialism dominated the Chinese intellectual tradition and slowly evolved into a fierce nationalist fervor which influenced Mao's philosophy immensely and was crucial in adapting Marxism to the Chinese model.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44">Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 44.</ref> Vital to understanding Chinese nationalist sentiments of the time is the Treaty of Versailles which was signed in 1919. The Treaty aroused a wave of bitter nationalist resentment in Chinese intellectuals as lands formerly ceded to Germany in Shandong were, without consultation with the Chinese, transferred to Japanese control rather than returned to Chinese sovereignty.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 17">Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 17.</ref> The negative reaction culminated in the May 4th Incident which occurred on that day in 1919. The protest began with 3,000 students in Beijing displaying their anger at the announcement of the Versailles Treaty's concessions to Japan yet rapidly took a violent turn as protesters began attacking the homes and offices of ministers who were seen as cooperating with, or in the direct pay of the Japanese.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 17"/> The May 4th Incident and Movement which followed, "catalyzed the political awakening of a society which had long seemed inert and dormant"<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 17"/>


=== Yan'an period between November 1935 and March 1947 ===
Yet another international event would have a large impact on not only Mao but also the Chinese intelligensia was the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Although the revolution did elicit interest among Chinese intellectuals, socialist revolution in China was not considered a viable option until after the May 4th Incident.<ref>Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Pages 18.</ref> Afterwards, "To become a Marxist was one way for a Chinese intellectual to reject both the traditions of the Chinese past and Western domination of the Chinese present" Maurice Meisner, ''Mao's China and After'', page 18.
Immediately following the ], Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were headquartered in the ] in ]. During this period, Mao established himself as a Marxist theoretician and produced most of the works that would later be canonised as the "Thought of Mao Zedong".<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=45}} The rudimentary philosophical base of Chinese Communist ideology is laid down in Mao's numerous dialectical treatises and was conveyed to newly recruited party members. This period established ideological independence from Moscow for Mao and the CCP.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=45}}


Although the Yan'an period did answer some of the ideological and theoretical questions raised by the ], it left many crucial questions unresolved, including how the Chinese Communist Party was supposed to launch a socialist revolution while wholly separated from the urban sphere.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=45}}
===Mao's personal philosophy===


=== Mao Zedong's intellectual development ===
Along with the Chinese intellectual tradition which was prevalent during his youth, it is clear that Mao's personal philosophy, his idealism and populist leanings, were foundational to the formation and profile of Maoism. Mao´s political ideas emerge from his personal ethics. One source is commentaries to "A System of Ethics" by Friederich Paulsen (1917-1918)where he expressed: "I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one action has to be benefiting others...Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others...People like me want to ...satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are only for me". <ref name="Chang, Jung; Halliday Jon, 2005. Page 15"> Chang, Jung; Halliday Jon. Mao: The Unknown Story. London: Vintage Books, 2005. Page 15.</ref> His politics were consistent with this personal values and views. Thinking about how to change China he said: "the country must be ...destroyed and then reformed".<ref name="Chang, Jung; Halliday Jon, 2005. Page 15"> Chang, Jung; Halliday Jon. Mao: The Unknown Story. London: Vintage Books, 2005. Page 18.</ref>
]
Mao's intellectual development can be divided into five significant periods, namely:


# the initial Marxist period from 1920 to 1926
====Idealism====
# the formative Maoist period from 1927 to 1935
Mao believed that human consciousness is the key factor in human history. In other words, Mao can be seen as an idealist and as such, directly contravenes the deterministic tenets of orthodox Marxism.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 41">Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 41.</ref> Mao had the utmost faith that, through the actions of "dedicated revolutionaries" a new social reality could be formed which would be in harmony with his ideals.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 41"/>
# the mature Maoist period from 1935 to 1940
# the Civil-War period from 1940 to 1949
# the post-1949 period following the revolutionary victory


==== Initial Marxist period (1920–1926) ====
====Populism====
Marxist thinking employs immanent socioeconomic explanations, whereas Mao's reasons were declarations of his enthusiasm. Mao did not believe education alone would transition from ] to ] for three main reasons. (1) the capitalists would not repent and turn towards communism on their own; (2) the rulers must be overthrown by the people; (3) "the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and had already become a fact."<ref name=":8">{{Cite book |last=Lowe |first=Donald M. |url=https://archive.org/details/functionofchinai0000unse |title=The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao |date=1966 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-520-00771-0 |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=109}} These reasons do not provide socioeconomic explanations, which usually form the core of Marxist ideology.
Mao also believed strongly in the concept of a unified "people". These notions were what prompted him to investigate the peasant uprisings in Hunan while the rest of the China's communists were in the cities and focused on the orthodox Marxist proletariat.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 43">Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 43.</ref> Many of the pillars of Maoism such as the distrust of intellectuals and the abhorrence of occupational specialty are typical populist ideas.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44"/> The concept of "People's War" which is so central to Maoist thought is directly populist in its origins. Mao believed that intellectuals and party cadres had to become first students of the masses to become teachers of the masses later. This concept was vital to the strategy of the "People's War."<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44"/>


==== Formative Maoist period (1927–1935) ====
====Nationalism====
In this period, Mao avoided all theoretical implications in his literature and employed a minimum of Marxist category thought. His writings in this period failed to elaborate on what he meant by the "Marxist method of political and class analysis".<ref name=":8" />{{Rp|page=111}} Before this period, Mao was concerned with the dichotomy between knowledge and action. He was more concerned with the dichotomy between revolutionary ideology and counter-revolutionary objective conditions. There was more correlation drawn between China and the Soviet model.
Also crucially important to the adaption of Marxism to the Chinese model and the formation of Maoism were Mao's nationalist impulses.<ref>Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 42.</ref> Mao truly believed that China was to play a crucial preliminary role in the socialist revolution internationally. This belief, or the fervor with which Mao held it, separated Mao from the other Chinese Communists and led Mao onto the path of what Leon Trotsky called, "Messianic Revolutionary Nationalism" which was central to his personal philosophy and is demonstrated in his long-standing hostile relationship with ComIntern.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 43"/>


=== The Yan'an period === ==== Mature Maoist period (1935–1940) ====
Intellectually, this was Mao's most fruitful time. The orientation shift was apparent in his pamphlet ''Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War'' (December 1936). This pamphlet tried to provide a theoretical veneer for his concern with revolutionary practice.<ref name=":8" />{{Rp|page=113}} Mao started to separate from the Soviet model since it was not automatically applicable to China. China's unique set of historical circumstances demanded a correspondingly unique application of Marxist theory, an application that would have to diverge from the Soviet approach.


Beginning in the ] period, Mao Zedong Thought became the ideological guide for developing revolutionary culture and a long-term social movement.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|page=53}}
During the period immediately following the ], Mao and the Chinese Communist Party were headquartered in Yan'an, which is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanxi province. During this period Mao clearly established himself as a Marxist theoretician and produced the bulk of the works which would later be canonized into the "thought of Mao Zedong".<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 45">Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 45.</ref> The rudimentary philosophical base of Chinese Communist ideology is laid down in Mao's numerous dialectical treatises and was conveyed to newly recruited party members. This period truly established ideological independence from Moscow for Mao and the CCP.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 45"/> Although the Yan'an period did answer some of the questions, both ideological and theoretical, which were raised by the Chinese Communist Revolution, it left many of the crucial questions unresolved; including how the Chinese Communist Party was supposed to launch a socialist revolution while completely separated from the urban sphere.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 45"/>


]
==Components==
===Basic components===


==== Civil War period (1940–1949) ====
#]: The armed branch of the party must not be distinct from the masses. To conduct a successful revolution the needs and demands of the masses must be the most important issues.
Unlike the Mature period, this period was intellectually barren. Mao focused more on revolutionary practice and paid less attention to Marxist theory. He continued to emphasise theory as practice-oriented knowledge.<ref name=":8" />{{Rp|page=117}} The most crucial topic of the theory he delved into was in connection with the ] movement of 1942. Here, Mao summarised the correlation between Marxist theory and Chinese practice: "The target is the Chinese revolution, the arrow is Marxism–Leninism. We Chinese communists seek this arrow for no other purpose than to hit the target of the Chinese revolution and the revolution of the east."<ref name=":8" />{{Rp|page=117}} The only new emphasis was Mao's concern with two types of subjectivist deviation: (1) ], the excessive reliance upon abstract theory; (2) ], excessive dependence on experience.
#]: In so called backward countries, socialism cannot be introduced before the country has gone through a period in which the material conditions improve. This cannot be done by the ], as its progressive character is long since replaced by a regressive character.
#Contradictions as the most important feature of society: Society is dominated by a wide range of contradictions. As these are different in nature, they must also be handled in different ways. The most important divide is the divide between contradictions among the masses and contradictions between the masses and their enemies, where the enemies are recognized as all who contradict Maoism. Also the socialist institutions are plagued with contradictions, and these contradictions must not be suppressed as they were during Stalin's era.
#]: The revolution does not wipe out bourgeois ideology; the class-struggle continues, and even intensifies, during socialism. Therefore a constant struggle against these ideologies and their social roots must be conducted. Cultural Revolution is directed also against traditionalism.
#]: During the ], two imperialist states formed the “first world”; the ] and the ]. The second world consisted of the other imperialist states in their spheres of influence. The third world consisted of the non-imperialist countries. Both the first and the second world exploit the third world, but the first world is the most aggressive part. The workers in the first and second world are “bought up” by imperialism, preventing socialist revolution. The people of the third world, on the other hand, have not even a short-sighted interest in the prevailing circumstances. Hence revolution is most likely to appear in third world countries, which again will weaken imperialism opening up for revolutions in other countries too.<ref name="emg"> Glossary of Terms, Encyclopedia of Marxism</ref>


In 1945, the party's first historical resolution put forward Mao Zedong Thought as the party's unified ideology.<ref name=":22">{{Cite book |last1=Doyon |first1=Jérôme |title=The Chinese Communist Party: A 100-Year Trajectory |last2=Froissart |first2=Chloé |date=2024 |publisher=ANU Press |isbn=9781760466244 |editor-last=Doyon |editor-first=Jérôme |location=Canberra |chapter=Introduction |editor-last2=Froissart |editor-first2=Chloé}}</ref>{{Rp|page=6}} It was also incorporated into the ].<ref name=":Li">{{Cite book |last=Li |first=Hongshan |title=Fighting on the Cultural Front: U.S.-China Relations in the Cold War |date=2024 |publisher=] |isbn=9780231207058 |location=New York, NY |doi=10.7312/li--20704 |jstor=10.7312/li--20704}}</ref>{{Rp|page=23}}
===Contradiction===
Mao drew information from the writings of ], ] and ] in elaborating his theory. Philosophically, his most important reflections emerge on the concept of "contradiction" (''maodun''). In two major essays, ] and “On the correct handling of contradictions among the people”, he adopts the ]-] idea (shared by Engels) that contradiction is present in matter itself (and thus, also in the ideas of the brain). Matter always develops through a dialectical contradiction:


==== Post-Civil War period (1949–1976) ====
{{quote|"The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist".<ref>Mao Tse Tung, "On contradiction", Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1967, p. 75, or http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm.</ref>}}
To Mao, the victory of 1949 was a confirmation of theory and practice. "Optimism is the keynote to Mao's intellectual orientation in the post-1949 period."<ref name=":8" />{{Rp|page=118}} Mao assertively revised the theory to relate it to the new practice of socialist construction. These revisions are apparent in the 1951 version of ''On Contradiction''. "In the 1930s, when Mao talked about contradiction, he meant the contradiction between subjective thought and objective reality. In ''Dialectal Materialism'' of 1940, he saw idealism and materialism as two possible correlations between subjective thought and objective reality. In the 1940s, he introduced no new elements into his understanding of the subject-object contradiction. In the 1951 version of ''On Contradiction'', he saw contradiction as a universal principle underlying all processes of development, yet with each contradiction possessed of its own particularity."<ref name=":8" />{{Rp|page=119}}


In 1956, Mao first fully theorized his view of continual revolution.<ref name=":Laikwan" />{{Rp|page=92}}
Furthermore, each contradiction (including ], the contradiction holding between relations of production and the concrete development of forces of production) expresses itself in a series of other contradictions, some dominant, others not.


=== Differences from Marxism ===
{{quote|"There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions".<ref>Mao Tse-Tung, "On contradiction", Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, op. cit., p. 89, or http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm.</ref>}}
]
Maoism and ] differ in how the proletariat is defined and in which political and economic conditions would start a ].
# For Marx, the proletariat was the urban ], which was determined in the revolution by which the ] overthrew ].<ref>Sandmo, Agnar. ''Economics Evolving: A History of Economic Thought'', Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.</ref> For Mao Zedong, the revolutionary class was the millions of peasants he referred to as ''the popular masses''. Mao based his revolution upon the peasantry. They possessed, according to him, two qualities: (i) they were poor and (ii) they were a political blank slate; in Mao's words, " clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it."<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Gregor |first1=A. James |last2=Chang |first2=Maria Hsia |date=1978 |title=Maoism and Marxism in Comparative Perspective |journal=] |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=307–327 |doi=10.1017/S0034670500028527 |issn=0034-6705 |jstor=1407255}}</ref>
# For Marx, the ] was internally fuelled by the capitalist mode of production; as capitalism developed, "a tension arises between the ] and the ]."<ref>Sandmo, Agnar (2011). ''Economics Evolving: A History of Economic Thought'', Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.</ref> The political tension between the productive forces (the workers) and the owners of the ] (the capitalists) would be an inevitable incentive for the proletarian revolution, resulting in a ]. Mao did not subscribe to Marx's theory of inevitable cyclicality in the economic system. His goal was to unify the Chinese nation and so realise progressive change for China in the form of communism; hence, a revolution was needed at once. In ''The Great Union of the Popular Masses'' (1919), Mao wrote that "he decadence of the state, the sufferings of humanity, and the darkness of society have all reached an extreme."<ref>Mao, Zedong. . {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035624/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_04.htm|date=2021-01-24}}. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Retrieved 25 April 2019.</ref>


=== After Mao Zedong's death ===
Thus, the principal contradiction should be tackled with priority when trying to make the basic contradiction "solidify". Mao elaborates further on this theme in the essay ]. On the relation between knowledge and practice, between knowing and doing”. Here, “Practice” connects "contradiction" with "class struggle" in the following way: Inside a mode of production, there are three realms where practice functions: economic production, scientific experimentation (which also takes place in economic production and should not be radically disconnected from the former) and finally, class struggle. These may be considered the proper objects of economy, scientific knowledge, and politics.<ref>Cfr. Mao Tse-Tung, "On practice. On the relation between knowledge and practice, between knowing and doing", Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, op.cit., p. 55: "Man's social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many forms&mdash;class struggle, political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also though his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life)", or http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm.</ref>


==== China ====
These three spheres deal with matter in its various forms, socially mediated. As a result, they are the only realms where knowledge may arise (since truth and knowledge only make sense in relation to matter, according to Marxist epistemology). Mao emphasizes&mdash;like Marx in trying to confront the "bourgeoisie idealism" of his time&mdash;that knowledge must be based on ].
]]]
The CCP's ideological framework distinguishes between political ideas described as "Thought" (as in Mao Zedong Thought) or as "Theory" (as in ]).<ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last=Hu |first=Richard |title=Reinventing the Chinese City |date=2023 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-21101-7 |location=New York |doi=10.7312/hu--21100}}</ref>{{Rp|page=2}} Thought carries more weight than Theory and conveys the greater relative importance of a leader's ideological and historical influence.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=2}} The process of formalizing a leader's political thinking in the Marxist tradition is important in establishing a leader's ideological legitimacy.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=3}}


Mao Zedong Thought is frequently described as the result of collaboration between the ] of the Party and is principally based on Mao's analysis of Marxism and Chinese history.<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last=Karl |first=Rebecca E. |title=Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-8223-4780-4 |series=Asia-pacific |location=Durham, NC |doi=10.2307/j.ctv11hpp6w |jstor=j.ctv11hpp6w}}</ref>{{Rp|page=53}} It is often also described as the adaptation of Marxism to the Chinese context.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|page=53}} Observing that concepts of both Marxism and Chinese culture were and are contested, academic Rebecca Karl writes that the development of Mao Zedong Thought is best viewed as the result of Mao's mutual interpretation of these concepts producing Mao's view of theory and revolutionary practice.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|page=53}}
Knowledge results from hypotheses verified in the contrast with a real object; this real object, despite being mediated by the subject’s theoretical frame, retains its materiality and will offer resistance to those ideas that do not conform to its truth. Thus, in each of these realms (economic, scientific and political practice), contradictions (principle and secondary) must be identified, explored and put to function to achieve the communist goal. This involves the need to know, "scientifically", how the masses produce (how they live, think, and work), to obtain knowledge of how class struggle (the main contradiction that articulates a mode of production, in its various realms) expresses itself.


