Maoism

Maoism was never exclusively a Chinese phenomenon. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the Chinese Communist revolution achieved nationwide victory, Communist parties in such Asian regions and countries as Indochina, Malaya, and Burma claimed to take Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological guide for their own revolutions. In the 1960s, following the great Sino-Soviet debate, the international Communist movement was divided. Some parties (such as the Albanian Labor Party) and many deviating factions within the Communist parties of different nations advocated Maoism, claiming it to be the "third milestone" in the development of Marxism-Leninism. In most cases, those parties and factions embraced the Maoist doctrines of conducting violent revolution as the only legitimate way to overthrow capitalism's national and global dominance. They also became the CCP's allies in the "anti-revisionist struggle" against Moscow.

This situation changed drastically with the Chinese-American rapprochement in the early 1970s and, especially, after Mao's death in 1976. Mao's decision to improve relations with the "U.S. imperialists" offended many "Maoist" parties and factions elsewhere, causing them (such as Albania) to denounce Mao's China as an example of "neo-revisionism."

The post-Mao CCP leadership's virtual abandonment of Maoism further alienated China from the remaining Maoist parties and factions abroad. When the Khmer Rouge waged a war of survival in Cambodia's jungle, China supported it not because of its Maoist ideology, but because it played an important role in checking Vietnam, China's main enemy in Southeast Asia at that time. As for such Maoist revolutionary movements as the Shining Path in Peru and the Maoist guerrillas in Nepal, Beijing offered no support and paid little attention.

Does Maoism have a future? As a revolutionary ideology, Maoism has long withered in China. With the decline of such "Maoist" movements as Peru's Shining Path, it is difficult for Maoism beyond China to attract large numbers of devotees. But it seems premature to say that Mao's ideas have forever lost their influence. Some Maoist strategies—such as those concerning mass mobilization and armed struggle—will remain attractive to revolutionaries of generations to come. In a deeper sense, Maoism's most lasting legacy lies, perhaps, in its utopian vision—one concerning the necessity and possibility of achieving universal justice and equality in human society. The vision's beauty exists in its ambiguity. Because it was never clearly definable in practical political terms, the vision may have continuing appeal as long as injustice and inequality persist in human life—in China, and in other parts of the world as well.