What is Maoism?
Maoism takes Marxism and Leninism and moves the center of revolution from the factory worker to the poor peasant. Mao Zedong argued that in a country like China, a party could win by organizing villages, raising an army and fighting a long people's war. After taking power, he held that class struggle goes on even under socialism, so the party must keep stirring the masses against enemies and against officials who drift toward privilege. In power, these ideas produced one of the deadliest famines and one of the most violent political campaigns of the twentieth century.
Core beliefs
- In poor, rural countries the peasantry can be the main force of revolution.
- Power comes from armed struggle led by a disciplined Communist Party.
- Class struggle continues after the revolution and needs constant campaigns.
- Ordinary people, mobilized in huge numbers, can overcome shortages of money and machines.
- Ideas must be tested in practice, and Marxism must be adapted to local conditions.
- Officials and experts who become comfortable are a danger to socialism.
History
Mao rose in the Communist Party during the civil war with the Nationalists and the war against Japan. In the 1930s and 1940s he wrote On Practice and On Contradiction and built a base at Yan'an. The party won the civil war and founded the People's Republic of China in 1949. The Great Leap Forward, launched in 1958, forced farmers into huge communes and set wild output targets. It led to a famine in which tens of millions starved between 1959 and 1962, with estimates varying widely. In 1966 Mao started the Cultural Revolution, in which Red Guards attacked teachers, officials and old culture. Many were beaten, jailed or driven to death, and estimates of the dead run from hundreds of thousands to millions. It faded after Mao died in 1976.
Variants
After Mao, China's leaders kept his name as a guide but turned to markets. Abroad, groups used the term Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the strategy of protracted people's war. Armed Maoist movements grew in Peru, Nepal, India and the Philippines. Student groups in Western countries borrowed his slogans in the 1960s and 1970s. In Albania, Enver Hoxha first sided with China and later broke with it, creating his own line. Another split in the 1960s separated Mao's China from the Soviet Union.
Criticisms
The record is the strongest argument against it. The Great Leap Forward turned bad policy and false reports into mass starvation. The Cultural Revolution brought mob violence, torture, attacks on schools and the destruction of cultural treasures. Mao's cult of personality left no room for open debate or a free press. Even many communists, including later Chinese leaders, called the Cultural Revolution a disaster. Defenders, now a small group, point to gains in literacy, health care and national independence under his rule, but they do not answer the death toll.
In practice
In China, Maoism ended as a mass movement within a few years of his death, though the party still honors him and uses his name. Elsewhere it lives mainly in armed insurgencies, such as Peru's Shining Path and Nepal's civil war of 1996 to 2006, which ended in a peace deal. On the 12 axes, it scores at the Public extreme on Ownership, high toward Strong leader on Authority, and strongly toward Secular on Religion, while Trade is toward Protected.