Mao Zedong Thought asserts that class struggle continues even if the proletariat has already overthrown the bourgeoisie and there are capitalist restorationist elements within the CCP itself. Maoism provided the CCP's first comprehensive theoretical guideline regarding how to continue the socialist revolution, the creation of a socialist society, and socialist military construction and highlights various contradictions in society to be addressed by what is termed "socialist construction". While it continues to be lauded to be the major force that defeated "imperialism and feudalism" and created a "New China" by the Chinese Communist Party, the ideology survives only in name on the Communist Party's Constitution as Deng Xiaoping abolished most Maoist practices in 1978, advancing a guiding ideology called "]".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Xinhua: Constitution of the Communist Party of China |url=http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2002-11/18/content_633225_1.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111017214011/http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2002-11/18/content_633225_1.htm |archive-date=17 October 2011 |access-date=10 November 2011 |website=news.xinhuanet.com}}</ref>{{Request quotation|date=January 2024}}
===People's war===
Maoism's political orientation emphasizes the "revolutionary struggle of the vast majority of people against the exploiting classes and their state structures", which Mao termed a "]". Usually involving peasants, its military strategies have involved ] tactics focused on surrounding the cities from the countryside, with a heavy emphasis on political transformation through mass involvement of the lower classes of society.


Shortly after ] in 1976, Deng Xiaoping initiated socialist market reforms in 1978, thereby beginning the radical change in Mao's ideology in the People's Republic of China (PRC).<ref>{{Cite web |title=UC Berkeley Journalism -Faculty - Deng's Revolution |url=http://journalism.berkeley.edu/faculty/schell/schelldeng.html |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090104132630/http://journalism.berkeley.edu/faculty/schell/schelldeng.html |archive-date=4 January 2009 |access-date=22 August 2007}}</ref> Although Mao Zedong Thought nominally remains the state ideology, Deng's admonition to "]" means that state policies are judged on their practical consequences, and in many areas, the role of ideology in determining policy has thus been considerably reduced. Deng also separated Mao from Maoism, making it clear that Mao was fallible, and hence the truth of Maoism comes from observing social consequences rather than by using Mao's quotations dogmatically.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Exploring Chinese History :: Culture :: Philosophy :: Maoism |url=http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/02cul/c04s07.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035536/http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/02cul/c04s07.html |archive-date=24 January 2021 |access-date=17 January 2019 |website=ibiblio.org}}</ref>
===Agrarian socialism===
Maoism departs from conventional European-inspired Marxism in that its focus is on the agrarian countryside, rather than the industrial urban forces. This is known as ]. Notably, Maoist parties in Peru, Nepal and Philippines have adopted equal stresses on urban and rural areas, depending on the country's focus of economic activity. Maoism broke with the ] framework of the ] under ] and dismisses it as modern ], a traditional pejorative term among communists referring to those who fight for capitalism in the name of socialism.


On June 27, 1981, the Communist Party's Central Committee adopted the '']''.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|page=166}} The ''Resolution'' assesses the legacy of the Mao era, describing Mao as first among equals in the development of Mao Zedong Thought before 1949 and deeming Mao Zedong Thought as successful in establishing national independence, transforming China's social classes, the development of economic self-sufficiency, the expansion of education and health care, and China's leadership role in the Third World.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|pages=166–167}} The ''Resolution'' describes setbacks during the period 1957 to 1964 (although it generally affirms this period) and major mistakes beginning in 1965.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|page=167}} The ''Resolution'' describes upholding the guidance of Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism-Leninism as among the Communist Party's cardinal principles.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|page=168}}
===New Democratic revolution===


Contemporary Maoists in China criticise the social inequalities created by the revisionist Communist Party. Some Maoists say that Deng's '']'' economic policies that introduced market principles spelled the end of Maoism in China. However, Deng asserted that his reforms were upholding Mao Zedong Thought in accelerating the output of the country's productive forces. A recent example of a Chinese politician regarded as neo-Maoist in terms of political strategies and mass mobilisation via red songs was ] in ].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Brown |first1=Kerry |url=https://archive.org/details/chinanewmaoists0000brow |title=China and the New Maoists |last2=Nieuwenhuizen |first2=Simone van |date=2016-08-15 |publisher=Zed Books Ltd. |isbn=978-1-78360-762-4 |language=en}}</ref>
The theory of the ] was known to the Chinese revolutionaries from the late 40’s. This thesis held that for the majority of the peoples of the planet, the long road to ] could only be opened by a ‘national, popular, democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution , run by the communists.'<ref>{{Cite news
| last = Amin
| first = Samir
| title = The Countries of the South Must Take Their Own Independent Initiatives
| newspaper =
| publisher = The Third World Forum
| date = October 2009
| url = http://www.forumtiersmonde.net/fren/index.php/activitesactions/249-the-countries-of-the-south-must-take-their-own-independent-initiatives


Although Mao Zedong Thought is still listed as one of the ] of the People's Republic of China, its historical role has been re-assessed. The Communist Party now says that Maoism was necessary to break China free from its feudal past, but it also says that the actions of Mao led to excesses during the Cultural Revolution.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Exploring Chinese History :: Culture :: Philosophy :: Maoism |url=http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/02cul/c04s07.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035536/http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/02cul/c04s07.html |archive-date=24 January 2021 |access-date=26 February 2018 |website=ibiblio.org}}</ref>
| accessdate = 2011年02月22日}}


The official view is that China has now reached an economic and political stage, known as the ], in which China faces new and different problems completely unforeseen by Mao, and as such, the solutions that Mao advocated are no longer relevant to China's current conditions. The 1981 ''Resolution'' reads:
</ref>
<blockquote>Chief responsibility for the grave 'Left' error of the 'cultural revolution,' an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong far from making a correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy herein lies his tragedy.<ref>{{Cite web |title=China the Four Modernizations, 1979-82 |url=http://www.country-studies.com/china/the-four-modernizations,-1979-82.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210211032140/https://www.country-studies.com/china/the-four-modernizations,-1979-82.html |archive-date=11 February 2021 |access-date=10 November 2011 |website=country-studies.com}}</ref></blockquote>


Scholars outside China see this re-working of the definition of Maoism as providing an ideological justification for what they see as the restoration of the essentials of capitalism in China by Deng and his successors, who sought to "eradicate all ideological and physiological obstacles to economic reform".<ref>S. Zhao, "A State-Led Nationalism: The Patriotic Education Campaign in Post-Tiananmen China", Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 1998, 31(3): p. 288.</ref> In 1978, this led to the ] when Albanian leader ] denounced Deng as a revisionist and formed ] as an anti-revisionist form of Marxism.{{citation needed|date=January 2024}}
And in the context of New Democratic revolution, the rationality of such economic policies as to destroy feudalism on the basis of land to the tiller, to confiscate all foreign and domestic economic establishments with a monopolistic character and to limit, control and guide private capital that do not control public life, have been proved in practice.<ref>{{Cite news
| last = Dahal
| first = Pushpa Kamal(Prachanda)
| title = On Maoism
| newspaper =PROBLEMS & PROSPECTS OF REVOLUTION IN NEPAL
| publisher = Published by (Printed Version): Janadisha Publications, Nepal, 2004
| date =
| url = http://web.archive.org/web/20041021024225/www.insof.org/collected/p_onmaoism.html


] Chairman Mao! Long live ]! ]!" (毛主席万岁！贡萨罗主席万岁！持久人民战争！) ] graffiti on a wall at Qinghua South Road, Beijing, 6 December 2021.]]The CCP officially regards Mao himself as a "great revolutionary leader" for his role in fighting against the ] during the Second World War and creating the People's Republic of China, but Maoism, as implemented between 1959 and 1976, is regarded by today's CCP as an economic and political disaster. In Deng's day, support of radical Maoism was regarded as a form of "left deviationism" and based on a ], although these "errors" are officially attributed to the ] rather than Mao himself.<ref>For a newest expression of the official judgment see 中国共产党历史第二卷下册，中共中央党史研究室著，中共党史出版社，第二八章对"文化大革命"十年的基本分析(History of China Communist Party, Vol. 2, Party History Research Centre (November 2010), Chap. 28 Analysis on Cultural Revolution).</ref> Thousands of Maoists were arrested in the ] period after 1976. The prominent Maoists ] and ] were sentenced to death with a two-year-reprieve, while others were sentenced to life imprisonment or imprisonment for 15 years.{{citation needed|date=January 2024}}
| accessdate = 2011年02月22日}}


After the ], Mao's influence continued to be weaker. Although not very influential, some radical Maoists, disgruntled by the injustices suffered by migrant workers, organized a number of protests and strikes, including the ]. In the 2020s, influenced by the ] and the ], Mao's thoughts are being revived in China's ], as they question authority of the CCP. The Chinese government has censored some Maoist posts.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Yuan |first=Li |date=8 July 2021 |title='Who Are Our Enemies?' China's Bitter Youths Embrace Mao |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/business/china-mao.html |access-date=29 October 2022 |work=]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Lau |first=Mimi |date=10 August 2018 |title=Chinese Maoists join students in fight for workers' rights |url=https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2158991/chinese-maoists-join-students-fight-workers-rights |access-date=4 May 2023 |work=South China Morning Post |language=en}}</ref>
</ref>


The 2021 The ] describes Mao Zedong Thought as "a summation of theories, principles, and experience on China's revolution and construction that has been proven correct through practice, and put forward a series of important theories for socialist construction."<ref name=":Hou">{{Cite book |last=Hou |first=Xiaojia |title=China under Xi Jinping: A New Assessment |publisher=] |year=2024 |isbn=9789087284411 |editor-last=Fang |editor-first=Qiang |chapter=China's Shift to Personalistic Rule: Xi Jinping's Centralization of Political Power |jstor=jj.15136086 |editor-last2=Li |editor-first2=Xiaobing}}</ref>{{Rp|page=91}}
===Mao's intellectual Marxist development===
Mao’s” Intellectual” Marxist development can be divided into five major periods: (1) The Initial Marxist Period from 1920–1926; (2) the formative Maoist period from 1927–1935; (3) the mature Maoism period from 1935–1940; (4) the civil war period from 1940–1949; and (5) the post-1949 period, following the revolutionary victory.
# The Initial Marxist Period from 1920–1926: Marxist thinking employs imminent socioeconomic explanations; Mao’s reasons were declarations of his enthusiasm. Mao did not believe education alone would bring about the transition from capitalism to communism because of three main reasons. (1) Psychologically: the capitalists would not repent and turn towards communist on their own; (2) the rulers must be overthrown by the people; (3) “the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and had already become a fact.”<ref>Lowe, Donald M. The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Page 109</ref> These reasons do not provide socioeconomic explanations, which usually forms the core of Marxist ideology.
# The Formative Maoist Period from 1927–1935: In this period, Mao avoided all theoretical implications in his literature and employed a minimum of Marxist category thought. His writings in this period failed to elaborate what he meant by the “Marxist method of political and class analysis”.<ref>Lowe, Donald M. The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Page 111</ref> Prior to this period, Mao was concerned with the dichotomy between knowledge and action. Now, he was more concerned with the dichotomy between revolutionary ideology and counter-revolutionary objective conditions. There was more correlation drawn between China and the Soviet model.
# The Mature Maoist Period from 1935–1940: Intellectually, this was Mao’s most fruitful time. The shift of orientation was apparent in his pamphlet “Strategic Problems of China’s Revolutionary War” (Dec, 1936). “This pamphlet tried to provide a theoretical veneer for his concern with revolutionary practice.”<ref>Lowe, Donald M. The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Page 113</ref> Mao started to separate from the Soviet Model since it was not automatically applicable to China. China’s historical particularism viewed through Marxist eyes served as the link between the Marxist process and China.
# The Civil-War Period from 1940-1949: Unlike the Mature period, this period was intellectually barren. Mao focused more on revolutionary practice and paid less attention to Marxist theory. “He continued to emphasize theory as practice-oriented knowledge.”<ref name="Lowe, Donald M 1966. Page 117">Lowe, Donald M. The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Page 117</ref> The biggest topic of theory he delved into was in connection with the cheng-feng movement of 1942. It was here that Mao summarized the correlation between Marxist theory and Chinese practice; “The target is the Chinese revolution, the arrow is Marxism-Leninism. We Chinese communists seek this arrow for no other purpose than to hit the target of the Chinese revolution and the revolution of the east.”<ref name="Lowe, Donald M 1966. Page 117"/> The only new emphasis was Mao’s concern with two types of subjectivist deviation: 1) Dogmatism, the excessive reliance upon abstract theory; 2) Empiricism, excessive dependence on experience.
# The post-1949 period, following the revolutionary victory: The victory of 1949 was a conformation of theory and practice. “Optimism is the keynote to Mao’s intellectual orientation in the post-1949 period.”<ref>Lowe, Donald M. The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Page 118</ref> Mao assertively revised theory to relate it to the new practice of socialist construction. These revisions are apparent in the 1951 version of “On Contradiction”. “In the 1930’s, when Mao talked about contradiction, he meant the contradiction between subjective thought and objective reality. In “Dialectal Materialism” of 1940, he saw idealism and materialism as two possible correlations between subjective thought and objective reality. In the 1940s he introduced no new elements into his understanding of the subject-object contradiction. Now, in the 1951 version of “On Contradiction”, he saw contradiction as a universal principle underlying all processes of development, yet with each contradiction possessed of its own particularity."<ref>Lowe, Donald M. The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Page 119</ref>


==== Internationally ====
===Departure from Leninism===
] speaking at a rally in ], Nepal]]
Mao departed from Leninism not only in his near-total disinterest in the urban working class but also in his concept of the nature and role of the Party. For Lenin, the Party was sacrosanct because it was the incarnation of the "proletarian consciousness," and there was no question about who were the teachers and who were the pupils. For Mao, on the other hand, this question would always be virtually impossible to answer.<ref>"Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. New York: Free Press, 1999. Page 44.</ref>
After the death of Mao in 1976 and the resulting power struggles in China that followed, the international Maoist movement was divided into three camps. One group, composed of various ideologically nonaligned groups, gave weak support to the new Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping. Another camp denounced the new leadership as traitors to the cause of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought. The third camp sided with the Albanians in denouncing the ] of the CCP (see the ]).{{citation needed|date=January 2024}}


The pro-Albanian camp would start to function as an international group as well<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Latham |first=Judith |date=19 August 2010 |title=Roma of the former Yugoslavia |journal=Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity |volume=27, 1999 |issue=2 |pages=205–226 |doi=10.1080/009059999109037 |s2cid=154891173}}</ref> (led by Enver Hoxha and the ]) and was also able to amalgamate many of the communist groups in ], including the ].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hobday |first=Charles |title=Communist and Marxist Parties of the World |publisher=Longman |year=1986 |isbn=0-582-90264-9 |location=Harlow |pages=410–411}}</ref> Later, Latin American Communists, such as Peru's ], also embraced the tenets of Maoism.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hobday |first=Charles |title=Communist and Marxist Parties of the World |publisher=Longman |year=1986 |isbn=0-582-90264-9 |location=Harlow |page=377}}</ref>
==Post-revolution==
In its post-revolutionary period, Mao Zedong's thought is defined in the CPC's Constitution as "] applied in a Chinese context", synthesized by Mao Zedong and China's "]". It asserts that ] continues even if the ] has already overthrown the ], and there are capitalist restorationist elements within the Communist Party itself. Maoism provided the CPC's first comprehensive theoretical guideline with regards to how to continue socialist revolution, the creation of a socialist society, socialist military construction, and highlights various contradictions in society to be addressed by what is termed "socialist construction". While it continues to be lauded to be the major force that defeated "imperialism and feudalism" and created a "New China" by the Communist Party of China, the ideology survives only in name on the Communist Party's Constitution; ] abolished most Maoist practices in 1978, advancing a guiding ideology called "].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2002-11/18/content_633225_1.htm |title=Xinhua: Constitution of the Communist Party of China |publisher=News.xinhuanet.com |date= |accessdate=2011年11月10日}}</ref>


The new Chinese leadership showed little interest in the foreign groups supporting Mao's China. Many of the foreign parties that were ] aligned with the Chinese government before 1975 either disbanded, abandoned the new Chinese government entirely, or even renounced Marxism–Leninism and developed into non-communist, ] parties. What is today called the international Maoist movement evolved out of the second camp—the parties that opposed Deng and said they upheld the true legacy of Mao.{{citation needed|date=January 2024}}
== Maoism after Mao ==
{{Context|date=March 2009}}
{{Politics of the People's Republic of China}}
Shortly after Mao's death in 1976, ] started the capitalist reforms of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1978 beginning the radical change of Mao's ideology in the PRC.<ref>{{dead link|date=November 2011}}</ref> Although Mao Zedong Thought nominally remains the state ideology, Deng's admonition to ] means that state policies are judged on their practical consequences; the role of ideology in determining policy, in many areas, has thus been considerably reduced. Deng also separated Mao from Maoism, making it clear that Mao was fallible and hence that the truth of Maoism comes from observing social consequences rather than by using Mao's quotations as ], as was done in Mao's lifetime.<ref name="citizendia.org">{{cite web|url=http://citizendia.org/Maoism#Maoism_in_China |title=Maoism |publisher=Citizendia |date= |accessdate=2011年11月10日}}</ref>


