MAOISM

Maoism

Maoism, variably and officially known as Mao Zedong Thought is a variant of Marxism derived from the teachings of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong, widely applied as the political and military guiding ideology in the Communist Party of China (CPC) from Mao's ascendancy to its leadership. It is also applied internationally in contemporary times. Maoist parties and groups exist throughout the world, with notable groups in Peru, India, and Nepal. Notably, in Nepal they won the country's first free elections in 2008

The basic tenets of Maoism include revolutionary struggle of the vast majority of people against the exploiting classes and their state structures, termed a People's War. Usually involving peasants, its military strategies have involved guerrilla war tactics focused on surrounding the cities from the countryside, with a heavy emphasis on political transformation through the mass involvement of the basic people of the society.

Maoism departs from conventional European-inspired Marxism in that its focus is on the agrarian countryside, rather than the industrial urban forces. This is known as Agrarian socialism. Notably, Maoist parties in Peru, Nepal and Philippines have adopted equal stresses on urban and rural areas, depending on the country's level of development.

In its post-revolutionary period, Mao Zedong Thought is defined in the CPC's Constitution as "Marxism-Leninism applied in a Chinese context", synthesized by Mao Zedong and China's first-generation leaders. It asserts that class struggle continues even if the proletariat has already overthrown the bourgeoisie, and there are capitalist restorationist elements within the Communist Party itself.

Maoism provided the CPC's first comprehensive theoretical guideline with regards to how to continue socialist revolution, the creation of a socialist society, socialist military construction, and highlights various contradictions in society to be addressed by what is termed "socialist construction". The ideology survives in name today on the Communist Party's Constitution; it is described as the guiding thought that created "new China" and a revolutionary concept against imperialism and feudalism.

Maoism broke with the state capitalist framework of the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev and dismisses it as modern revisionism, a traditional pejorative term among communists referring to those who fight for capitalism in the name of socialism. Some critics claim that Maoists see Joseph Stalin as the last true socialist leader of the Soviet Union, although allowing the Maoist assessments of Stalin vary between the extremely positive and the more ambivalent. Some political philosophers have seen in Maoism an attempt to combine Confucianism and Socialism - what one such called 'a third way between communism and capitalism