For anyone still unsure what the main lines of Maoism today are, here is a little rundown (according to their definitions in ‘Critique of Maoist Reason’ by Joseph Moufawad-Paul):
>Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM)
This is the main line of Maoism that is active in the world today.
This is the line practiced by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI(M)) as well as the Communist Party of Afghanistan among others.
Said two former parties are waging Protracted People’s Wars against their respective nation-states and represent the height of actual Communist struggle in the 21st Century so far.
This line was first articulated in the 1995 document ‘Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism’(1), which was authored by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM).
The RIM which was a collection of anti-revisionist Communist parties and organizations (which opposed the Khrushchevite revisionism of the USSR post-Stalin and allied themselves to Mao the then CPC).
The main contributor in the RIM was the Peruvian Communist Party (PCP), who was at the time waging a significant and highly successful Protracted People’s War (PPW), which was being practiced both as the USSR fell.
Truthfully, this was the most significant development in Communist practice since the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
<This line is basically the correctly understanding of the The Paris Commune, Russian and Chinese revolutions, the three world-historical revolutions.
>Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Principly-Maoist (MLM-pM)
This a line spun off from the main MLM trend and chooses to only adhere to the PCP’s conception of MLM before it was concretely systematized through the RIM.
This is the line that insists that PPW is universally applicable based on the experience of the PCP and their relative success in practicing this strategy in a country (Peru) with a significantly urban population.
The other key concept from this trend is ‘Jefatura’ which involves the most senior members of the party making executive decisions above anyone else.
This tragically backfired as the Peruvian state was around the time of the articulation of MLM in the RIM able to capture or execute most of senior members of the PCP including it’s main theoretician, Abimael Guzmán AKA Chairman Gonzalo, who was been in jail since 1992.
This line has not been put into actual practice since.
These are the two main lines, now onto the outliers:
>Maoist Third-Worldism (MTW)
The infamous ideology practiced Jason Unruhe among others.
This line proposes that no revolution can happen in the ‘first world’ nations as the working classes there have been bought-off through the concessions made possible under imperialism made by the respective nation’s ruling classes, focusing on the concept of the ‘labour aristocracy’ as outlined by Lenin and the ‘Three Worlds Theory’ Mao expressed near his death and was perpetuated by Lin Bao.
This conception did not come from theoreticians in the third world, but the first.
The logical (non-dialectic) contradiction is obvious; MTW is a theory that says first-worlders can’t wage successful revolutions, and thus never conceive of the correct theory, but said first-worlders were the ones to conceive said theory, thus invalidating their own understanding of things.
>Mao-Zedong-Thought (MZT)
<This line is basically ML+Mao
This was the ideology made famous by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China.
Here Maoism is not considered to be a theoretical rupture to Marxism-Leninism (ML) and define a new trend to address the inherent problems with ML theory and practice (party bureaucracy and endemic revisionism due to the rejection of class struggle under socialism), but simply the specific revisionism of the USSR post-Stalin and other Third International parties who followed suit.
This was the main trend of Maoism until MLM was formulated.
>Post-Maoism
The ideology practiced currently by the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RCP-USA) and Alan Baidou among others.
This proposes that Maoism, despite being the most recent significant development in Communist theory and history, needs to not be put into practice but theoretically superseded somehow.
The main manifestation of this comes in the form of he RCP-USA’s ‘New Synthesis’ as theorized by Bob Avakian, which since its theorization has made said party a glorified cult for Bob and his theory.
The absolute lack of concrete results concerning this line in actual class struggle speaks for itself.
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(1) library.redspark.nu/1995_-_Long_Live_Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
>If I am incorrect in any points, please correct me and I will amend this at a later date.
>Hope this helps!