== Components ==
In addition, the party constitution has been rewritten to give the capitalist ideas of Deng Xiaoping prominence over those of Mao. One consequence of this is that groups outside China which describe themselves as Maoist generally regard China as having repudiated Maoism and restored ], and there is a wide perception both in and out of China that China has abandoned Maoism. However, while it is now permissible to question particular actions of Mao and to talk about excesses taken in the name of Maoism, there is a prohibition in China on either publicly questioning the validity of Maoism or questioning whether the current actions of the CPC are "Maoist."
=== New Democracy ===
{{Marxism–Leninism sidebar|variants}}
The theory of the ] was known to the Chinese revolutionaries from the late 1940s. This thesis held that for most people, the "long road to ]" could only be opened by a "national, popular, democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution, run by the communists".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Amin |first=Samir |date=October 2009 |title=The Countries of the South Must Take Their Own Independent Initiatives |url=http://www.forumtiersmonde.net/fren/index.php/activitesactions/249-the-countries-of-the-south-must-take-their-own-independent-initiatives |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723131304/http://www.forumtiersmonde.net/fren/index.php/activitesactions/249-the-countries-of-the-south-must-take-their-own-independent-initiatives |archive-date=23 July 2011 |access-date=22 February 2011 |publisher=The Third World Forum}}</ref>


=== People's war ===
Although Mao Zedong Thought is still listed as one of the ] of the People's Republic of China, its historical role has been re-assessed. The Communist Party now says that Maoism was necessary to break China free from its feudal past, but that the actions of Mao are seen to have led to excesses during the ].<ref name="citizendia.org"/>
{{see also|People's war}}


Holding that "]",<ref>{{Cite web |title=Quotations From Chairman Mao |url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch05.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126042155/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch05.htm |archive-date=26 January 2021 |access-date=1 April 2018 |publisher=Peking Foreign Languages Press}}</ref> Maoism emphasises the "revolutionary struggle of the vast majority of people against the exploiting classes and their state structures", which Mao termed a "]". Mobilizing large parts of rural populations to revolt against established institutions by engaging in ], Maoist Thought focuses on "surrounding the cities from the countryside".
The official view is that China has now reached an economic and political stage, known as the ], in which China faces new and different problems completely unforeseen by Mao, and as such the solutions that Mao advocated are no longer relevant to China's current conditions. The official proclamation of the new CPC stand came in June 1981, when the Sixth Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee took place. The 35,000-word "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China" reads:


Maoism views the industrial-rural divide as a major division exploited by capitalism, identifying capitalism as involving industrial urban developed ] societies ruling over rural developing ] societies.<ref>Alexander C. Cook, "Third World Maoism" in A Critical Introduction to Mao. Cambridge, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Cambridge University, 2011. p. 290.</ref> Maoism identifies peasant insurgencies in particular national contexts as part of a context of world revolution, in which Maoism views the global countryside as overwhelming the global cities.<ref name="Mao. Cambridge 2011. P. 289-290">Alexander C. Cook, "Third World Maoism" in A Critical Introduction to Mao. Cambridge, England, UK; New York, New York, USA, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 289–290.</ref> Due to this ] by the capitalist urban First World toward the rural Third World, Maoism has endorsed ] movements in the Third World.<ref name="Mao. Cambridge 2011. P. 289-290" />
] ]]]
"Chief responsibility for the grave 'Left' error of the 'cultural revolution,' an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong . . . . far from making a correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy. . . . Herein lies his tragedy."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.country-studies.com/china/the-four-modernizations,-1979-82.html |title=China the Four Modernizations, 1979-82 |publisher=Country-studies.com |date= |accessdate=2011年11月10日}}</ref>


=== Mass line ===
Both Maoist critics{{Who|date=April 2010}} outside China and most Western commentators{{Who|date=April 2010}} see this re-working of the definition of Maoism as providing an ideological justification for what they see as the restoration of the essentials of capitalism in China by Deng and his successors. In 1978 this led to the ] when Albanian leader ] denounced Deng as a revisionist and formed ] as an anti-revisionist form of Marxism.
{{main|Mass line}}
Building on the theory of the ]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lenin |first=Vladimir |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ |title=Lenin's Collected Works |date=1961 |publisher=Foreign Languages Publishing House |volume=5 |location=Moscow |pages=347–530 |translator-last=Fineberg |translator-first=Joe |chapter=What Is To Be Done |orig-date=1902 |translator-last2=Hanna |translator-first2=George}}</ref> by ], the theory of the ] outlines a strategy for the revolutionary leadership of the masses, consolidation of the ], and strengthening of the party and the building of ]. The mass line can be summarised as "from the masses, to the masses". It has three components or stages:<ref>{{Cite web |title=Short Definitions of the 'Mass Line' and a 'Mass Perspective' |url=http://massline.info/sum1p.htm |access-date=15 June 2014 |website=massline.info}}</ref>
# Gathering the diverse ideas of the masses.
# Processing or concentrating these ideas from the perspective of revolutionary Marxism, in light of the long-term, ultimate interests of the masses (which the masses may sometimes only dimly perceive) and in light of a scientific analysis of the objective situation.
# Returning these concentrated ideas to the masses in the form of a political line which will advance the mass struggle toward revolution.


These three steps should be applied repeatedly, reiteratively uplifting practice and knowledge to higher and higher stages.
Mao himself is officially regarded by the CPC as a "great revolutionary leader" for his role in fighting the ] and creating the People's Republic of China, but Maoism as implemented between 1959 and 1976 is regarded by today's CPC as an economic and political disaster. In Deng's day, support of radical Maoism was regarded as a form of "left deviationism" and being based on a ], although these 'errors' are officially attributed to the ] rather than to Mao himself.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}} Thousands of Maoists were arrested in the Hua Guofeng period after 1976, with prominent Maoists sentenced to death.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}}


== Maoism internationally == === Cultural Revolution ===
The theory of cultural revolution - rooted in Marxism-Leninism thought<ref name=":7" /> - states that the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat do not wipe out bourgeois ideology; the class struggle continues and even intensifies during socialism. Therefore, a constant struggle against bourgeois ideology, traditional cultural values, and the social roots that encourage both of them must be conducted in order to create and maintain a society in which socialism can succeed.
=== Maoism outside China ===
From 1962 onwards, the challenge to the Soviet ] in the ] made by the CPC resulted in various divisions in communist parties around the world. At an early stage,{{Citation needed|date=May 2012}} the ] sided with the CPC. So did many of the ] (non-splinter group) communist parties in South-East Asia, like the ], ], and ]. Some Asian parties, like the ] and the ] attempted to take a middle-ground position.


Practical examples of this theory's application can be seen in the rapid social changes undergone by post-revolution Soviet Union in the late 1920s -1930s<ref>{{Cite journal |last=David-Fox |first=Michael |date=1999 |title=What Is Cultural Revolution? |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0036-0341.651999065 |journal=The Russian Review |language=en |volume=58 |issue=2 |pages=181–201 |doi=10.1111/0036-0341.651999065 |issn=0036-0341}}</ref> as well as pre-revolution China in the New Culture and May Fourth movements of the 1910s-1920s.<ref name=":5">{{Citation |last=Mertha |first=Andrew |title=Rectification |date=2019-06-25 |work=Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi |publisher=ANU Press |doi=10.22459/acc.2019.33 |isbn=9781788734769 |s2cid=242980910 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Both of these sociocultural movements can be seen as shaping Maoist theory on the need for and goals of Cultural Revolution, and subsequently the mass cultural movements enacted by the CCP under Mao, which include the Great Leap Forward, the Anti-rightist movement of the 1950s, and the ].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Li |first=Xing |date=2001 |title=The Chinese Cultural Revolution Revisited |journal=] |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=137–165 |issn=1680-2012 |jstor=23461931}}</ref>
The Khmer Rouge of Cambodia is said to have been a replica of the Maoist regime. According to BBC The Communist Party of Kampuchea (Cambodia), better known as the "]", identified strongly with Maoism, and is generally labeled a "Maoist" movement today.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8373556.stm | work=BBC News | title=Khmer Rouge Duch trial nears end | date=2009年11月23日 | accessdate=2010年05月12日}}</ref><ref>{{dead link|date=November 2011}}</ref> Maoists, however, are quick to point out that the CPK strongly deviated from Marxist doctrine, and that the few references to Maoist China in CPK propaganda were critical of the Chinese.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aworldtowin.org/back_issues/1999-25/PolPot_eng25.htm |title=What Went Wrong with the Pol Pot Regime |publisher=Aworldtowin.org |date= |accessdate=2011年11月10日}}</ref>


The social upheavals that occurred from the New Culture Movement - as well as the May Fourth Movement that followed it<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Luo |first=Zhitian |date=2019-10-02 |title=Wholeness and individuality: Revisiting the New Culture Movement, as symbolized by May Fourth |journal=Chinese Studies in History |publisher=Informa UK Limited |volume=52 |issue=3–4 |pages=188–208 |doi=10.1080/00094633.2019.1654802 |issn=0009-4633 |s2cid=211429408}}</ref> - largely focused around the dismantling of traditional Han Chinese cultural norms in which the majority of the populace were illiterate and largely uneducated.<ref name=":5" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Schwarcz |first=Vera |title=The Chinese enlightenment: intellectuals and the legacy of the May Fourth movement of 1919 |date=1986 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=0-520-05027-4 |publication-place=Berkeley}}</ref> This consequence of this social dynamic was that political and economic power largely resided in the hands of a small group of educated elites, and Han Chinese culture formed around principles of respect and reverence for these educated and powerful authority figures. The aforementioned movements sought to combat these social norms through grassroots educational campaigns which were focused primarily around giving educational opportunities towards to people from traditionally uneducated families and normalising all people to be comfortable making challenges towards traditional figures of authority in Confucian society.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hon |first=Tze-ki |date=2014-03-28 |title=The Chinese Path to Modernisation: Discussions of "Culture" and "Morality" in Republican China |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/hcm/2/3/article-p211_2.xml |journal=International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=211–228 |doi=10.18352/hcm.470 |issn=2213-0624 |s2cid=56325531 |doi-access=free}}</ref>
In the west and south, a plethora of parties and organizations were formed that upheld links to the CPC. Often they took names such as ''Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)'' or ''Revolutionary Communist Party'' to distinguish themselves from the traditional pro-Soviet communist parties. The pro-CPC movements were, in many cases, based among the wave of student radicalism that engulfed the world in the 1960s and 1970s.


The cultural revolution experienced by the Soviet Union was similar to the New Culture and May Fourth movements experienced by China in that it also placed a great importance on mass education and the normalisation of challenging of traditional cultural norms in the realising of a socialist society. However, the movements occurring in the Soviet Union had a far more adversarial mindset towards proponents of traditional values, with leadership in the party taking action to censor and exile these "enemies of change" on over 200 occasions,<ref name="emg" /> rather than exclusively putting pressure on these forces by enacting additive social changes such as education campaigns.
Only one ] classic communist party sided with CPC, the ]. Under the leadership of CPC and Mao Zedong, a parallel international communist movement emerged to rival that of the ], although it was never as formalized and homogeneous as the pro-Soviet tendency.


The most prominent example of a Maoist application of cultural revolution can be seen in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s wherein Mao claimed that "Revisionist" forces had entered society and infiltrated the government, with the goal of reinstating traditionalism and capitalism in China.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wu |first=Yuan-Li |date=1968-03-01 |title=Economics, Ideology and the Cultural Revolution |journal=] |volume=8 |issue=3 |pages=223–235 |doi=10.2307/2642569 |issn=0004-4687 |jstor=2642569}}</ref> Leaning more on the example of the Soviet Union, which involved the silencing and subjugation of adversarial political forces to help bring about a cultural change, Mao called for his followers to speak openly and critically about revisionist forces that they were observing in society and to expel them, assuring them that their actions would be endorsed by the party and that their efforts would in no way be interfered with.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Macfarquhar |first1=Roderick |author-link=Roderick MacFarquhar |url= |title=Mao's Last Revolution |title-link=Mao's Last Revolution |last2=Schoenhals |first2=Michael |author-link2=Michael Schoenhals |date=2006-12-31 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-674-04041-0 |doi=10.4159/9780674040410}}</ref>{{Page number|date=October 2024}} This warrant granted to the public ultimately lead to roughly ten years in which those seen as "Revisionist" forces - largely understood to mean landlords, rich peasants, and the so-called "bourgeoise academic"<ref>{{Citation |last=Thornton |first=Patricia M. |title=Cultural Revolution |date=2019 |work=Afterlives of Chinese Communism |pages=55–62 |editor-last=Sorace |editor-first=Christian |series=Political Concepts from Mao to Xi |publisher=ANU Press |isbn=978-1-78873-476-9 |jstor=j.ctvk3gng9.11 |editor2-last=Franceschini |editor2-first=Ivan |editor3-last=Loubere |editor3-first=Nicholas |jstor-access=free}}</ref> - were publicly criticised and denounced in places of gathering, and in more extreme examples had physical violence inflicted on them, including being beaten, tortured, and/or killed for their perceived crimes.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Xiuyuan |first=Lü |date=1994 |title=A Step Toward Understanding Popular Violence in China's Cultural Revolution |journal=] |volume=67 |issue=4 |pages=533–563 |doi=10.2307/2759573 |issn=0030-851X |jstor=2759573}}</ref>
After the death of Mao in 1976 and the resulting power-struggles in China that followed, the international Maoist movement was divided into three camps. One group, composed of various ideologically nonaligned groups, gave weak support to the new Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping. Another camp denounced the new leadership as traitors to the cause of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The third camp sided with the Albanians in denouncing the ] of the CPC (see ].)


Beginning in 1967, Mao and the PLA sought to restrain the mass organizations that had developed during the early phase of the Cultural Revolution, and began reframing the movement as one to study Mao Zedong Thought rather than using it as a guide to immediate action.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|page=133}}
], though initially praising the ] prior to, during and shortly after the ], later came out in support of Maoism, and advocated the adoption of the ideology throughout ]. The pro-Albanian camp would start to function as an international group as well,<ref>''ROMA OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA'' Author: Judith Latham DOI: 10.1080/009059999109037. Published in: journal Nationalities Papers, Volume 27, Issue 2 June 1999 , pages 205 - 226</ref> led by ] and the ], and was also able to amalgamate many of the communist groups in Latin America, including the ] and ] in ]. Later Latin American Communists such as ] ] also embraced the tenets of Maoism.


=== Contradiction ===
The new Chinese leadership showed little interest in the various foreign groups supporting Mao's China. Many of the foreign parties that were ] aligned with the Chinese government before 1975 either disbanded, abandoned the new Chinese government entirely, or even renounced ] and developed into non-communist, ] parties. What is today called the "international Maoist movement" evolved out of the second camp{{spaced ndash}}the parties that opposed Deng and claimed to uphold the legacy of Mao.
Mao drew from the writings of Karl Marx, ], and ] in elaborating his theory. Philosophically, his most important reflections emerge on the concept of "contradiction" (''maodun''). In two major essays, '']'' and '']'', he adopts the idea that contradiction is present in matter itself and thus also in the ideas of the brain. Matter always develops through a dialectical contradiction: "The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist".<ref>Mao Tse Tung, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124172339/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm |date=2021-01-24 }}, Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1967, p. 75.</ref>


Mao held that contradictions were the essential feature of society, and a wide range of contradictions dominates society, this calls for various strategies. Revolution is necessary to resolve antagonistic contradictions between labour and capital fully. Contradictions within the revolutionary movement call for an ideological correction to prevent them from becoming antagonistic. Furthermore, each contradiction (including ], the contradiction holding between relations of production and the concrete development of forces of production) expresses itself in a series of other contradictions, some dominant, others not. "There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions".<ref>Mao Tse-Tung, " {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124172339/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm |date=2021-01-24 }}", Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, op. cit., p. 89.</ref>


The principal contradiction should be tackled with priority when trying to make the fundamental contradiction "solidify". Mao elaborates on this theme in the essay '']'', "on the relation between knowledge and practice, between knowing and doing". Here, ''Practice'' connects "contradiction" with "class struggle" in the following way, claiming that inside a mode of production, there are three realms where practice functions: economic production, scientific experimentation (which also takes place in economic production and should not be radically disconnected from the former) and finally class struggle. These are the proper objects of economy, scientific knowledge, and politics.<ref>Cfr. Mao Tse-Tung, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210211062705/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm |date=2021-02-11 }}, Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, op.cit., p. 55: "Man's social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many forms&mdash;class struggle, political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also though his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life)".</ref>
==== India ====
*]


These three spheres deal with matter in its various forms, socially mediated. As a result, they are the only realms where knowledge may arise (since truth and knowledge only make sense in relation to matter, according to Marxist epistemology). Mao emphasises&mdash;like Marx in trying to confront the "bourgeois idealism" of his time&mdash;that knowledge must be based on empirical evidence. Knowledge results from hypotheses verified in the contrast with a real object; this real object, despite being mediated by the subject's theoretical frame, retains its materiality and will offer resistance to those ideas that do not conform to its truth. Thus, in each of these realms (economic, scientific, and political practice), contradictions (principle and secondary) must be identified, explored, and put to function to achieve the communist goal. This involves the need to know "scientifically" how the masses produce (how they live, think and work), to obtain knowledge of how class struggle (the central contradiction that articulates a mode of production in its various realms) expresses itself.
The ] is a ] ] in ] which aims to overthrow the government of India.<ref>{{Cite news
| last = Ridge
| first = Mian
| title = Maoists' hijacking of Indian train reveals new audacity
| newspaper = The Christian Science Monitor
| publisher = The Christian Science Monitor
| date = 2009年10月29日
| url = http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Maoists-looking-at-armed-overthrow-of-state-by-2050/articleshow/5648742.cms
| accessdate = 2009年12月14日}}
</ref> It was founded on September 21, 2004, through the merger of the ] and the ] (MCC). The merger was announced to the public on October 14 the same year. In the merger a provisional central committee was constituted, with the erstwhile People's War Group leader ] alias Ganapathi as General Secretary. It is currently proscribed as a ] organization by the Indian government for organizing mass killings in furtherance of their ideology.


