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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 vanguardism in pre-industrial societiesMao, Zedong. "On Guerilla Warfare". Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Retrieved 11 April 2023. 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.Lenman, B.P.; Anderson, T., eds. (2000). Chambers Dictionary of World History. p. 769.
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.
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.
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, "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."
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.
In the late 1930s, writings and speeches by Mao and other leaders close to Mao began to emerge as the Communist Party's developing ideology. This was described as the Sinicization of Marxism. Mao's view was that these concepts were not a complete system of thought but were still developing. As a result, he decided not to use the term "Maoism" and instead favored characterizing these ideological contributions as Mao Zedong Thought ( Mao Zedong sixiang).
Beginning in the Yan'an period, Mao Zedong Thought became the ideological guide for developing revolutionary culture and a long-term social movement.
In 1945, the party's first historical resolution put forward Mao Zedong Thought as the party's unified ideology. (2025). 9781760466244, ANU Press. ISBN 9781760466244 It was also incorporated into the party's constitution.
In 1956, Mao first fully theorized his view of continual revolution.
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 ... and 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".S. Zhao, "A State-Led Nationalism: The Patriotic Education Campaign in Post-Tiananmen China", Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 1998, 31(3): p. 288. In 1978, this led to the Sino-Albanian split when Albanian leader Enver Hoxha denounced Deng as a revisionist, stating "The events and facts are demonstrating ever more clearly that China is sinking deeper and deeper into revisionism, capitalism and imperialism" and formed Hoxhaism as an anti-revisionist form of Marxism.
The CCP officially regards Mao himself as a "great revolutionary leader" for his role in fighting against the Japanese fascism 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.For a newest expression of the official judgment see ä¸å›½å…±äº§å…šåŽ†å²ç¬¬äºŒå·ä¸‹å†Œï¼Œä¸å…±ä¸å¤®å…šå²ç ”究室著，ä¸å…±å…šå²å‡ºç‰ˆç¤¾ï¼Œç¬¬äºŒå…«ç« 对"文化大é©å‘½"å年的基本分æž(History of China Communist Party, Vol. 2, Party History Research Centre (November 2010), Chap. 28 Analysis on Cultural Revolution). 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 having put forward a series of important theories for socialist construction."
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.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. 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.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. 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.
These three steps should be applied repeatedly, reiteratively uplifting practice and knowledge to higher and higher stages.
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. (2006). 9780674040410, Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674040410 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.
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 the fully antagonistic contradictions between labour and capital. 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".Mao Tse-Tung, " On contradiction ", Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung, op. cit., p. 89.
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.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—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)".
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.
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. "Maoism" . Glossary of Terms. Encyclopedia of Marxism.
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.John H. Badgley, John Wilson Lewis. Peasant Rebellion and Communist Revolution in Asia. Stanford, California, USA: Stanford University Press, 1974. p. 249.
Cambodia's Khmer Rouge could have been considered a replica of the Maoist regime under the leadership of Angkar, 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.
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 party 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.
The Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan was founded in 2004 through the merger of five MLM parties.
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.D. Van Herrewegen, "De verdeeldheid van radicaal-links in Vlaanderen: De strategische -en praktische breuklijnen tussen AMADA, de KPB en de RAL tussen 1969-1972" , unpublished masterpaper, Department of History, pp. 25–29.
In 1966, PCF members dissatisfied with the party's direction formed their own movement and in 1967 they founded the Maoist-oriented French Marxist–Leninist Communist Party.
French Maoism grew after the Sino-Soviet split and particularly from 1966 to 1976. 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.
The École Normale Maoists merged with leaders of May 68 to form Proletarian Left. For six years, it was the most visible Maoist organization in France. Proletarian Left worked in cities, working class suburbs, rural areas, and immigrant communities. Its areas of focus included abortion rights, international leftism, and organizing in universities and among factory workers. Proletarian Left included developed supporters among intellectuals, such as Jean-Paul Sartre (who nominally filled the position of editor at a Proletarian Left newspaper after its editor was arrested) and Michel Foucault (who was influential in Proletarian Left's Prison Information Group, which investigated the conditions of prisoners, including political prisoners). Proletarian Left was radically anti-hierarchical, and ultimately failed to maintain its organization, dissolving in 1974.
Alain Badiou is one of the central intellectual figures in the analysis of French Maoism and its legacies.
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong gained popularity following the 1967 Naxalbari uprising and the beginning of the Naxalite Movement. The leader of the first phase of the Naxalite Movement, Charu Majumdar, placed major emphasis on the text, requiring it to be studied and to be read aloud to illiterate peasants. During this phase of the Naxalite Movement, Quotations was popular among both movement participants and those who sympathized with it. Contending that China's approach to revolution provided the path for revolution in India, Majumdar and others split from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).
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.
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.
Shortly after, former partisan Giuseppe Regis founded the publisher Edizioni Oriente (Eastern Editions), which translated and published Maoist texts, including Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. In early 1964, Mao-oriented activists founded the newspaper Nuova Unità (New Unity), which called for Italian communists break with the stance of the Italian Communist Party and align with the socialist countries against US imperialism.
Numerous political factions and groupings took inspiration from Mao's theories and practice. Among the most visible Mao-inspired group was Servire il Popolo (Serve the People), which modeled itself on the Red Guards of China. Servire il Popolo practiced self-criticism and "serving and teaching the peasants" in rural Italy.
Violent groups which cited Mao included The Brigatte Rosse (Red Brigades) and Lotta Continua (Continuous Fight).
The Maoist-inspired group Shining Path and its leader Abimael Guzmán viewed revolution as requiring prolonged people's war. According to academic Carlos Iván Degregori, Shining Path's view of violence exceeded the typical Maoist confines, with Shining Path viewing violence as a value in itself instead of a means. In the 1980s and 1990s, it waged an insurgency against the Peruvian state that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Abimael Guzmán: Peru's Shining Path guerrilla leader dies at 86
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.
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.
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 Eastern world and the achievements of the Chinese Communist Revolution.Ren, Chao (2009) "" Concrete Analysis of Concrete Conditions": A Study of the Relationship between the Black Panther Party and Maoism ," Constructing the Past: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1, Article 7. After his return to the United States, Newton said that "everything I saw in China demonstrated that the People's Republic is a free and liberated territory with a socialist government" and "to see a classless society in operation is unforgettable".Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Writers and Readers Publishing Inc., 1995), 323. He extolled the Chinese police force as one that "served 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. 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.
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".Martin Cohen (2025). 058543378X, Pluto. 058543378X.
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, (2025). 9780224071260, Jonathan Cape. ISBN 9780224071260 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 during the Great Leap Forward which resulted in , thirty million perished between 1958 and 1961. By the end of 1961, the birth rate was nearly cut in half because of malnutrition.Roderick MacFarquhar (1974). 9780231110822, 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 9780231110822 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. (2025). 9781760462499, Australian National University Press. ISBN 9781760462499
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.
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