>>2932806What a waste of an effortpost. Mapping these things out is definitely worthwhile, but it's very clear this person hasn't engaged with this content with any real depth. They probably just skimmed JMP's
Critique of Maoist Reason and figured that was enough.
<Marxism-Leninism-MaoismJMP and others cite the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement as having systematized Maoism, and for a time I agreed with this view. However recently many Maoists have taken a more critical view of RIM and its legacy, and this has led to many moving away from the view that Maoism was systematized in RIM. We can divide these more critical Maoists broadly into two: those who view the issue as principally one of rightism within RIM, and those who view RIM and building a new international in general as a mistake.
Those who fall into the former grouping have largely come together in and around the International Communist League, an attempt at reconstituting the Comintern more directly centered around Maoism and Gonzalo Thought (what JMP refers to as "Principally Maoism"). There is also the Communist (maoist) Party of Afghanistan, which also is seeking to rebuild the RIM but disagree with the ICL on the significance of Gonzalo Thought among other things. CmPA tends towards the right wing of Maoism, and JMP can broadly be described as being part of their trend.
Those who fall into the latter grouping are basically all of the most significant Maoist Parties today
except the Communist Party of Brazil and what's left of the Communist Party of Peru (who are in ICL). The Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Communist Party of the Philippines have both issued statements expressing their view that forming a new International today is premature at best. Parties in this trend are in favor of international communication and cooperation, but believe that the attempt of RIM and ICL to form a new democratic centralist body can only produce a first worldist and rightist formation at this time. Also within this trend is the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was always critical of RIM as a project of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA.
When Maoism was "systematized" is a bit of a debate, but isn't a dividing line question outside of the ICL (who are very adamant about crediting the PCP with this). Of course folks are familiar with JMP's view of Maoism being systematized between 1988 and 1993, but what JMP is notably quiet about is the view of the CPI(Maoist) and CPP, who don't agree. Their view (and mine) moreso aligns with that of the Maoist Internationalist Movement — today most notably represented by MIM(Prisons) — that Maoism can be said to exist after the 9th Congress of the Communist Party of China. The 9th Congress identified Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as a third and higher stage of revolutionary science:
>Chairman Mao has integrated the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of revolution, has inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism in the political, military, economic, cultural, philosophical and other spheres, and has brought Marxism-Leninism to a higher and completely new stage. Mao Tsetung Thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory.>the draft Party Constitution has clearly reaffirmed that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is the theoretical basis guiding the Party's thinking. This is a great victory for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in smashing Liu Shao-chi's revisionist line on Party building, a great victory for Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.Past this point, distinctions between Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought are mostly semantic. The importance of adopting the former terminology over the latter, a struggle the Communist Party of Peru genuinely led internationally, was in drawing a line between those who upheld the view of the 9th Congress — that the advances of Mao's body of work and the practice of the GPCR opened up a third and higher stage of Marxism — and those who clung to the pre-Cultural Revolution view, or who followed Deng Xiaoping in the post-Mao ideological shift of the CPC, which is generally articulated as Marxism-Leninism
and Mao Zedong Thought.
<Maoism Third-WorldismThis is probably the most misunderstood tendency that exists today, hands down. It's also probably the most overblown, with people oftentimes slinging it as a pejorative against pretty much any Maoists and acting like it exists as some major tendency. Maoism Third-Worldism actually falls under the category of "post-Maoism", but I doubt JMP bothered doing enough research to know this. It was coined by the now-defunct Leading Light Communist Organization, who broke with the Maoist Internationalist Movement and declared that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism had been fully captured by opportunists and an ideological rupture had become necessary for the movement to move forward. The two things the Anon gets right in the image is that the LLCO cites Lin Biao as a major theoretician and views the defense of his legacy as a dividing line question, and that Jason Unruhe is part of this tendency.
Where JMP, and most people, get wildly off-base is in tossing MIM into this tendency as well, when they have stated their disagreements with it on multiple occasions. MIM and now MIM(Prisons) adopted Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as their ideology before even the PCP, and they continue to uphold this as the present stage of revolutionary science. At no point have they called themselves "third worldists" outside of times where they were called that by someone else.
Additionally, the contradiction JMP identifies doesn't actually track. For one, MIM has never said nobody in the first world can "conceive" revolutionary theory, let alone apply Marxism to analyze the world around them. Of course they can. It's amazing that a university professor, one who isn't stupid and has produced interesting works, would turn around and stoop to such an infantile "gotcha" that could be disproven by MIM's own review of his book. Additionally, while MIM was principally in the first world, nothing they have put forward is actually anything new or originating in the first world. Of course they do draw from Lenin (JMP and the Anon need to reread their history books, Lin Biao died before Three Worlds theory was ever discussed in '74) and Mao, but this is also grounded within the analyses emerging from the African revolutionary struggle, Asia, and South America. Theoreticians like Samir Amin and Walter Rodney are indispensable to understanding where MIM is coming from.
<Post-MaoismI prefer the term "Postisms" used by Ajith, personally. Avakianism has, in general, had a devastating effect on the Maoist movement which it's only just beginning to recover from. However, the analysis of how it came to dominate in first world "Maoism" is kinda fascinating, cause it reifies a point I've made a few times on here: Trotskyism won in the first world. Avakianism is a direct product of the Trotskyist "Marxism-Leninism" that has been dominant in the US since 1958. Of course this existed in the CPUSA, but it also persisted within the Foster and SWP-influenced Parties which emerged alongside the first Maoist Parties in the 60s and 70s. For a time it was able to set up shop within the Maoist forces through the RU/RCP and Progressive Labor Party, continuing the tradition of entryism, trade unionism, and first worldist "internationalism". This of course culminated in the RIM, which then exploded as the PCP successfully clarified and struggled for genuine Maoism internationally and the RCP was increasingly exposed for its fed behavior.
With Maoism no longer useful to Avakian and the RCP, they dumped it and put Avakian himself forward as the new messiah of Communism, attempting to use the last bits of the RIM they controlled to get the good word out there. Avakian of course now looks like a youth pastor, go figure. I'm not a huge fan of using the word "cult" to describe political movements, but this tendency is certainly guilty of overemphasizing Avakian's unremarkable (at best) body of work. But again, is this really so surprising for what is essentially a Trotskyist group? Just look at WWP with Sam Marcy.