] is considered universally applicable]]
==== Nepal====
The ], a national communist party with a revolutionary background, is a follower of Maoism, although it is believed that the party has developed its own ideology, ], which was developed taking Nepal's political, sociological and geographical constraints into consideration. Still, this party is believed to have taken Maoism as its doctrine as its name suggests.


==== Norway==== === Three Worlds Theory ===
In 1974, China announced its ] at the UN.<ref name=":Laikwan">{{Cite book |last=Laikwan |first=Pang |title=One and All: The Logic of Chinese Sovereignty |date=2024 |publisher=] |isbn=9781503638815 |location=Stanford, CA |doi=10.1515/9781503638822}}</ref>{{Rp|page=74}}
In Norway, the maoism of the ml-movement (''ml-bevegelsen'') was described in the 2012 movie by Wong Men Hoi, ''The East is Red''.<ref>http://klassekampen.no/60203/article/item/null/kinesisk-blikk-pa-akp</ref>


Three Worlds Theory states that during the ], two imperialist states formed the "first world"—the United States and the Soviet Union. The second world consisted of the other imperialist states in their spheres of influence. The third world consisted of non-imperialist countries. Both the first and the second world exploit the third world, but the first world is the most aggressive party. The first- and second-world workers are "bought up" by imperialism, preventing socialist revolution. On the other hand, the people of the third world have not even a short-sighted interest in the prevailing circumstances. Hence revolution is most likely to appear in third-world countries, which again will weaken imperialism, opening up for revolutions in other countries too.<ref name="emg"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210211005551/https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm#maoism |date=2021-02-11 }}. Glossary of Terms. ''Encyclopedia of Marxism''.</ref>
==== United States====
In the United States, the ], especially ], was profoundly influenced by Maoist thought.


=== Agrarian socialism ===
In the USA the ] (KP), was initiated by former RCP USA members critical of what they viewed as the dogmatism and cult of personality of RCP USA. KP describes itself as seeking to radically re-imagine contemporary revolutionary politics. It is deeply influenced by Maoist thought, in particular as developed by the RCP USA, but claims members who arrive from other traditions, such as anarchism.
Maoism departs from conventional European-inspired Marxism in that it focuses on the agrarian countryside rather than the urban industrial forces—this is known as ]. Notably, Maoist parties in Peru, Nepal, and the Philippines have adopted equal stresses on urban and rural areas, depending on the country's focus on economic activity. Maoism broke with the framework of the Soviet Union under ], dismissing it as "]" and "]", a pejorative term among communists referring to those who fight for capitalism in the name of socialism and who depart from ] and ].


Although Maoism is critical of urban industrial capitalist powers, it views urban ] as a prerequisite to expanding ] and the socialist reorganisation of the countryside, with the goal being the achievement of rural industrialisation that would abolish the distinction between town and countryside.<ref>John H. Badgley, John Wilson Lewis. Peasant Rebellion and Communist Revolution in Asia. Stanford, California, USA: Stanford University Press, 1974. p. 249.</ref>
==== Spain====
The ] is an independent party that follows Marxist-Leninism and Maoism.


== International influence ==
==== Somalia====
] in February 2013]]
In Africa, ] regime in ] is often cited as being pro-Maoist, as it sided with the ] during the ] and, as such, China provided support to the regime during ] with the pro-Soviet nations of ], ] and ].
From 1962 onwards, the challenge to the Soviet hegemony in the world communist movement made by the CCP resulted in various divisions in communist parties around the world. At an early stage, the Albanian Party of Labour sided with the CCP.<ref>{{Cite journal |date=August 1979 |title=The Party of Labour of Albania – A New Centre of Revisionism |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.hightide/enver.htm |url-status=live |journal=Revolution |volume=4 |issue=1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035549/https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.hightide/enver.htm |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2019-10-09 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |editor-first1=Sam |editor-last1=Richards |editor-first2=Paul |editor-last2=Saba}}</ref> So did many of the mainstream (non-splinter group) Communist parties in South-East Asia, like the ], the ], and the ]. Some Asian parties, like the ] and the ], attempted to take a middle-ground position.


Cambodia's ] could have been considered a replica of the Maoist regime, however Maoists and Marxists generally contend that the CPK strongly deviated from Marxist doctrine and the few references to Maoist China in CPK propaganda were critical of the Chinese.<ref>{{Cite web |last=F.G. |title=What Went Wrong with the Pol Pot Regime |url=http://www.aworldtowin.org/back_issues/1999-25/PolPot_eng25.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810043740/http://www.aworldtowin.org/back_issues/1999-25/PolPot_eng25.htm |archive-date=10 August 2011 |access-date=10 November 2011 |website=A World to Win}}</ref>
=== Maoist organizations ===
Today, there is no consensus on who does and who does not represent Maoism. Various efforts have sought to regroup the international communist movement under Maoism since the time of Mao's death in 1976.


Various efforts have sought to regroup the international communist movement under Maoism since Mao's death in 1976. Many parties and organisations were formed in the West and Third World that upheld links to the CCP. Often, they took names such as Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) or Revolutionary Communist Party to distinguish themselves from the traditional pro-Soviet communist parties. The pro-CCP movements were, in many cases, based on the wave of student radicalism that engulfed the world in the 1960s and 1970s.
One notable organization was the ] (RIM). RIM was founded in 1984 and included such notable organizations as the ] (PCP), also known as "Sendero Luminoso" or "Shining Path," the then ], now known as the ] UCPN(M), and the ] (RCP(USA)). Today, the RIM appears to be defunct or near defunct. The magazine associated with the RIM, A World To Win, has not published an issue since 2006, though A World To Win News Service still publishes regularly on the internet.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aworldtowin.org/wordpress/ |title=AWorld To Win News Service |publisher=Aworldtowin.org |date=2006年04月03日 |accessdate=2011年11月10日}}</ref>


Only one Western classic communist party sided with the CCP, the ]. Under the leadership of the CCP and Mao Zedong, a parallel international communist movement emerged to rival that of the ], although it was never as formalised and homogeneous as the pro-Soviet tendency.
In addition, many of the one-time RIM organizations have become increasingly critical of each other. This has resulted in many public splits. For example, recently the RCP USA has criticized the UCPN(M) as revisionist after the UCPN(M) abandoned its people's war for the parliamentary road. In addition, Red Sun, a web page that claims to be affiliated with some faction the Communist Party of Peru, has criticized both the UCPN(M) and RCP USA. Another movement that has criticized the UCPN(M) is the Communist Party of India (Maoist) -- although they were never formally a RIM member, the CPI(Maoist) was formed out of three organizations, some of which were RIM members, at conferences organized by RIM.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://revcom.us/a/1200/awtwindia.htm |title=RW ONLINE: Maoist Organizations Unite in India |publisher=Revcom.us |date= |accessdate=2011年11月10日}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Scott H. |url=http://www.massline.info/India/Indian_Groups.htm#CPI%28Maoist%29 |title=Maoist Revolutionary parties and organizations in India |publisher=Massline.info |date= |accessdate=2011年11月10日}}</ref>


=== Afghanistan ===
Another effort at regrouping the international communist movement is the ] (ICMLPO). Two notable parties that participate in the ICMLPO are the ] (MLPD) and the ] (CPP). The ICMLPO seeks to unity around Marxism-Leninism, not Maoism. However, some of the parties and organizations within the ICMLPO identify as Mao Zedong Thought or Maoist.
The ] was a Maoist organisation in Afghanistan. It was founded in 1965 with ] as its first leader, advocating the overthrow of the then-current order through people's war.


The ] was founded in 2004 through the merger of five MLM parties.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2006-08-25 |title=Afghanistan Maoists Unite in a Single Party |url=http://www.awtw.org/current_issues/afrgan.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060825084529/http://www.awtw.org/current_issues/afrgan.htm |archive-date=2006-08-25 |access-date=2021-01-12 |website=A World to Win}}</ref>
== Criticisms and interpretations ==
Maoism has fallen out of favour within the Communist Party of China, beginning with Deng Xiaoping's reforms in 1978. Deng believed that Maoism showed the dangers of "ultra-leftism", manifested in the harm perpetrated by the various mass movements that characterized the Maoist era. In Chinese Communism, the term "left" can be taken as a euphemism for Maoist policies. However, Deng stated that the revolutionary side of Maoism should be considered separate from the governance side, leading to his famous epithet that Mao was "70% good, 30% bad". China scholars generally agree that Deng's interpretation of Maoism preserves the legitimacy of Communist rule in China but at the same time criticizes Mao's brand of economic and political governance.


=== Australia ===
Critic Graham Young claims that Maoists see ] as the last true socialist leader of the Soviet Union, but allows that the Maoist assessments of Stalin vary between the extremely positive and the more ambivalent.<ref>Graham Young, ''On Socialist Development and the Two Roads'', The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 8 (Jul., 1982), pp. 75-84, doi:10.2307/2158927</ref> Some political philosophers, such as Martin Cohen, have seen in Maoism an attempt to combine ] and ] - what one such called 'a third way between communism and capitalism'.<ref>Political Philosophy from Plato to Mao, by Martin Cohen, page 206, published 2001 by Pluto Press, London and Sterling VA ISBN 0-7453-1603-4</ref>
The ] is a Maoist organisation in Australia. It was founded in 1964 as a pro-Mao split from the ].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Declaration of Australian Marxist-Leninists |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/australia/declaration.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035446/https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/australia/declaration.htm |archive-date=24 January 2021 |access-date=16 November 2019 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref>


=== Bangladesh ===
Enver Hoxha critiqued Maoism from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, arguing that ''new democracy'' halts class struggle, the theory of the three worlds is "counter-revolutionary" and questioned Mao's guerilla warfare methods.
The ] is a Maoist party in Bangladesh. It was founded in 1968 with ] as its first leader. The party played a role in the ].


== See also == === Belgium ===
The Sino-Soviet split had a significant influence on communism in Belgium. The pro-Soviet ] experienced a split of a Maoist wing under ]. The latter was a lower-ranking CPB member before the split, but Grippa rose in prominence as he formed a worthy internal Maoist opponent to the CPB leadership. His followers were sometimes referred to as Grippisten or Grippistes. When it became clear that the differences between the pro-Moscow leadership and the pro-Beijing wing were too significant, Grippa and his entourage decided to split from the CPB and formed the ] (PCBML). The PCBML had some influence, mainly in the heavily industrialised ] region of ], but never managed to gather more support than the CPB. The latter held most of its leadership and base within the pro-Soviet camp. However, the PCBML was the first European Maoist party and was recognised at its foundation as the largest and most important Maoist organisation in Europe outside of ].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Alexander |first=Robert Jackson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FjM-4ZG9iuMC&q=pcbml+european+maoist+party&pg=PA59 |title=Maoism in the Developed World |date=2001 |publisher=Greenwood |isbn=978-0-275-96148-0 |pages=59 |language=en |access-date=2020-11-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035439/https://books.google.com/books?id=FjM-4ZG9iuMC&q=pcbml+european+maoist+party&pg=PA59 |archive-date=2021-01-24 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=17 November 1967 |title=End of the Road for Grippa? |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/world-outlook/v05n37-nov-17-1967-wo.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035428/https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/world-outlook/v05n37-nov-17-1967-wo.pdf |archive-date=24 January 2021 |access-date=10 October 2019 |work=World Outlook |page=930}}</ref>
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* '']''


Although the PCBML never really gained a foothold in ], there was a reasonably successful Maoist movement in this region. Out of the student unions that formed in the wake of the May 1968 protests, Alle Macht Aan De Arbeiders (AMADA), or All Power To The Workers, was formed as a vanguard party under construction. This Maoist group originated primarily from students from the universities of ] and ] but did manage to gain some influence among the striking miners during the shutdowns of the Belgian stone coal mines in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This group became the ] (PVDA-PTB) in 1979 and still exists today, although its power base has shifted somewhat from Flanders towards Wallonia. The WPB stayed loyal to the teachings of Mao for a long time, but after a general congress held in 2008, the party formally broke with its Maoist/Stalinist past.<ref>D. Van Herrewegen, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035427/http://www.ethesis.net/radicaal-links/radicaal-links.htm |date=2021-01-24 }}, unpublished masterpaper, Department of History, pp. 25–29.</ref>
'''External to China:'''
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]


== References == === Ecuador ===
The ], also known as ''Puka Inti'', is a small Maoist guerrilla organisation in ].
{{Reflist|2}}


==Further reading== === France ===
After ], the cultural influence of French Maoists increased.<ref name=":04">{{Cite book |last=Crean |first=Jeffrey |title=The Fear of Chinese Power: an International History |date=2024 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-350-23394-2 |series=New Approaches to International History series |location=London, UK}}</ref>{{Rp|page=122}} Maoists became the first group of French intellectuals to emphasize ] in their publications and contributed to the nascent ].<ref name=":04" />{{Rp|page=122}}
*''Marxism in the Chinese Revolution'' by Arif Dirlik
*''Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought'' by Nick Knight
*''The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao'' by Donald Lowe
*''Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism'' by Maurice Meisner
*''Mao’s China and After'' by Maurice Mesiner
*''The Political Thought of Mao Tse-Tung'' by Stuart Schram
*''Mao Tse-Tung, The Marxist Lord of Misrule. On Practice and Contradiction'' by Slavoj Zizek


== External links == === India ===
{{See also|Naxalite–Maoist insurgency}}
{{External links|date=August 2011}}
The ] is the leading Maoist organisation in India. The CPI (Maoist) is designated as a terrorist organization in India under the ].<ref>{{Cite news |date=16 September 2016 |title=Maoists fourth deadliest terror outfit after Taliban, IS, Boko Haram: Report |url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/maoists-fourth-deadliest-terror-outfit-after-taliban-is-boko-haram-report/articleshow/54354196.cms |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035457/https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/maoists-fourth-deadliest-terror-outfit-after-taliban-is-boko-haram-report/articleshow/54354196.cms |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2019-07-17 |work=]|author-last1=Chauhan|author-first1=Neeraj}}</ref> Since 1967, there has been an ongoing ] between the ] and Maoist insurgents.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{Cite news |date=12 April 2006 |title=India's Naxalites: A spectre haunting India |url=http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7799247 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100523074605/http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7799247 |archive-date=23 May 2010 |access-date=13 July 2009 |newspaper=The Economist}}</ref> As of 2018, there have been a total of 13,834 deaths across insurgents, security forces, and civilians.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fatalities in Left-wing Extremism |url=https://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/maoist/data_sheets/fatalitiesnaxalmha.htm |access-date=26 September 2023 |website=www.satp.org |publisher=South Asia Terrorism Portal}}</ref> Different separatist movements within India also were influenced by Maoism like the ] (NSCN), a militant group promoting ].
=== General ===
<div class="references-small">
* Mao Internet Library
* Mao Zedong Thought.
* Mao's life.
* Text of the leaflets distributed by the Zhengzhou Four.
* Maoist revolutionary film, music, and art archive
* Batchelor, J. , Clio History Journal, 2009.
</div>


=== Selected organizations === === Iran ===
{{main|1982 Amol uprising}}
<div class="references-small">
The ] was an Iranian Maoist organisation. The UIC (S) was formed in 1976 after the alliance of Maoist groups carrying out military actions within Iran. In 1982, the UIC (S) mobilised forces in forests around ] and launched an insurgency against the Islamist Government. The uprising was eventually a failure, and many UIC (S) leaders were shot. The party dissolved in 1982.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gorriti Ellenbogen |first=Gustavo |url=http://archive.org/details/shiningpath00gust |title=The Shining Path: a history of the millenarian war in Peru |date=1999 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-807-82373-6 |location=Chapel Hill, NC |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Committee of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties from around the world
* ''Revolution'' newspaper online
* Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
* Communist Party of Iran (MLM) *in ]*
*
*
*
*
*
* PCTP/MRPP (Portugal)
* Polish Journal of Maoism-Third Worldism
</div>


Following the dissolution of the Union of Iranian Communists, the ] was formed in 2001. The party is a continuation of the Sarbedaran Movement and the Union of Iranian Communists (Sarbedaran). CPI (MLM) believes Iran is a 'semifeudal-]' country and is trying to launch a 'People's war' in Iran.
===Revolutions===
<div class="references-small">
* on ]
</div>


=== Palestine ===
{{Maoism}}
The ] is a Maoist political and military organisation. The DFLP's original political orientation was based on the view that Palestinian national goals could be achieved only through a revolution of the masses and people's war.
{{BlackPanther}}

=== Philippines ===
{{main|Communist Party of the Philippines}}
The Communist Party of the Philippines is the largest communist party in the Philippines, active since December 26, 1968 (Mao's birthday). It was formed due to the ] and a split between the old ], which the founders saw as revisionist. The CPP was formed on Maoist lines in stark contrast with the old PKP, which focused primarily on the parliamentary struggle. The CPP was founded by ] and other cadres from the old party.<ref name="saulo">{{Cite book |last=Saulo |first=Alfredo |title=Communism in the Philippines}}</ref>

The CPP also has an armed wing that it exercises absolute control over, namely the ]. It currently wages a guerrilla war against the government of the Republic of the Philippines in the countryside and is still currently active. The CPP and the NPA are part of the ], a consolidation of Maoist sectoral organisations such as ] as part of the united front strategy. The NDFP also represents the people's democratic government in peace talks.<ref name="cppsbp">{{Cite book |url=https://www.philippinerevolution.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2016-CPP-consti-ppdr_en.pdf |title=Constitution and Program |publisher=Communist Party of the Philippines |edition=2016 |access-date=2019-06-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200217062221/https://www.philippinerevolution.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2016-CPP-consti-ppdr_en.pdf |archive-date=2020-02-17 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Peru ===
In the late 1970s, the Peruvian Communist Party, ] developed and synthesised Maoism into ], a contemporary variety of Marxism–Leninism that is a supposed higher level of Marxism–Leninism that can be applied universally.<ref name="Modern Thought 1999 p. 501">Bullock, Allan; Trombley, Stephen, eds. (1999). ''The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought'' (3rd ed.). p. 501.</ref>

=== Portugal ===
]]]
Maoist movements in Portugal were very active during the 1970s, especially during the ] that led to the fall of the nationalist government (the ]) in 1974.

