Maoism, largely a matter of following the ideas set forth in The Little Red Book, technically The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, is a radical version of communism, owing rather less than might be expected to the Marxist-Leninism which held sway, on and off, in China during his years in office. It also caught the attention of radicals world-wide, and much of the French, German and even American far left are still influenced by it. The crucial point of Maoism is the total rejection of the immunity of the official communist party to criticism, and the need directly to work with and listen to ‘the people’. As a doctrine it is completely anti-élitist, rejecting not only hierarchy in organization, but even the authority of technical expertise. Thus Maoism represents a sort of populist Marxism, a direct opposition to democratic centralism, and urges a permanent rejection of authority.
It also stresses communalism (see commune) and the small-scale organization of social and economic units, rather than large-scale organization with more ‘privatized’ individual life. It is a doctrine attractive to the impatient and anarchist, rather than the gradualist and ordered aspects of revolutionary expectations, which was why it was so popular, for example, among the student revolutionaries in Paris in 1968. To orthodox communism Maoism is an extremely dangerous doctrine, and the post-Mao Chinese leadership and the leaders of Western and Eastern communist parties have all sought to eradicate it. Technically it can only be described as utopian, but its form of expression, by a man who wrote naturally in the classic aphorisms of Chinese culture, makes it eminently more readable than the turgid jargon of much modern Marxism. Because Mao organized his revolution, and directed his thought to communism in predominantly agrarian and non-industrialized societies, Maoism has heavily influenced communist movements in the Third World, and especially in Asia. With the rejection of Marxism in the former Soviet bloc, and the popular rejection there of the heroes of the 1917 revolution and of orthodox communism, the influence of Maoism is likely to increase within surviving communist movements.
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