Maoism

Maoism is also sometimes called Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, or MLM, because the people who follow it describe Mao Zedong Thought (or Mao’s ideas) as a continuation and development of the ideas from Marx to Lenin, a continuation and development of the scientific process of understanding our socio-economic reality and finding a scientific solution for its problems. While China itself retains its self-described ideological identity of being “Marxist-Leninist,” considering Mao’s ideas to be an application of Marxist-Leninist theory to the conditions of China in his time, Maoists, on the other hand, believe that Mao’s ideas represent an ideology of its own, with its own principles and analysis.

Maoists point out Mao’s emphasis on how Marx originally believed that socialism would occur first in the “economically advanced countries” (the countries where capitalism had developed and created much wealth, and where most of the country is now employed by wage labor), but that China’s struggle for liberation from colonial powers and its alliance of members of the industrial working class and the peasant class (this alliance also being a feature of the Soviet Union’s founding) made the conditions for socialism to develop more ripe than in more advanced capitalist nations, which had many socialist parties that failed to gain any real political power.

To Maoists, imperialism has an effect on the dialectical struggle between the classes, and on the emergence of socialism. Because the most advanced capitalist nations then enforced capitalism on virtually the rest of the world by conquest and economic pressure, and thereby, with their earlier start that gave them time to develop before these other countries even came into the system, these countries would exercise economic control over these other nations through the enforced legal system of “private property.” As discussed before, forcing another nation’s government to enshrine private property into law makes it legal for the rich ruling class of the enforcer country to go there and buy the land and resources that produce wealth; thereby the potential of wealth and what it can create is not with the people of the nation it is being extracted from, but with those private individuals that came from the “economically advanced countries,” and these private individuals usually pay taxes, and by this and other ways, much of the wealth produced by some countries (the oppressed countries) is being systematically transferred to these exploiting, “economically advanced countries.”

So, in the Maoist perspective, socialism will not first arise out of the more advanced capitalist countries, because of the contradiction between the fact that the working class in these countries are exploited for their own labor by their own capitalists and at the same time are benefactors of the imperialist accumulation of wealth and resources their countries’ capitalists provide. Conversely, the domination of foreign capital and wealth over their land and resources made the citizens of poorer countries, who were coming out of pre-capitalist economic and political systems, desire a better alternative to the ideology of the invading forces, and so it made them more likely to not only understand the necessity of socialism but, faced with imperialist violence, fight for it.

The term “Third-Worldist” is sometimes applied to Maoists, and occasionally used as an implied insult, because Maoist theory highlights how socialist revolutions have historically arisen in poorer and colonized regions of the world. However, this label oversimplifies Maoism and can lead to confusion with other Third-Worldist ideas. Maoism does not claim that socialist revolution will only occur in these countries; rather, it emphasizes that particular material and social conditions in these countries created fertile ground for revolutionary movements. Third-Worldism, by contrast, asserts that the working class of imperialist countries benefits from global exploitation, creating a divide between them and the workers of the oppressed nations. According to this view, only by the oppressed countries rising up and reclaiming their resources can the imperialist countries be cut off from their supply of plunder and, with it, the separation of their working class from the rest of the worldwide working-class movement. It is worth noting that Marxists, MLs, MLMs, and third-worldists all support the struggle for liberation of countries suffering under imperial domination.

Another focus of Mao Zedong’s theory was the concept of the protracted people’s war. It was a concept that was developed in detail while Mao Zedong and the rest of the communist party and their supporters were engaging in a civil war against the government, which was led by a nationalist party that did not want to end capitalism (and thereby imperialist domination) in China.

In what seems to be evidence of Marx’s belief that ideas came from material reality, and ideologies came out of the dialectical struggle of forces, Mao’s theory of the protracted people’s war came out of the constantly changing and developing struggle between the communists and their supporters and the national party and its own supporters. The civil war presented opportunities for strategies to be tested, abandoned if they didn’t work, refined if they needed improvement, or repeated if they were successful: strategies for how to successfully create a mass movement and have a revolution that overthrows the old systems of power.

Mao continued the Marxist-Leninist tradition of emphasizing the scientific process (or scientific method) as being essential to having a successful revolution, and so, observing the conditions of China and reacting to the problems the communist party faced, Mao gradually developed a comprehensive set of writings that addresses the problems they faced and the solutions they found that worked and led to their victory in the civil war and the successful seizure of state power from the rival nationalist party.

Key strategies used in the protracted people’s war were using strategic retreat into the countryside when necessary, gaining popular support and mobilizing the masses (the broader population) to take part in the struggle, and a focus on guerrilla warfare instead of traditional battles.

Another critical distinction of Maoist theory is the concept of continuous class struggle under socialism. Traditional Marxist-Leninist thought often assumed that once the vanguard party seized state power and abolished private property, the capitalist class was fundamentally defeated. Mao argued otherwise. He theorized that the bureaucratic power of the new state apparatus could naturally generate a new bourgeoisie right inside the communist party itself.

To prevent the revolution from decaying into a new system of oppression, Maoists believe that the dialectical struggle does not end with the revolution. It must continue in perpetuity. The masses must be continually mobilized to criticize and challenge the party leadership, ensuring the state remains a tool for working-class liberation rather than a new hierarchy of control.

Groups identifying as Maoist (or MLM) have sprung up in countries all over the world, from college campuses in places like America and Europe to armed guerrilla resistance movements in countries like the Philippines and India.