Portugal's most significant Maoist movement was the ]. The party was among the most active resistance movements before the Portuguese democratic revolution of 1974, especially among the ] in Lisbon. After the revolution, the MRPP achieved fame for its large and highly artistic mural paintings.

Intensely active between 1974 and 1975, during that time, the party had members that later came to be significant in national politics. For example, a future Prime Minister of Portugal, ], was active in Maoist movements in Portugal and identified as a Maoist. In the 1980s, the ] was another far-left Maoist armed organisation operating in Portugal between 1980 and 1987, aiming to create socialism in post-revolutionary Portugal.

=== Spain ===
The ] was a Spanish clandestine Maoist party. The party's armed wing was the ].

=== Sweden ===
In 1968, a small extremist Maoist sect called Rebels ({{langx|sv|Rebellerna}}) was established in ]. Led by ], the group unsuccessfully demanded that the Chinese embassy admit them into the Chinese Communist Party. The organisation only lasted a few months.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Säfve |first=Torbjörn |url=http://fib.se/fib_1/forlopp.html |title=Rebellerna i Sverige. Dokumentation, kritik, vision |publisher=Författarförlaget |year=1971 |location=Göteborg |language=sv |chapter=Rebellrörelsens förlopp |access-date=27 March 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210113145711/http://fib.se/fib_1/forlopp.html |archive-date=13 January 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Turkey ===
{{see also|Maoist insurgency in Turkey}}
The ] (TKP/ML) is a Maoist organisation in Turkey currently waging a people's war against the ]. It was founded in 1972 as a split from another illegal Maoist party, the ] (TİİKP), which ] founded in 1969, led by ]. The party's armed wing is named the Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army in Turkey (TİKKO). TİİKP is succeeded by the ], headed by Perinçek. Though ] was significantly influenced by Mao, the Patriotic Party says he's not a Maoist, instead saying that he embraced "Mao's contributions to the literature of the world revolution and scientific socialism" and "adapted them to Turkey's conditions".<ref>{{Cite web |title="Perinçek 70'lerde Maocu, 80'lerde Kürtçü şimdi de Atatürkçü oldu" diyenler var. Gerçekten öyle mi? |url=https://vatanpartisi.org.tr/genel-merkez/soruyorum/50213 |access-date=12 March 2023 |website=Patriotic Party |language=tr}}</ref>

=== United States ===
] on February 21, 1972, in which Nixon took steps to placate tensions between the People's Republic of China and the United States, beginning the slow process of reestablishing diplomatic relations]]
After the tumultuous 1960s (particularly the events of 1968, such as the launch of the ], the ], ], and the election of Richard Nixon), proponents of Maoist ideology constituted the "largest and most dynamic" branch of ].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Elbaum |first=Max |date=1998 |title=Maoism in the United States |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/maoism-us.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124171902/https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/maoism-us.htm |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2020-06-23 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Twombly |first=Matthew |date=January 2018 |title=A Timeline of 1968: The Year That Shattered America |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/timeline-seismic-180967503/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035343/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/timeline-seismic-180967503/ |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2020-06-23 |website=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en}}</ref> From this branch came a collection of "newspapers, journals, books, and pamphlets," each of which spoke on the unreasonability of the American system and proclaimed the need for a concerted social revolution.<ref name=":0" /> Among the many Maoist principles, the group of aspiring American revolutionaries sympathized with the idea of a protracted people's war, which would allow citizens to address the oppressive nature of global capitalism martially.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Marks |first1=Thomas A. |last2=Rich |first2=Paul B. |date=2017-05-04 |title=Back to the future – people's war in the 21st century |journal=Small Wars & Insurgencies |volume=28 |issue=3 |pages=409–425 |doi=10.1080/09592318.2017.1307620 |issn=0959-2318 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

Mounting discontent with racial oppression and socioeconomic exploitation birthed the two largest, officially-organized Maoist groups: the ] and the ].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Leonard |first1=Aaron J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eP5JBgAAQBAJ&q=revolutionary+communist+party+scholarly+articles&pg=PT8 |title=Heavy Radicals - The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists: The Revolutionary Union / Revolutionary Communist Party 1968-1980 |last2=Gallagher |first2=Conor A. |date=2015-02-27 |publisher=John Hunt Publishing |isbn=978-1-78279-533-9 |language=en |access-date=2020-11-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035324/https://books.google.com/books?id=eP5JBgAAQBAJ&q=revolutionary+communist+party+scholarly+articles&pg=PT8 |archive-date=2021-01-24 |url-status=live}}</ref> However, these were not the only groups: a slew of organizations and movements emerged across the globe as well, including ], the ], the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization, the ], the Workers Viewpoint Organization, and many others—all of which overtly supported Maoist doctrine.<ref name=":0" />

Orchestrated by ''],'' in the spring of 1973, an attempt to conflate the strands of American Maoism was made with a series of sponsored forums titled "What Road to Building a New Communist Party?" The forums drew 1,200 attendees to a New York City auditorium that spring.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Elbaum |first=Max |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PSJaDwAAQBAJ&q=%E2%80%9CWhat+Road+to+Building+a+New+Communist+Party&pg=PA108 |title=Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che |date=2018-02-06 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78663-459-7 |language=en |access-date=2020-11-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210223073024/https://books.google.com/books?id=PSJaDwAAQBAJ&q=%E2%80%9CWhat+Road+to+Building+a+New+Communist+Party&pg=PA108 |archive-date=2021-02-23 |url-status=live}}</ref> The central message of the event revolved around "building an anti-revisionist, non-Trotskyist, non-anarchist party".<ref>{{Cite web |title=MIM Notes |url=https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn.php?issue=070 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035301/https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn.php?issue=070 |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2020-06-23 |website=www.prisoncensorship.info}}</ref> From this, other forums were held worldwide, covering topics such as "The Role of the Anti-Imperialist Forces in the Antiwar Movement" and "The Question of the Black Nation"—each forum rallying, on average, an audience of 500 activists, and serving as a "barometer of the movement's strength."<ref name=":1" />

The Americans' burgeoning Maoist and Marxist–Leninist movements proved optimistic for a potential revolution, but "a lack of political development and rampant rightist and ultra-leftist opportunism" thwarted the advancement of the greater communist initiative.<ref name=":1" /> In 1972, Richard Nixon made a landmark visit to the People's Republic of China to shake hands with Chairman Mao Zedong; this simple handshake marked the gradual pacification of east–west hostility and the re-formation of relations between "the most powerful and most populous" global powers: the United States and China.<ref>{{Cite web |last=CDT |first=Posted on 04 21 09 10:42 AM |title=RealClearSports - Richard Nixon - Mao Zedong |url=https://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/famous_political_handshakes/nixon_mao.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035254/https://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/famous_political_handshakes/nixon_mao.html |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2020-06-23 |website=www.realclearpolitics.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Frankel |first=Max |date=1972-02-21 |title=HISTORIC HANDSHAKE: President Nixon being welcomed by Premier Chou En-lal. At the left is Mrs. Nixon. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/21/archives/a-quiet-greeting-no-airport-speeches-plane-stops-in-shanghai-an.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035334/https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/21/archives/a-quiet-greeting-no-airport-speeches-plane-stops-in-shanghai-an.html |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2020-06-23 |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Nearly a decade after the Sino-Soviet split, this newfound amiability between the two nations quieted American-based counter-capitalist rumblings and marked the steady decline of American Maoism until its unofficial cessation in the early-1980s.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Saba |first=Paul |date=22 May 1981 |title=End of the Line for American Maoism |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/wv-end-maoism.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035242/https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/wv-end-maoism.htm |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2020-06-23 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

The ] (BPP) was another American-based, left-wing revolutionary party to oppose American global imperialism; it was a self-described ] organization with metropolitan chapters in ], New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles, and an overt sympathizer with global anti-imperialistic movements (e.g., Vietnam's resistance of American neo-colonial efforts).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Vietnam War |url=https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210211015440/https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history |archive-date=2021-02-11 |access-date=2020-06-24 |website=HISTORY |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Oliver |first=Pamela |date=19 October 2017 |title=Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panthers – Race, Politics, Justice |url=https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/racepoliticsjustice/2017/10/19/black-against-empire-the-history-and-politics-of-the-black-panthers/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035229/https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/racepoliticsjustice/2017/10/19/black-against-empire-the-history-and-politics-of-the-black-panthers/ |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2020-06-24}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Hermidda |first=Ariane |title=Mapping the Black Panther Party - Mapping American Social Movements |url=https://depts.washington.edu/moves/BPP_map-cities.shtml |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210213212029/https://depts.washington.edu/moves/BPP_map-cities.shtml |archive-date=2021-02-13 |access-date=2020-06-24 |website=depts.washington.edu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Earl |first=Anthony |title=Black Panther Party |url=https://web.stanford.edu/~ccarson/articles/am_left.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200704132738/http://web.stanford.edu/~ccarson/articles/am_left.htm |archive-date=2020-07-04 |access-date=2020-06-24 |website=web.stanford.edu}}</ref> In 1971, a year before Nixon's monumental visit, BPP leader ] landed in China, whereafter he was enthralled with the mystical ] and the achievements of the Chinese Communist Revolution.<ref name=":2">Ren, Chao (2009) "“ {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210222022414/https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1090&context=constructing |date=2021-02-22 }}," Constructing the Past: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1, Article 7.</ref> After his return to the United States, Newton said that "verything I saw in China demonstrated that the People's Republic is a free and liberated territory with a socialist government" and "o see a classless society in operation is unforgettable".<ref name=":3">Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Writers and Readers Publishing Inc., 1995), 323.</ref> He extolled the Chinese police force as one that " the people" and considered the Chinese antithetical to American law enforcement, which, according to Newton, represented "one huge armed group that was opposed to the will of the people".<ref name=":3" /> In general, Newton's first encounter with anti-capitalist society commenced a psychological liberation and embedded within him the desire to subvert the American system in favor of what the BPP called "revolutionary ]".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Vasquez |first=Delio |date=2018-06-11 |title=Intercommunalism: The Late Theorizations of Huey P. Newton, 'Chief Theoretician' of the Black Panther Party |url=https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/06/11/intercommunalism-the-late-theorizations-of-huey-p-newton-chief-theoretician-of-the-black-panther-party/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035204/https://viewpointmag.com/2018/06/11/intercommunalism-the-late-theorizations-of-huey-p-newton-chief-theoretician-of-the-black-panther-party/ |archive-date=2021-01-24 |access-date=2020-06-24 |website=Viewpoint Magazine}}</ref> Furthermore, the BPP was founded on a similar politico-philosophical framework as that of Mao's CCP, that is, "the philosophical system of dialectical materialism" coupled with traditional Marxist theory.<ref name=":2" /> The words of Mao, quoted liberally in BPP speeches and writings, served as a guiding light for the party's analysis and theoretical application of Marxist ideology.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Chao |first=Eveline |date=2016-10-14 |title=Let One Hundred Panthers Bloom |url=https://www.chinafile.com/viewpoint/let-one-hundred-panthers-bloom |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210205005009/https://www.chinafile.com/viewpoint/let-one-hundred-panthers-bloom |archive-date=2021-02-05 |access-date=2020-06-24 |website=ChinaFile |language=en}}</ref>
] poster commemorating Mao's legacy.]]
In his autobiography ''],'' published in 1973, Newton wrote:
<blockquote>Chairman Mao says that death comes to all of us, but it varies in its significance: to die for the reactionary is lighter than a feather; to die for the revolution is heavier than Mount Tai. When I presented my solutions to the problems of Black people, or when I expressed my philosophy, people said, "Well, isn't that socialism?" Some of them were using the socialist label to put me down, but I figured that if this was socialism, then socialism must be a correct view. So I read more of the works of the socialists and began to see a strong similarity between my beliefs and theirs. My conversion was complete when I read the four volumes of Mao Tse-tung to learn more about the Chinese Revolution.<ref name=":3" /></blockquote>

== Criticism and implementation ==
]
Maoism has fallen out of favor within the Chinese Communist Party, beginning with ]'s reforms in 1978. Deng believed that Maoism showed the dangers of "ultra-leftism", manifested in the harm perpetrated by the various mass movements that characterized the Maoist era. In Chinese communism, the term "left" can be considered a euphemism for Maoist policies. However, Deng stated that the revolutionary side of Maoism should be considered separate from the governance side, leading to his famous epithet that Mao was "70% right, 30% wrong".<ref>{{Cite web |author-first1=Helwig|author-last1=Schmidt-Glintzer|date=10 August 2017 |title=70 per cent good, 30 per cent bad |url=http://www.ips-journal.eu/in-focus/the-politics-of-memory/article/show/70-per-cent-good-30-per-cent-bad-2216/ |url-status=live |website=International Politics and Society|publisher=Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200814080617/https://www.ips-journal.eu/in-focus/the-politics-of-memory/article/show/70-per-cent-good-30-per-cent-bad-2216/ |archive-date=2020-08-14 |access-date=2017-11-04}}</ref> Chinese scholars generally agree that Deng's interpretation of Maoism preserves the legitimacy of Communist rule in China but simultaneously criticizes Mao's brand of economic and political governance.

