I heard Maoism jokingly called "Anarcho-Stalinism" once. Given that Maoists uphold the Cultural Revolution, slogans like "Bombard the Headquarters" and "It's Right To Rebel" do kinda lend themselves to the bit
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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To be fair, Mao wouldn't be much a fan of many "Maoists" either. "Maoism" was invented after his death in a different country. Mao considered himself a Marxist-Leninist.
To be fair, in turn, this is how nearly every philosophy and ideology is. Lenin was not a Leninist, he was a Marxist. Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Jew.
It wasn't until people came along later and systematized these philosophies, extracting what lessons were universalizable from their namessake, were Leninism, or Maoism, or Christianity come into being.
Lenin himself was not the rupture from Marxism to ML, it was Socialists in the USSR grappling with his work, and the conditions the USSR found itself in, that gave birth to ML.
However in the case of Marxism, Leninism, Christianity, etc. the founders of that school of thought were that thinker's direct followers. They were part of the institutions and organizations that those thinkers belonged to, part of the same philosophical tradition. You can see the direct through-line of those who worked with Lenin to Leninists, Marxism-Leninism was created by those who knew him and were part of his project.
Whereas with Maoism it's not the direct followers of Mao or his institutions that gave rise to the Maoist tradition. Instead, his name and image was coopted by an unrelated party on the other side of the planet, one with basically no affiliation or right to claim it
Paul, the person who arguably made Christianity a gentile movement, never knew Jesus.
But I see your point
Well it's debatable if Jesus actually ever existed as a single real historical person. Christianity should more accurately be called Paulism.
Maoism a.k.a Gonzaloism with better marketing.
Mao was in many respects okay with anarchists, and as others note Mao wasn't exactly a Maoist.
I make some effort to speak in defense of the subset of anarchists who prioritize democracy over natural rights, but I'm inclined to think OOOP here is from the school of "MLs are red fascists unless they support us and of course we won't support them," and thereby a useless asshole as far as this subject goes.
Yeah, I've got coherent politics. Why do you ask?
Most self-described Maoists I've encountered here in the west have been a lot like loudly self-described anarchists, more concerned with picking apart AES and demanding perfection from other places all while failing to produce even a modicum of revolutionary energy in their own countries themselves.
In fact, I'd spread this out to any western leftist who is more concerned with being a part of the "One True Correct Leftism" and considers anyone on the left who isn't a part of that group to be a "traitor" just for existing and not blindly agreeing with them.
Maoists (in the global south anyway) are actually waging revolutions. Certainly more than anarchists.
And even the Anarchists have had more going on than trots who I don't think have ever waged a Revolution of their own.
So if I were ranking my respect for non-ML tendencies, it'd be something like that ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Average DSA maoist
Just like any true anarchist I support a head of state
So long as you can justify the hierarchy I suppose...
We'd all support anarchists who are getting invaded by the US and allies
But safe to say it's not going to happen anytime soon
I’ve heard the truism that MZT integrated a lot of ideas from anarchist praxis. I’ve even heard it referred to as synthesis. Not familiar enough with Mao’s entire works to say whether this is true but I’ve heard it here more than once.
At the very beginning of his radicalization, anarchism was an interest, but he quickly moved on to Marxism and Leninism and never references anarchists in his work afaik. To make a synthesis of anarchist theory he would be referencing it all the time
He references Chinese philosophical ideas and texts much more than anarchist ideas and concepts to give you an idea of how little anarchism factors into his work. And like every single Chinese philosopher in existence, his works make more sense after reading Confucian text.
I think the lack of such references is meaningful (though it's not a total lack, and he worked with or at least was happy to facilitate communalist types), but there's a difference between synthesizing things and being an eclectic who just picks things out and retains those elements in their original form. He really did have important elements of his approach that bore a substantial resemblance to anarchist ideas and approaches, maybe most conspicuously in the Cultural Revolution. I would also consider this anarchist-like lean, while it did have real benefits in some cases (like the approach to land reform!), to be a contributing factor to several of his greatest failures (the Hundred Flowers campaign, a few GLF policies, and worst of all some of the Red Guard ordeal). Of course, that's hardly the only source of his errors either, to be clear.
By the time he was doing or writing anything meaningful Mao had nothing to do with anarchism. Maoism (which was created because certain people copied Mao's ideas to their own national context even though Mao pretty explicitly said not to do that) just looks like anarchism because they are both the post-hoc philosophical justifications for the natural activity of the radical lumpenproletariat.
BRG typing this:
because physical wounds heal