Maoism

Peak influence 1949–1976

Core claim

In agrarian societies the peasantry, not the industrial proletariat, is the revolutionary class — and class struggle continues after the revolution, inside the party itself, or the revolution is lost.

What it wants the state to do

Wants collectivised agriculture, protracted people's war as the route to power, and periodic mass campaigns to break the administrative class that any revolution accumulates. Deeply suspicious of technical experts, including its own.

Historical success case

The land reform and public health campaigns of the 1950s, which its defenders credit with a large rise in rural life expectancy from a very low base.

Historical failure mode

The Great Leap Forward, 1958–1962: a mass mobilisation built on falsified output reporting produced one of the deadliest famines in recorded history, then the Cultural Revolution dismantled the institutions that might have documented it.

Nearby traditions

Marxism–Leninism, from which it inherits the party form while rejecting its urban and expert bias; third-world national liberation movements that borrowed the strategy without the philosophy.

Common mix-up

The permanent-revolution rhetoric is not decentralisation. Continuous struggle against bureaucracy was directed from the centre and dismantled every institution capable of checking the centre.

Coordinates