Critic Graham Young says that Maoists see Joseph Stalin as the last true socialist leader of the Soviet Union but allows the Maoist assessments of Stalin to vary between the extremely positive and the more ambivalent.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Young |first=Graham |year=1982 |title=On Socialist Development and the 'Two Roads' |journal=The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs |publisher=University of Chicago Press |volume=8 |issue=8 |pages=75–84 |doi=10.2307/2158927 |issn=0156-7365 |jstor=2158927 |s2cid=147645749}}</ref> Some political philosophers, such as Martin Cohen, have seen in Maoism an attempt to combine Confucianism and ]—what one such called "a third way between communism and capitalism".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cohen |first=Martin |title=Political philosophy : from Plato to Mao |date=2001 |publisher=Pluto |isbn=0-585-43378-X |publication-place=London}}.</ref>

] critiqued Maoism from a Marxist–Leninist perspective, arguing that New Democracy halts class struggle<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |title=Enver Hoxha: Imperialism and the Revolution (1979) |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201215063423/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm |archive-date=15 December 2020 |access-date=19 September 2019 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref> and allows unrestricted capitalist exploitation,<ref name=":4" /> that the theory of the three worlds is "counter-revolutionary",<ref>{{Cite web |title=Enver Hoxha: Imperialism and the Revolution (1979) |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch4.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210127064521/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch4.htm |archive-date=27 January 2021 |access-date=19 September 2019 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref> and questioned Mao's guerilla warfare methods.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Enver Hoxha: Imperialism and the Revolution (1979) |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch3.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201101015124/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch3.htm |archive-date=1 November 2020 |access-date=19 September 2019 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref>

Some say Mao departed from Leninism not only in his near-total lack of interest in the urban working class but also in his concept of the nature and role of the party. On the other hand, for Mao, this question would always be virtually impossible to answer.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=44}}

] and ] contend that implementation of Maoist thought in China was responsible for as many as 70 million deaths during peacetime,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Chang |first1=Jung |title=Mao: The Unknown Story |title-link=Mao: The Unknown Story |last2=Halliday |first2=Jon |date=2005 |publisher=Jonathan Cape |isbn=978-0-224-07126-0 |pages=3 |language=en}}</ref> with the ], the ] of 1957–1958,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Teiwes |first=Frederick C |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315502816 |title=China's Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Great Leap Forward, 1955-59: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Great Leap Forward, 1955-59 |date=2016-07-01 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-315-50281-6 |edition=1 |language=en |doi=10.4324/9781315502816}}</ref> and the ]. Some historians have argued that because of Mao's ]s during the Great Leap Forward which resulted in ]s, thirty million perished between 1958 and 1961. By the end of 1961, the birth rate was nearly cut in half because of malnutrition.<ref>{{Cite book |last=MacFarquhar |first=Roderick |author-link=Roderick MacFarquhar |url=https://archive.org/details/originsofcultura0000macf |title=The Origins of the Cultural Revolution |date=1974 |publisher=Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, The East Asian Institute of Columbia University and the Research Institute on Communist Affairs of Columbia University |isbn=978-0-231-11082-2 |pages=4 |language=en}}</ref> Critiquing discourses on deaths under Maoism, academics Christian Sorace, Ivan Franeschini, and Nicholas Loubere observe that these discourses attribute responsibility for deaths in manner not typical of discourses on other ideologies, such as liberalism.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Sorace |first1=Christian |title=Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi |last2=Franeschini |first2=Ivan |last3=Loubere |first3=Nicholas |date=2019 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-760-46249-9 |location=Acton, Australia |pages=4–5 |chapter=Introduction |jstor=j.ctvk3gng9.3 |jstor-access=free}}</ref>

Active campaigns, including party purges and "reeducation", resulted in imprisonment or the execution of those deemed contrary to the implementation of Maoist ideals.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Link |first=Perry |author-link=Perry Link |date=18 July 2007 |title=Legacy Of a Maoist Injustice |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR2007071701486.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190106043143/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR2007071701486.html |archive-date=6 January 2019 |access-date=1 April 2018 |newspaper=]}}</ref> The incidents of destruction of cultural heritage, religion, and art remain controversial. Some Western scholars saw Maoism as specifically engaged in a battle to dominate and subdue nature and was a catastrophe for the environment.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shapiro |first=Judith |title=Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China |date=2001-03-05 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-521-78680-5 |language=en}}</ref>

=== Populism ===
Mao also believed strongly in the concept of a unified people. These notions prompted him to investigate the peasant uprisings in Hunan while the rest of China's communists were in the cities and focused on the orthodox Marxist proletariat.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=43}} Many of the pillars of Maoism, such as the distrust of intellectuals and the abhorrence of occupational speciality, are typical populist ideas.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=44}} The concept of "people's war", central to Maoist thought, is directly populist in its origins. Mao believed that intellectuals and party cadres would first become students of the masses and teachers of the masses later. This concept was vital to the aforementioned "people's war" strategy.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=44}}

=== Nationalism ===
Mao's nationalist impulses also played a crucially important role in adapting Marxism to the Chinese model and in the formation of Maoism.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=42}} Mao believed that China was to play a crucial preliminary role in the socialist revolution internationally. This belief, or the fervor with which Mao held it, separated Mao from the other Chinese communists and led Mao onto the path of what ] called "Messianic Revolutionary Nationalism", which was central to his philosophy.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=43}} German post–World War II far-right activist ], a former Maoist, once praised Maoism as a Chinese form of ].<ref name="Lee2013">{{Cite book |last=Martin A. Lee |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sZ_cAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA195 |title=The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists |date=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-28124-3 |pages=195– |access-date=2021-03-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418081323/https://books.google.com/books?id=sZ_cAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA195 |archive-date=2021-04-18 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Mao-Spontex ===
] refers to a Maoist interpretation in western Europe that stresses the importance of the cultural revolution and overthrowing hierarchy.<ref name="Levy1971" /> A political movement in the Marxist and ] movements in Western Europe from 1968 to 1971,<ref name="Bourg2017">{{Cite book |last=Bourg |first=Julian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h6Y6DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT86 |title=From Revolution to Ethics, Second Edition: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought |publisher=MQUP |year=2017 |isbn=978-0-7735-5247-0 |page=86 |quote=It did not take long for the GP-ists to become known as "Mao-spontex," or Maoist-spontaneists. The name was originally an insult—Spontex was the brand name of a cleaning sponge—intended to belittle the group's embrace of antiauthoritarianism as an element of revolutionary contestation. The marxisant tradition had long criticized spontaneism as an anarchistic error. |via=]}}</ref><ref name="Levy1971">{{Cite web |last=Lévy |first=Benny |author-link=Benny Lévy |date=1971 |title=Investigation into the Maoists in France |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/levy-benny/1971/investigation.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035106/https://www.marxists.org/archive/levy-benny/1971/investigation.htm |archive-date=24 January 2021 |access-date=30 April 2019 |via=]}}</ref> Mao-Spontex came to represent an ideology promoting the ideas of Maoism with some influence from ] and ], but rejecting the total idea of ].<ref name="Levy1971" />

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
{{Library resources box}}

* Brown, Jeremy, and Matthew D. Johnson, eds. ''Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China's Era of High Socialism'' (Harvard UP, 2015) .
* Cook, Alexander C., ed. ''Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History'' (Cambridge UP, 2014).
* ''Marxism in the Chinese Revolution'' by Arif Dirlik.
* Feigon, Lee. ''Mao: A Reinterpretation''. Ivan R. Dee, Publisher.
* {{Cite journal |last=Fields |first=Belden |date=1984 |editor-last=Sayrers |editor-first=Sohnya |title=French Maoism |journal=Social Text |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |volume=The 60s Without Apology |issue=9/10 |pages=148–178 |doi=10.2307/466540 |issn=0164-2472 |jstor=466540}}
* ''Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practise in France and the United States''. A. Belden Fields (1988).
* {{Cite journal |last1=Gregor |first1=A. James |last2=Chang |first2=Maria Hsia |date=1978 |title=Maoism and Marxism in Comparative Perspective |journal=] |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=307–327 |doi=10.1017/S0034670500028527 |issn=0034-6705 |jstor=1407255 |s2cid=145556746}}
* Kang, Liu. "Maoism: Revolutionary globalism for the Third World revisited." ''Comparative Literature Studies'' 52.1 (2015): 12–28. {{Dead link|date=November 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
* ''Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought'' by Nick Knight.
* Lanza, Fabio. ''The end of concern: Maoist China, activism, and Asian studies'' (Duke UP, 2017).
* Lovell, Julia. ''Maoism: A Global History'' (2019), a comprehensive scholarly history;
* Lowe, Donald. ''The Function of "China" in Marx, Lenin, and Mao''
* Liu, Elliott. ''Maoism and the Chinese Revolution: A Critical Introduction''
* {{Cite book |last1=Marquis |first1=Christopher |author-link=Christopher Marquis |url=https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300263381/mao-and-markets/ |title=Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise |last2=Qiao |first2=Kunyuan |date=2022 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-300-26338-1}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Meisner |first=Maurice |author-link=Maurice Meisner |date=January–March 1971 |title=Leninism and Maoism: Some Populist Perspectives on Marxism-Leninism in China |journal=] |volume=45 |issue=45 |pages=2–36 |doi=10.1017/S0305741000010407 |issn=0305-7410 |jstor=651881 |s2cid=154407265}}
* Meisner, Maurice. ''Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism''
* Meisner, Maurice. ''Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays''
* Mesiner, Maurice.'']''
* {{Cite journal |last1=Mignon |first1=Carlos |last2=Fishwick |first2=Adam |date=4 July 2018 |title=Origins and evolution of Maoism in Argentina, 1968–1971 |url=https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2086/14717/Origins%20and%20Evolution%20of%20Maoism%20-%20LH%20FINAL.docx?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |format=docx |journal=Labor History |language=en |volume=59 |issue=4 |pages=454–471 |doi=10.1080/0023656X.2018.1422382 |issn=0023-656X |s2cid=148976890 |hdl-access=free |hdl=2086/14717}}
* '']'' by ] (2017).
* {{Cite journal |last=Ning |first=Wang |date=2015 |title=Introduction: Global Maoism and Cultural Revolutions in the Global Context |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/576080/pdf |journal=Comparative Literature Studies |volume=52 |issue=1 |pages=1–11 |doi=10.5325/complitstudies.52.1.0001 |issn=1528-4212}}
* Palmer, David Scott. ed. ''The Shining Path of Peru'' (2nd ed 1994)
* ], ''The Political Thought of Mao Tse-Tung''
* Schram, Stuart. ''Mao Tse-Tung Unrehearsed''
* Seth, Sanjay. “India Maoism: The Significance of Naxalbari,” in ''Critical Perspectives on Media and Society,'' ed. R. Avery and D. Easton (Guilford Press, 1991), 289–313.
* {{Cite journal |last=Starn |first=Orin |date=May 1995 |title=Maoism in the Andes: The Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path and the Refusal of History |url=http://www.umass.edu/legal/Benavides/Fall2005/397U/Readings%20Legal%20397U/8%20Orin%20Starn.pdf |journal=Journal of Latin American Studies |language=en |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=399–421 |doi=10.1017/S0022216X00010804 |issn=1469-767X |jstor=158120 |s2cid=145740201}}
* Srivastava, Arun. ''Maoism in India'' (2015)
* {{Cite journal |last=Steiner |first=H. Arthur |date=January 14, 1953 |title=Maoism or Stalinism for Asia? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3024690 |journal=] |publisher=] |volume=22 |issue=1 |pages=1–5 |doi=10.2307/3024690 |issn=0362-8949 |jstor=3024690}}
* ''Mao Tse-Tung, the Marxist Lord of Misrule: On Practice and Contradiction'' by Slavoj Zizek.

== External links ==
{{sister project links|d=Q167651|c=Category:Maoism|wikt=Maoism|m=no|mw=no|n=no|voy=no|species=no|v=no|s=Author:Mao Zedong|q=no|b=no}}
* (PDF). international project.
* . Mao Internet Library.
* . Mao Zedong Thought.
* . Mao's life.
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110317032355/http://www.monthlyreview.org/0105commentary.htm |date=2011-03-17 }} (January 2005). Text of the leaflets distributed by the Zhengzhou Four.
* . Maoist revolutionary film, music and art archive.
* Batchelor, J. (2009). {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180902164316/http://cliojournal.wikispaces.com/Maoism+and+Classical+Marxism |date=2018-09-02 }}. ''Clio History Journal''.
* . '']''. 10 August 2015.
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{{Cultural Revolution}} {{Cultural Revolution}}
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Latest revision as of 12:07, 26 December 2024

Variant of Marxism–Leninism "Maoist" redirects here. For the novel by Roopesh, see Maoist (novel). Not to be confused with Marxism–Leninism–Maoism.

Mao Zedong Thought
Mao Zedong, for whom the ideology is named
Simplified Chinese毛泽东思想
Traditional Chinese毛澤東思想
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinMáo Zédōng sīxiǎng
Bopomofoㄇㄠˊ ㄗㄜˊ ㄉㄨㄥ ㄙ ㄒㄧㄤˇ
Wade–GilesMao Tse-tung ssu-hsiang
IPA
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationMòh Jaahk-dūng sī séung
JyutpingMo4 Zaak6-dung1 si1 soeng2
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Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.

From the 1950s until the Chinese economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, Maoism was the political and military ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and Maoist revolutionary movements worldwide. After the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union each claimed to be the sole heir and successor to Joseph Stalin concerning the correct interpretation of Marxism–Leninism and the ideological leader of world communism.

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Further information: Ideology of the Chinese Communist Party

Chinese intellectual tradition

At the turn of the 19th century, the contemporary Chinese intellectual tradition was defined by two central concepts: iconoclasm and nationalism.

Iconoclastic revolution and anti-Confucianism

By the turn of the 20th century, a proportionately small yet socially significant cross-section of China's traditional elite (i.e., landlords and bureaucrats) found themselves increasingly sceptical of the efficacy and even the moral validity of Confucianism. These skeptical iconoclasts formed a new segment of Chinese society, a modern intelligentsia whose arrival—or as the historian of China Maurice Meisner would label it, their defection—heralded the beginning of the destruction of the gentry as a social class in China.

The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 marked the final failure of the Confucian moral order, and it did much to make Confucianism synonymous with political and social conservatism in the minds of Chinese intellectuals. This association of conservatism and Confucianism lent to the iconoclastic nature of Chinese intellectual thought during the first decades of the 20th century.

Chinese iconoclasm was expressed most clearly and vociferously by Chen Duxiu during the New Culture Movement, which occurred between 1915 and 1919. Proposing the "total destruction of the traditions and values of the past", the New Culture Movement, spearheaded by the New Youth, a periodical published by Chen Duxiu, profoundly influenced the young Mao Zedong, whose first published work appeared in the magazine's pages.

Nationalism and the appeal of Marxism

Along with iconoclasm, radical anti-imperialism dominated the Chinese intellectual tradition and slowly evolved into a fierce nationalist fervor which influenced Mao's philosophy immensely and was crucial in adapting Marxism to the Chinese model. Vital to understanding Chinese nationalist sentiments of the time is the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in 1919. The Treaty aroused a wave of bitter nationalist resentment in Chinese intellectuals as lands formerly ceded to Germany in Shandong were—without consultation with the Chinese—transferred to Japanese control rather than returned to Chinese sovereignty.

The adverse reaction culminated in the May Fourth Movement in 1919, during which a protest began with 3,000 students in Beijing displaying their anger at the announcement of the Versailles Treaty's concessions to Japan. The protest turned violent as protesters began attacking the homes and offices of ministers who were seen as cooperating with or being in the direct pay of the Japanese. The popular movement which followed "catalyzed the political awakening of a society which had long seemed inert and dormant."

Another international event would have a significant impact not only on Mao but also on the Chinese intelligentsia. The Russian Revolution elicited great interest among Chinese intellectuals, although the socialist revolution in China was not considered a viable option until after the 4 May Incident. Afterward, "o become a Marxist was one way for a Chinese intellectual to reject both the traditions of the Chinese past and Western domination of the Chinese present."

Yan'an period between November 1935 and March 1947

Immediately following the Long March, Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were headquartered in the Yan'an Soviet in Shaanxi. During this period, Mao established himself as a Marxist theoretician and produced most of the works that would later be canonised as the "Thought of Mao Zedong". The rudimentary philosophical base of Chinese Communist ideology is laid down in Mao's numerous dialectical treatises and was conveyed to newly recruited party members. This period established ideological independence from Moscow for Mao and the CCP.

Although the Yan'an period did answer some of the ideological and theoretical questions raised by the Chinese Communist Revolution, it left many crucial questions unresolved, including how the Chinese Communist Party was supposed to launch a socialist revolution while wholly separated from the urban sphere.

Mao Zedong's intellectual development

Strategic Issues of Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War (1938)

Mao's intellectual development can be divided into five significant periods, namely:

  1. the initial Marxist period from 1920 to 1926
  2. the formative Maoist period from 1927 to 1935
  3. the mature Maoist period from 1935 to 1940
  4. the Civil-War period from 1940 to 1949
  5. the post-1949 period following the revolutionary victory

Initial Marxist period (1920–1926)

Marxist thinking employs immanent socioeconomic explanations, whereas Mao's reasons were declarations of his enthusiasm. Mao did not believe education alone would transition from capitalism to communism for three main reasons. (1) the capitalists would not repent and turn towards communism on their own; (2) the rulers must be overthrown by the people; (3) "the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and had already become a fact." These reasons do not provide socioeconomic explanations, which usually form the core of Marxist ideology.

Formative Maoist period (1927–1935)

In this period, Mao avoided all theoretical implications in his literature and employed a minimum of Marxist category thought. His writings in this period failed to elaborate on what he meant by the "Marxist method of political and class analysis". Before this period, Mao was concerned with the dichotomy between knowledge and action. He was more concerned with the dichotomy between revolutionary ideology and counter-revolutionary objective conditions. There was more correlation drawn between China and the Soviet model.

Mature Maoist period (1935–1940)

Intellectually, this was Mao's most fruitful time. The orientation shift was apparent in his pamphlet Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War (December 1936). This pamphlet tried to provide a theoretical veneer for his concern with revolutionary practice. Mao started to separate from the Soviet model since it was not automatically applicable to China. China's unique set of historical circumstances demanded a correspondingly unique application of Marxist theory, an application that would have to diverge from the Soviet approach.

Beginning in the Yan'an period, Mao Zedong Thought became the ideological guide for developing revolutionary culture and a long-term social movement.

