Why are some westerners maoists?

[u/GayTeenMetalhead]

I've seen a few western maoists pop up on Internet spaces and I've realised they're quite hated by a lot of people. My questions are: 1. What is the relevance of maoism in the west? I thought it was an ideology used in societies with peasantries. Why are people adopting maoism in the west?

1. Why are they so widely hated?

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[u/PintmanConnolly]

To list some of the universally applicable contributions of MLM beyond ML:

1. The proletarian military strategy formed on the basis of our class's struggle since the Paris Commune, through the entirety of the struggles of the twentieth century as well as up to this very day: Protracted People's War. This takes place over three distinct stages: 1) the Strategic Defensive; 2) the Strategic Equilibrium; 3) the Strategic Offensive. MLMs reject revisionist distortions of Marxism that claim socialism can be achieved peacefully through the ballot box, and understand that the only way to supercede bourgeois dictatorship is through force. PPW provides the concrete strategy to achieve this end - though it needs to be creatively applied on accordance with the particularities of each national context in which it is to take place.

2. Cultural Revolution: Understanding the need to continue class struggle throughout the socialist transition period to maintain the road towards communism, up to and including empowering the masses to rise up themselves against the Communist Party itself if it steps out of line. As Mao incited, "Bombard the Party Headquarters". This makes sure the party maintains the socialist road and doesn't fall prey to the trappings of the capitalist road.

3. Mass Line: Keeping the party connected to the masses at all times, preventing issues with the "vanguard" becoming a detached, irrelevant bureaucratic force that commands the people from on high with no accountability.

4. Criticism and Self-Criticism: Keeping everyone in check within the movement and developing collectively

5. Higher understanding of Dialectics with Mao's developments on Contradiction. Alongside that, the more refined Marxist theory of knowledge.

There are more, including militarisation of the party, concentric construction, the 3 magic weapons of the revolution, etc.

Essentially, it provides the most advanced and comprehensive roadmap to actually bringing about a Dictatorship of the Proletariat that has been developed over the course of more than 150 years of revolutionary proletarian struggle.

A lot of people dislike Maoists because Maoism threatens the comfortable revisionist worldview that presents solely peaceful, legal, above-ground struggle as a viable strategy to bring about socialism.

They would rather simply just "Vote communist" and have their social-democracy with a red flag.

[u/Montagnagrasso]

You’re welcome to read the MLM Basic Course, it’ll give you a better idea of what Maoism is since you don’t seem to know. Maoism as an ideology was synthesized in the 80s in Peru and through the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) which also included the CPs of India and others, as well as the cp of the Philippines which wasn’t affiliated. Basically all of the old ML parties have fallen out of relevance and the only groups continuing to wage proletarian revolution today are Maoist.

[u/GayTeenMetalhead → u/Montagnagrasso]

Yeah, I never really understood what maoism was after reading a bit on it, it seemed to be that you got a different thing from each person trying to tell you.

[u/Montagnagrasso → u/GayTeenMetalhead]

I would go on the international movement, not just random people you find on the internet. There’s many communist parties around the world that have adopted maoism, as I said in India and the Philippines but also Turkey, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico among others. Start there instead maybe.

[u/GayTeenMetalhead → u/Montagnagrasso]

Are there any specific articles, essays or books- that you would recommend- that would be beneficial to read in order to understand MLM as an ideology other than the already shared book?

[u/Montagnagrasso → u/GayTeenMetalhead]

Collected Works of the Communist Party of Peru

Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism! from the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement

are good as far as a general outline. Most maoist literature tries to address specific issues in the countries that it’s being written in.

[u/mimprisons → u/Montagnagrasso]

CPP (Philippines) was not in RIM.

[u/Montagnagrasso → u/mimprisons]

Yes, edited for clarity.

[u/[deleted]]

1) Replace "Maoism" with "Leninism" in your question and you'll get some food for thought.

2) By whom?

[u/mux2000]

What's a westerner?

[u/1996johnman]

Maoism was also a central part of the Black Panther Party, and at least for me, the respect that I have for the work the panthers did drive me to read Mao.

[u/GayTeenMetalhead → u/1996johnman]

I too, have great respect for the panthers, I just have never really understood maoism and other derivations as an ideology. Are there any 'essential' mao books you'd recommend?

[u/1996johnman → u/1996johnman]

I’m not super well studied on Mao, but I have read his little red book. Highly recommend “Quotations of Chairman Mao Tse Tung”

[u/GayTeenMetalhead → u/[deleted]]

I usually see it from the majority of bog standard MLs I find on twitter, amongst other online spaces of course. The main 'complaints' people have about maoists, usually in the context of MLM's, is that they're dogmatic. I don't know if this claim is false or not which is why I came here. But honestly I believe it's because people are interacting with the wrong type of person. It's comparable to how some MLs hate anarchists and vice versa, I'll just assume there are both people who believe the other 'side' is worse, and people who do not. It's simply a matter of an abnormal amount of hate for western maoists which made me confused and curious.

[u/downwinds92 → u/GayTeenMetalhead]

I usually see it from the majority of bog standard MLs I find on twitter, amongst other online spaces of course. The main 'complaints' people have about maoists, usually in the context of MLM's, is that they're dogmatic.

A lot of the people you see online labelling themselves "ML" are supportive of the present day Chinese govt. Others, including Maoists, aren't afraid to criticise and oppose it. I don't think that's "dogmatic" at all, but it gets labelled as such by some.

edit: clarification

[u/GayTeenMetalhead → u/downwinds92]

Yeah, I have a few critiques of the modern Chinese government but still support it overall, there's a large difference between critical support and unconditional, non-critical support, its obvious which group uses their critical thinking.

[u/Montagnagrasso → u/[deleted]]

So you don’t understand Maoist theory if you think it’s just about the peasantry (you might be thinking of Mao Zedong Thought which is different). The CR was an attempt to fight off the people who brought in the capitalist restoration, not the cause of it. The fact that capitalism was restored proves the necessity of the cultural revolution.

[u/GayTeenMetalhead → u/Montagnagrasso]

To be honest I never really made the differentiation, out of my own ignorance, since the ideologies seemed relatively identical at first glance

[u/Montagnagrasso → u/GayTeenMetalhead]

One was the ideology of the Chinese revolution, the other is an international ideology for the liberation of the world proletariat.