Strategic Issues in the Chinese Revolutionary War (1947)

Civil War period (1940–1949)

Unlike the Mature period, this period was intellectually barren. Mao focused more on revolutionary practice and paid less attention to Marxist theory. He continued to emphasise theory as practice-oriented knowledge. The most crucial topic of the theory he delved into was in connection with the Cheng Feng movement of 1942. Here, Mao summarised the correlation between Marxist theory and Chinese practice: "The target is the Chinese revolution, the arrow is Marxism–Leninism. We Chinese communists seek this arrow for no other purpose than to hit the target of the Chinese revolution and the revolution of the east." The only new emphasis was Mao's concern with two types of subjectivist deviation: (1) dogmatism, the excessive reliance upon abstract theory; (2) empiricism, excessive dependence on experience.

In 1945, the party's first historical resolution put forward Mao Zedong Thought as the party's unified ideology. It was also incorporated into the party's constitution.

Post-Civil War period (1949–1976)

To Mao, the victory of 1949 was a confirmation of theory and practice. "Optimism is the keynote to Mao's intellectual orientation in the post-1949 period." Mao assertively revised the theory to relate it to the new practice of socialist construction. These revisions are apparent in the 1951 version of On Contradiction. "In the 1930s, when Mao talked about contradiction, he meant the contradiction between subjective thought and objective reality. In Dialectal Materialism of 1940, he saw idealism and materialism as two possible correlations between subjective thought and objective reality. In the 1940s, he introduced no new elements into his understanding of the subject-object contradiction. In the 1951 version of On Contradiction, he saw contradiction as a universal principle underlying all processes of development, yet with each contradiction possessed of its own particularity."

In 1956, Mao first fully theorized his view of continual revolution.

Differences from Marxism

Beijing, 1978. The billboard reads, "Long Live Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought!"

Maoism and Marxism differ in how the proletariat is defined and in which political and economic conditions would start a communist revolution.

  1. For Marx, the proletariat was the urban working class, which was determined in the revolution by which the bourgeoisie overthrew feudalism. For Mao Zedong, the revolutionary class was the millions of peasants he referred to as the popular masses. Mao based his revolution upon the peasantry. They possessed, according to him, two qualities: (i) they were poor and (ii) they were a political blank slate; in Mao's words, " clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it."
  2. For Marx, the proletarian revolution was internally fuelled by the capitalist mode of production; as capitalism developed, "a tension arises between the productive forces and the mode of production." The political tension between the productive forces (the workers) and the owners of the means of production (the capitalists) would be an inevitable incentive for the proletarian revolution, resulting in a communist society. Mao did not subscribe to Marx's theory of inevitable cyclicality in the economic system. His goal was to unify the Chinese nation and so realise progressive change for China in the form of communism; hence, a revolution was needed at once. In The Great Union of the Popular Masses (1919), Mao wrote that "he decadence of the state, the sufferings of humanity, and the darkness of society have all reached an extreme."

After Mao Zedong's death

China

Deng Xiaoping

The CCP's ideological framework distinguishes between political ideas described as "Thought" (as in Mao Zedong Thought) or as "Theory" (as in Deng Xiaoping Theory). Thought carries more weight than Theory and conveys the greater relative importance of a leader's ideological and historical influence. The process of formalizing a leader's political thinking in the Marxist tradition is important in establishing a leader's ideological legitimacy.

Mao Zedong Thought is frequently described as the result of collaboration between the first-generation leaders of the Party and is principally based on Mao's analysis of Marxism and Chinese history. It is often also described as the adaptation of Marxism to the Chinese context. Observing that concepts of both Marxism and Chinese culture were and are contested, academic Rebecca Karl writes that the development of Mao Zedong Thought is best viewed as the result of Mao's mutual interpretation of these concepts producing Mao's view of theory and revolutionary practice.

Mao Zedong Thought asserts that class struggle continues even if the proletariat has already overthrown the bourgeoisie and there are capitalist restorationist elements within the CCP itself. Maoism provided the CCP's first comprehensive theoretical guideline regarding how to continue the socialist revolution, the creation of a socialist society, and socialist military construction and highlights various contradictions in society to be addressed by what is termed "socialist construction". While it continues to be lauded to be the major force that defeated "imperialism and feudalism" and created a "New China" by the Chinese Communist Party, the ideology survives only in name on the Communist Party's Constitution as Deng Xiaoping abolished most Maoist practices in 1978, advancing a guiding ideology called "socialism with Chinese characteristics".

Shortly after Mao died in 1976, Deng Xiaoping initiated socialist market reforms in 1978, thereby beginning the radical change in Mao's ideology in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although Mao Zedong Thought nominally remains the state ideology, Deng's admonition to "seek truth from facts" means that state policies are judged on their practical consequences, and in many areas, the role of ideology in determining policy has thus been considerably reduced. Deng also separated Mao from Maoism, making it clear that Mao was fallible, and hence the truth of Maoism comes from observing social consequences rather than by using Mao's quotations dogmatically.

On June 27, 1981, the Communist Party's Central Committee adopted the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China. The Resolution assesses the legacy of the Mao era, describing Mao as first among equals in the development of Mao Zedong Thought before 1949 and deeming Mao Zedong Thought as successful in establishing national independence, transforming China's social classes, the development of economic self-sufficiency, the expansion of education and health care, and China's leadership role in the Third World. The Resolution describes setbacks during the period 1957 to 1964 (although it generally affirms this period) and major mistakes beginning in 1965. The Resolution describes upholding the guidance of Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism-Leninism as among the Communist Party's cardinal principles.

Contemporary Maoists in China criticise the social inequalities created by the revisionist Communist Party. Some Maoists say that Deng's Reform and Opening economic policies that introduced market principles spelled the end of Maoism in China. However, Deng asserted that his reforms were upholding Mao Zedong Thought in accelerating the output of the country's productive forces. A recent example of a Chinese politician regarded as neo-Maoist in terms of political strategies and mass mobilisation via red songs was Bo Xilai in Chongqing.

Although Mao Zedong Thought is still listed as one of the Four Cardinal Principles of the People's Republic of China, its historical role has been re-assessed. The Communist Party now says that Maoism was necessary to break China free from its feudal past, but it also says that the actions of Mao led to excesses during the Cultural Revolution.

The official view is that China has now reached an economic and political stage, known as the primary stage of socialism, in which China faces new and different problems completely unforeseen by Mao, and as such, the solutions that Mao advocated are no longer relevant to China's current conditions. The 1981 Resolution reads:

Chief responsibility for the grave 'Left' error of the 'cultural revolution,' an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong far from making a correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy herein lies his tragedy.

Scholars outside China see this re-working of the definition of Maoism as providing an ideological justification for what they see as the restoration of the essentials of capitalism in China by Deng and his successors, who sought to "eradicate all ideological and physiological obstacles to economic reform". In 1978, this led to the Sino-Albanian split when Albanian leader Enver Hoxha denounced Deng as a revisionist and formed Hoxhaism as an anti-revisionist form of Marxism.

"Long live Chairman Mao! Long live Chairman Gonzalo! Protracted People's War!" (毛主席万岁！贡萨罗主席万岁！持久人民战争！) New Leftist graffiti on a wall at Qinghua South Road, Beijing, 6 December 2021.

The CCP officially regards Mao himself as a "great revolutionary leader" for his role in fighting against the Japanese fascist invasion during the Second World War and creating the People's Republic of China, but Maoism, as implemented between 1959 and 1976, is regarded by today's CCP as an economic and political disaster. In Deng's day, support of radical Maoism was regarded as a form of "left deviationism" and based on a cult of personality, although these "errors" are officially attributed to the Gang of Four rather than Mao himself. Thousands of Maoists were arrested in the Hua Guofeng period after 1976. The prominent Maoists Zhang Chunqiao and Jiang Qing were sentenced to death with a two-year-reprieve, while others were sentenced to life imprisonment or imprisonment for 15 years.

After the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, Mao's influence continued to be weaker. Although not very influential, some radical Maoists, disgruntled by the injustices suffered by migrant workers, organized a number of protests and strikes, including the Jasic incident. In the 2020s, influenced by the growing wealth gap and the 996 working hour system, Mao's thoughts are being revived in China's generation Z, as they question authority of the CCP. The Chinese government has censored some Maoist posts.

The 2021 The Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century describes Mao Zedong Thought as "a summation of theories, principles, and experience on China's revolution and construction that has been proven correct through practice, and put forward a series of important theories for socialist construction."

Internationally

Maoist leader Prachanda speaking at a rally in Pokhara, Nepal

After the death of Mao in 1976 and the resulting power struggles in China that followed, the international Maoist movement was divided into three camps. One group, composed of various ideologically nonaligned groups, gave weak support to the new Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping. Another camp denounced the new leadership as traitors to the cause of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought. The third camp sided with the Albanians in denouncing the Three Worlds Theory of the CCP (see the Sino-Albanian split).

The pro-Albanian camp would start to function as an international group as well (led by Enver Hoxha and the APL) and was also able to amalgamate many of the communist groups in Latin America, including the Communist Party of Brazil. Later, Latin American Communists, such as Peru's Shining Path, also embraced the tenets of Maoism.

The new Chinese leadership showed little interest in the foreign groups supporting Mao's China. Many of the foreign parties that were fraternal parties aligned with the Chinese government before 1975 either disbanded, abandoned the new Chinese government entirely, or even renounced Marxism–Leninism and developed into non-communist, social democratic parties. What is today called the international Maoist movement evolved out of the second camp—the parties that opposed Deng and said they upheld the true legacy of Mao.

Components

New Democracy

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The theory of the New Democracy was known to the Chinese revolutionaries from the late 1940s. This thesis held that for most people, the "long road to socialism" could only be opened by a "national, popular, democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution, run by the communists".

People's war

See also: People's war

Holding that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun", Maoism emphasises the "revolutionary struggle of the vast majority of people against the exploiting classes and their state structures", which Mao termed a "people's war". Mobilizing large parts of rural populations to revolt against established institutions by engaging in guerrilla warfare, Maoist Thought focuses on "surrounding the cities from the countryside".

Maoism views the industrial-rural divide as a major division exploited by capitalism, identifying capitalism as involving industrial urban developed First World societies ruling over rural developing Third World societies. Maoism identifies peasant insurgencies in particular national contexts as part of a context of world revolution, in which Maoism views the global countryside as overwhelming the global cities. Due to this imperialism by the capitalist urban First World toward the rural Third World, Maoism has endorsed national liberation movements in the Third World.

Mass line

Main article: Mass line

Building on the theory of the vanguard party by Vladimir Lenin, the theory of the mass line outlines a strategy for the revolutionary leadership of the masses, consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and strengthening of the party and the building of socialism. The mass line can be summarised as "from the masses, to the masses". It has three components or stages:

  1. Gathering the diverse ideas of the masses.
  2. Processing or concentrating these ideas from the perspective of revolutionary Marxism, in light of the long-term, ultimate interests of the masses (which the masses may sometimes only dimly perceive) and in light of a scientific analysis of the objective situation.
  3. Returning these concentrated ideas to the masses in the form of a political line which will advance the mass struggle toward revolution.

These three steps should be applied repeatedly, reiteratively uplifting practice and knowledge to higher and higher stages.

Cultural Revolution

The theory of cultural revolution - rooted in Marxism-Leninism thought - states that the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat do not wipe out bourgeois ideology; the class struggle continues and even intensifies during socialism. Therefore, a constant struggle against bourgeois ideology, traditional cultural values, and the social roots that encourage both of them must be conducted in order to create and maintain a society in which socialism can succeed.

Practical examples of this theory's application can be seen in the rapid social changes undergone by post-revolution Soviet Union in the late 1920s -1930s as well as pre-revolution China in the New Culture and May Fourth movements of the 1910s-1920s. Both of these sociocultural movements can be seen as shaping Maoist theory on the need for and goals of Cultural Revolution, and subsequently the mass cultural movements enacted by the CCP under Mao, which include the Great Leap Forward, the Anti-rightist movement of the 1950s, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s-1970s.

The social upheavals that occurred from the New Culture Movement - as well as the May Fourth Movement that followed it - largely focused around the dismantling of traditional Han Chinese cultural norms in which the majority of the populace were illiterate and largely uneducated. This consequence of this social dynamic was that political and economic power largely resided in the hands of a small group of educated elites, and Han Chinese culture formed around principles of respect and reverence for these educated and powerful authority figures. The aforementioned movements sought to combat these social norms through grassroots educational campaigns which were focused primarily around giving educational opportunities towards to people from traditionally uneducated families and normalising all people to be comfortable making challenges towards traditional figures of authority in Confucian society.

The cultural revolution experienced by the Soviet Union was similar to the New Culture and May Fourth movements experienced by China in that it also placed a great importance on mass education and the normalisation of challenging of traditional cultural norms in the realising of a socialist society. However, the movements occurring in the Soviet Union had a far more adversarial mindset towards proponents of traditional values, with leadership in the party taking action to censor and exile these "enemies of change" on over 200 occasions, rather than exclusively putting pressure on these forces by enacting additive social changes such as education campaigns.

The most prominent example of a Maoist application of cultural revolution can be seen in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s wherein Mao claimed that "Revisionist" forces had entered society and infiltrated the government, with the goal of reinstating traditionalism and capitalism in China. Leaning more on the example of the Soviet Union, which involved the silencing and subjugation of adversarial political forces to help bring about a cultural change, Mao called for his followers to speak openly and critically about revisionist forces that they were observing in society and to expel them, assuring them that their actions would be endorsed by the party and that their efforts would in no way be interfered with. This warrant granted to the public ultimately lead to roughly ten years in which those seen as "Revisionist" forces - largely understood to mean landlords, rich peasants, and the so-called "bourgeoise academic" - were publicly criticised and denounced in places of gathering, and in more extreme examples had physical violence inflicted on them, including being beaten, tortured, and/or killed for their perceived crimes.

Beginning in 1967, Mao and the PLA sought to restrain the mass organizations that had developed during the early phase of the Cultural Revolution, and began reframing the movement as one to study Mao Zedong Thought rather than using it as a guide to immediate action.

Contradiction

Mao drew from the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin in elaborating his theory. Philosophically, his most important reflections emerge on the concept of "contradiction" (maodun). In two major essays, On Contradiction and On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, he adopts the idea that contradiction is present in matter itself and thus also in the ideas of the brain. Matter always develops through a dialectical contradiction: "The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist".

Mao held that contradictions were the essential feature of society, and a wide range of contradictions dominates society, this calls for various strategies. Revolution is necessary to resolve antagonistic contradictions between labour and capital fully. Contradictions within the revolutionary movement call for an ideological correction to prevent them from becoming antagonistic. Furthermore, each contradiction (including class struggle, the contradiction holding between relations of production and the concrete development of forces of production) expresses itself in a series of other contradictions, some dominant, others not. "There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions".

The principal contradiction should be tackled with priority when trying to make the fundamental contradiction "solidify". Mao elaborates on this theme in the essay On Practice, "on the relation between knowledge and practice, between knowing and doing". Here, Practice connects "contradiction" with "class struggle" in the following way, claiming that inside a mode of production, there are three realms where practice functions: economic production, scientific experimentation (which also takes place in economic production and should not be radically disconnected from the former) and finally class struggle. These are the proper objects of economy, scientific knowledge, and politics.

These three spheres deal with matter in its various forms, socially mediated. As a result, they are the only realms where knowledge may arise (since truth and knowledge only make sense in relation to matter, according to Marxist epistemology). Mao emphasises—like Marx in trying to confront the "bourgeois idealism" of his time—that knowledge must be based on empirical evidence. Knowledge results from hypotheses verified in the contrast with a real object; this real object, despite being mediated by the subject's theoretical frame, retains its materiality and will offer resistance to those ideas that do not conform to its truth. Thus, in each of these realms (economic, scientific, and political practice), contradictions (principle and secondary) must be identified, explored, and put to function to achieve the communist goal. This involves the need to know "scientifically" how the masses produce (how they live, think and work), to obtain knowledge of how class struggle (the central contradiction that articulates a mode of production in its various realms) expresses itself.

Mao Zedong Thought is described as being Marxism–Leninism adapted to Chinese conditions, whereas its variant Marxism–Leninism–Maoism is considered universally applicable

Three Worlds Theory

In 1974, China announced its Three Worlds Theory at the UN.

Three Worlds Theory states that during the Cold War, two imperialist states formed the "first world"—the United States and the Soviet Union. The second world consisted of the other imperialist states in their spheres of influence. The third world consisted of non-imperialist countries. Both the first and the second world exploit the third world, but the first world is the most aggressive party. The first- and second-world workers are "bought up" by imperialism, preventing socialist revolution. On the other hand, the people of the third world have not even a short-sighted interest in the prevailing circumstances. Hence revolution is most likely to appear in third-world countries, which again will weaken imperialism, opening up for revolutions in other countries too.

Agrarian socialism

Maoism departs from conventional European-inspired Marxism in that it focuses on the agrarian countryside rather than the urban industrial forces—this is known as agrarian socialism. Notably, Maoist parties in Peru, Nepal, and the Philippines have adopted equal stresses on urban and rural areas, depending on the country's focus on economic activity. Maoism broke with the framework of the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev, dismissing it as "state capitalist" and "revisionist", a pejorative term among communists referring to those who fight for capitalism in the name of socialism and who depart from historical and dialectical materialism.

Although Maoism is critical of urban industrial capitalist powers, it views urban industrialisation as a prerequisite to expanding economic development and the socialist reorganisation of the countryside, with the goal being the achievement of rural industrialisation that would abolish the distinction between town and countryside.

International influence

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) in February 2013

From 1962 onwards, the challenge to the Soviet hegemony in the world communist movement made by the CCP resulted in various divisions in communist parties around the world. At an early stage, the Albanian Party of Labour sided with the CCP. So did many of the mainstream (non-splinter group) Communist parties in South-East Asia, like the Communist Party of Burma, the Communist Party of Thailand, and the Communist Party of Indonesia. Some Asian parties, like the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Workers' Party of Korea, attempted to take a middle-ground position.

Cambodia's Khmer Rouge could have been considered a replica of the Maoist regime, however Maoists and Marxists generally contend that the CPK strongly deviated from Marxist doctrine and the few references to Maoist China in CPK propaganda were critical of the Chinese.

Various efforts have sought to regroup the international communist movement under Maoism since Mao's death in 1976. Many parties and organisations were formed in the West and Third World that upheld links to the CCP. Often, they took names such as Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) or Revolutionary Communist Party to distinguish themselves from the traditional pro-Soviet communist parties. The pro-CCP movements were, in many cases, based on the wave of student radicalism that engulfed the world in the 1960s and 1970s.

Only one Western classic communist party sided with the CCP, the Communist Party of New Zealand. Under the leadership of the CCP and Mao Zedong, a parallel international communist movement emerged to rival that of the Soviets, although it was never as formalised and homogeneous as the pro-Soviet tendency.

Afghanistan

The Progressive Youth Organization was a Maoist organisation in Afghanistan. It was founded in 1965 with Akram Yari as its first leader, advocating the overthrow of the then-current order through people's war.

The Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan was founded in 2004 through the merger of five MLM parties.

Australia

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) is a Maoist organisation in Australia. It was founded in 1964 as a pro-Mao split from the Australian Communist Party.

Bangladesh

The Purba Banglar Sarbahara Party is a Maoist party in Bangladesh. It was founded in 1968 with Siraj Sikder as its first leader. The party played a role in the Bangladesh Liberation War.

Belgium

The Sino-Soviet split had a significant influence on communism in Belgium. The pro-Soviet Communist Party of Belgium experienced a split of a Maoist wing under Jacques Grippa. The latter was a lower-ranking CPB member before the split, but Grippa rose in prominence as he formed a worthy internal Maoist opponent to the CPB leadership. His followers were sometimes referred to as Grippisten or Grippistes. When it became clear that the differences between the pro-Moscow leadership and the pro-Beijing wing were too significant, Grippa and his entourage decided to split from the CPB and formed the Communist Party of Belgium – Marxist–Leninist (PCBML). The PCBML had some influence, mainly in the heavily industrialised Borinage region of Wallonia, but never managed to gather more support than the CPB. The latter held most of its leadership and base within the pro-Soviet camp. However, the PCBML was the first European Maoist party and was recognised at its foundation as the largest and most important Maoist organisation in Europe outside of Albania.

Although the PCBML never really gained a foothold in Flanders, there was a reasonably successful Maoist movement in this region. Out of the student unions that formed in the wake of the May 1968 protests, Alle Macht Aan De Arbeiders (AMADA), or All Power To The Workers, was formed as a vanguard party under construction. This Maoist group originated primarily from students from the universities of Leuven and Ghent but did manage to gain some influence among the striking miners during the shutdowns of the Belgian stone coal mines in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This group became the Workers' Party of Belgium (PVDA-PTB) in 1979 and still exists today, although its power base has shifted somewhat from Flanders towards Wallonia. The WPB stayed loyal to the teachings of Mao for a long time, but after a general congress held in 2008, the party formally broke with its Maoist/Stalinist past.

Ecuador

The Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun, also known as Puka Inti, is a small Maoist guerrilla organisation in Ecuador.

France

After May 68, the cultural influence of French Maoists increased. Maoists became the first group of French intellectuals to emphasize gay and lesbian rights in their publications and contributed to the nascent feminist movement in France.

India

See also: Naxalite–Maoist insurgency

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is the leading Maoist organisation in India. The CPI (Maoist) is designated as a terrorist organization in India under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Since 1967, there has been an ongoing conflict in India between the Indian government and Maoist insurgents. As of 2018, there have been a total of 13,834 deaths across insurgents, security forces, and civilians. Different separatist movements within India also were influenced by Maoism like the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), a militant group promoting Naga nationalism.

Iran

Main article: 1982 Amol uprising

The Union of Iranian Communists (Sarbedaran) was an Iranian Maoist organisation. The UIC (S) was formed in 1976 after the alliance of Maoist groups carrying out military actions within Iran. In 1982, the UIC (S) mobilised forces in forests around Amol and launched an insurgency against the Islamist Government. The uprising was eventually a failure, and many UIC (S) leaders were shot. The party dissolved in 1982.

Following the dissolution of the Union of Iranian Communists, the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist–Leninist–Maoist) was formed in 2001. The party is a continuation of the Sarbedaran Movement and the Union of Iranian Communists (Sarbedaran). CPI (MLM) believes Iran is a 'semifeudal-semicolonial' country and is trying to launch a 'People's war' in Iran.

Palestine

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Maoist political and military organisation. The DFLP's original political orientation was based on the view that Palestinian national goals could be achieved only through a revolution of the masses and people's war.

Philippines

Main article: Communist Party of the Philippines

The Communist Party of the Philippines is the largest communist party in the Philippines, active since December 26, 1968 (Mao's birthday). It was formed due to the First Great Rectification Movement and a split between the old Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930, which the founders saw as revisionist. The CPP was formed on Maoist lines in stark contrast with the old PKP, which focused primarily on the parliamentary struggle. The CPP was founded by Jose Maria Sison and other cadres from the old party.

The CPP also has an armed wing that it exercises absolute control over, namely the New People's Army. It currently wages a guerrilla war against the government of the Republic of the Philippines in the countryside and is still currently active. The CPP and the NPA are part of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, a consolidation of Maoist sectoral organisations such as Kabataang Makabayan as part of the united front strategy. The NDFP also represents the people's democratic government in peace talks.

Peru

In the late 1970s, the Peruvian Communist Party, Shining Path developed and synthesised Maoism into Marxism–Leninism–Maoism, a contemporary variety of Marxism–Leninism that is a supposed higher level of Marxism–Leninism that can be applied universally.

Portugal

The flag of FP-25

Maoist movements in Portugal were very active during the 1970s, especially during the Carnation Revolution that led to the fall of the nationalist government (the Estado Novo) in 1974.

Portugal's most significant Maoist movement was the Portuguese Workers' Communist Party. The party was among the most active resistance movements before the Portuguese democratic revolution of 1974, especially among the Marxist–Leninist Students' Federation in Lisbon. After the revolution, the MRPP achieved fame for its large and highly artistic mural paintings.

Intensely active between 1974 and 1975, during that time, the party had members that later came to be significant in national politics. For example, a future Prime Minister of Portugal, José Manuel Durão Barroso, was active in Maoist movements in Portugal and identified as a Maoist. In the 1980s, the Forças Populares 25 de Abril was another far-left Maoist armed organisation operating in Portugal between 1980 and 1987, aiming to create socialism in post-revolutionary Portugal.

Spain

The Communist Party of Spain (Reconstituted) was a Spanish clandestine Maoist party. The party's armed wing was the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups.

Sweden

In 1968, a small extremist Maoist sect called Rebels (Swedish: Rebellerna) was established in Stockholm. Led by Francisco Sarrión, the group unsuccessfully demanded that the Chinese embassy admit them into the Chinese Communist Party. The organisation only lasted a few months.

Turkey

See also: Maoist insurgency in Turkey

The Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist–Leninist (TKP/ML) is a Maoist organisation in Turkey currently waging a people's war against the Turkish government. It was founded in 1972 as a split from another illegal Maoist party, the Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Party of Turkey (TİİKP), which Doğu Perinçek founded in 1969, led by İbrahim Kaypakkaya. The party's armed wing is named the Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army in Turkey (TİKKO). TİİKP is succeeded by the Patriotic Party, headed by Perinçek. Though Perinçek was significantly influenced by Mao, the Patriotic Party says he's not a Maoist, instead saying that he embraced "Mao's contributions to the literature of the world revolution and scientific socialism" and "adapted them to Turkey's conditions".

United States

Mao meets Richard Nixon on February 21, 1972, in which Nixon took steps to placate tensions between the People's Republic of China and the United States, beginning the slow process of reestablishing diplomatic relations

After the tumultuous 1960s (particularly the events of 1968, such as the launch of the Tet Offensive, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., nationwide university protests, and the election of Richard Nixon), proponents of Maoist ideology constituted the "largest and most dynamic" branch of American socialism. From this branch came a collection of "newspapers, journals, books, and pamphlets," each of which spoke on the unreasonability of the American system and proclaimed the need for a concerted social revolution. Among the many Maoist principles, the group of aspiring American revolutionaries sympathized with the idea of a protracted people's war, which would allow citizens to address the oppressive nature of global capitalism martially.

Mounting discontent with racial oppression and socioeconomic exploitation birthed the two largest, officially-organized Maoist groups: the Revolutionary Communist Party and the October League. However, these were not the only groups: a slew of organizations and movements emerged across the globe as well, including I Wor Kuen, the Black Workers Congress, the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization, the August Twenty-Ninth Movement, the Workers Viewpoint Organization, and many others—all of which overtly supported Maoist doctrine.

Orchestrated by The Guardian, in the spring of 1973, an attempt to conflate the strands of American Maoism was made with a series of sponsored forums titled "What Road to Building a New Communist Party?" The forums drew 1,200 attendees to a New York City auditorium that spring. The central message of the event revolved around "building an anti-revisionist, non-Trotskyist, non-anarchist party". From this, other forums were held worldwide, covering topics such as "The Role of the Anti-Imperialist Forces in the Antiwar Movement" and "The Question of the Black Nation"—each forum rallying, on average, an audience of 500 activists, and serving as a "barometer of the movement's strength."

The Americans' burgeoning Maoist and Marxist–Leninist movements proved optimistic for a potential revolution, but "a lack of political development and rampant rightist and ultra-leftist opportunism" thwarted the advancement of the greater communist initiative. In 1972, Richard Nixon made a landmark visit to the People's Republic of China to shake hands with Chairman Mao Zedong; this simple handshake marked the gradual pacification of east–west hostility and the re-formation of relations between "the most powerful and most populous" global powers: the United States and China. Nearly a decade after the Sino-Soviet split, this newfound amiability between the two nations quieted American-based counter-capitalist rumblings and marked the steady decline of American Maoism until its unofficial cessation in the early-1980s.

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was another American-based, left-wing revolutionary party to oppose American global imperialism; it was a self-described Black militant organization with metropolitan chapters in Oakland, California, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles, and an overt sympathizer with global anti-imperialistic movements (e.g., Vietnam's resistance of American neo-colonial efforts). In 1971, a year before Nixon's monumental visit, BPP leader Huey P. Newton landed in China, whereafter he was enthralled with the mystical East and the achievements of the Chinese Communist Revolution. After his return to the United States, Newton said that "verything I saw in China demonstrated that the People's Republic is a free and liberated territory with a socialist government" and "o see a classless society in operation is unforgettable". He extolled the Chinese police force as one that " the people" and considered the Chinese antithetical to American law enforcement, which, according to Newton, represented "one huge armed group that was opposed to the will of the people". In general, Newton's first encounter with anti-capitalist society commenced a psychological liberation and embedded within him the desire to subvert the American system in favor of what the BPP called "revolutionary intercommunalism". Furthermore, the BPP was founded on a similar politico-philosophical framework as that of Mao's CCP, that is, "the philosophical system of dialectical materialism" coupled with traditional Marxist theory. The words of Mao, quoted liberally in BPP speeches and writings, served as a guiding light for the party's analysis and theoretical application of Marxist ideology.

1978 Revolutionary Communist Party USA poster commemorating Mao's legacy.

In his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, published in 1973, Newton wrote:

Chairman Mao says that death comes to all of us, but it varies in its significance: to die for the reactionary is lighter than a feather; to die for the revolution is heavier than Mount Tai. When I presented my solutions to the problems of Black people, or when I expressed my philosophy, people said, "Well, isn't that socialism?" Some of them were using the socialist label to put me down, but I figured that if this was socialism, then socialism must be a correct view. So I read more of the works of the socialists and began to see a strong similarity between my beliefs and theirs. My conversion was complete when I read the four volumes of Mao Tse-tung to learn more about the Chinese Revolution.

Criticism and implementation

Despite falling out of favor within the Chinese Communist Party by 1978, Mao is still revered, with Deng's famous "70% right, 30% wrong" line

Maoism has fallen out of favor within the Chinese Communist Party, beginning with Deng Xiaoping's reforms in 1978. Deng believed that Maoism showed the dangers of "ultra-leftism", manifested in the harm perpetrated by the various mass movements that characterized the Maoist era. In Chinese communism, the term "left" can be considered a euphemism for Maoist policies. However, Deng stated that the revolutionary side of Maoism should be considered separate from the governance side, leading to his famous epithet that Mao was "70% right, 30% wrong". Chinese scholars generally agree that Deng's interpretation of Maoism preserves the legitimacy of Communist rule in China but simultaneously criticizes Mao's brand of economic and political governance.

Critic Graham Young says that Maoists see Joseph Stalin as the last true socialist leader of the Soviet Union but allows the Maoist assessments of Stalin to vary between the extremely positive and the more ambivalent. Some political philosophers, such as Martin Cohen, have seen in Maoism an attempt to combine Confucianism and socialism—what one such called "a third way between communism and capitalism".

Enver Hoxha critiqued Maoism from a Marxist–Leninist perspective, arguing that New Democracy halts class struggle and allows unrestricted capitalist exploitation, that the theory of the three worlds is "counter-revolutionary", and questioned Mao's guerilla warfare methods.

Some say Mao departed from Leninism not only in his near-total lack of interest in the urban working class but also in his concept of the nature and role of the party. On the other hand, for Mao, this question would always be virtually impossible to answer.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday contend that implementation of Maoist thought in China was responsible for as many as 70 million deaths during peacetime, with the Cultural Revolution, the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957–1958, and the Great Leap Forward. Some historians have argued that because of Mao's land reforms during the Great Leap Forward which resulted in famines, thirty million perished between 1958 and 1961. By the end of 1961, the birth rate was nearly cut in half because of malnutrition. Critiquing discourses on deaths under Maoism, academics Christian Sorace, Ivan Franeschini, and Nicholas Loubere observe that these discourses attribute responsibility for deaths in manner not typical of discourses on other ideologies, such as liberalism.

Active campaigns, including party purges and "reeducation", resulted in imprisonment or the execution of those deemed contrary to the implementation of Maoist ideals. The incidents of destruction of cultural heritage, religion, and art remain controversial. Some Western scholars saw Maoism as specifically engaged in a battle to dominate and subdue nature and was a catastrophe for the environment.

Populism

Mao also believed strongly in the concept of a unified people. These notions prompted him to investigate the peasant uprisings in Hunan while the rest of China's communists were in the cities and focused on the orthodox Marxist proletariat. Many of the pillars of Maoism, such as the distrust of intellectuals and the abhorrence of occupational speciality, are typical populist ideas. The concept of "people's war", central to Maoist thought, is directly populist in its origins. Mao believed that intellectuals and party cadres would first become students of the masses and teachers of the masses later. This concept was vital to the aforementioned "people's war" strategy.

Nationalism

Mao's nationalist impulses also played a crucially important role in adapting Marxism to the Chinese model and in the formation of Maoism. Mao believed that China was to play a crucial preliminary role in the socialist revolution internationally. This belief, or the fervor with which Mao held it, separated Mao from the other Chinese communists and led Mao onto the path of what Leon Trotsky called "Messianic Revolutionary Nationalism", which was central to his philosophy. German post–World War II far-right activist Michael Kühnen, a former Maoist, once praised Maoism as a Chinese form of Nazism.

Mao-Spontex

Mao-Spontex refers to a Maoist interpretation in western Europe that stresses the importance of the cultural revolution and overthrowing hierarchy. A political movement in the Marxist and libertarian movements in Western Europe from 1968 to 1971, Mao-Spontex came to represent an ideology promoting the ideas of Maoism with some influence from Marxism and Leninism, but rejecting the total idea of Marxism–Leninism.

Notes

  1. The term "Maoism" is a creation of Mao's supporters; Mao himself always rejected it and preferred the use of the term "Mao Zedong Thought".

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