MZT - What Mao actually wrote, said, did.
Maoism (western, current) - The most annoying people on the internet.
i lack reading on that part, all i know is that what people refer to maoism was wrote by abimael guzman aka presidente gonzalo, chairman of communist party of peru aka sendero luminoso (shining path).
there is a lot of memes going around about him and sendero, never understood fully tho.
there is a dude i like to watch named joao carvalho that claims to be maoist, he say that guzman wrapped up mao theory much like stalin with lenin, but he and the party brought themselves to ruin with virulent leftism, the same that is still present on people that read guzman. he says if you filter out the leftism, it is some good stuff also the so maoist hate him because he isnt a real maoist because he isn’t leftist
Anyone who props up guzman is an idiot, he killed more indigenous socialists than he did capitalists.
I don’t know all of the details, but i think generally Mao Zedong understood that he didn’t always make the right decision and learned from them, whereas Maoists think he wasn’t ever wrong.
Maybe its more complicated than that. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
MLMs reject various Maoist ideas like the three worlds theory. The principles they advocate for are in many ways indistinguishable from baseline Marxism-Leninism, they just take it a step further with dogmatism.
Dogmatism is a great way to describe it. Mao once said to support everything the enemy opposes and to oppose everything the enemy supports. I loved Mao’s quotations but that one sucks. If that quote isn’t an encapsulation of Dogmatism, I genuinely don’t know what else is.
i think the quote is taken out of context. i think he is more referring to a united front/revolutionary defeatism than for it to be taken 100% seriously. Mao wasn’t an idiot
EDIT: found the context(in Selected Works Vol. 2) - he was indeed talking about a united front against Japan.
To put it maybe a bit too simply, MZT is Marxism-Leninism adopted to mid-century Chinese conditions, whereas Maoism is a branch of ultra adventurism. From my understanding of the history, it kicked off around the time Deng became Premier and started to implement the policies that comprised Reform and Opening Up, as an ultra-left reaction against these policies.
Maoists think that Deng took the Capitalist Road. Students of MZT can see the thread connecting classical Marxism, Leninism, MZT, and modern SWCC and recognize that they all play their part in building communism in China.
MZDT: incorporated his contributions, applications and critiques to Marxism-Leninism. Usually much more open about ideas, using his framework to analyze contributions from comrads.
Maoism: the more left the better, and any sign of reactionary or capitalism cannot be tolerated. Ideological purity is the end-goal, whether it would benefit the people or not.
So, MZDT would suggest that Mao was right in agreeing to incorporate the stars in the Chinese flag representing the local bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie. Maoists would say that Mao is revisionist. Which is actually a conversation that happened. I didn’t think these people actually existed until I met one.
Personally I don’t like the term Maoist. They should be called the ultra-left. I’d like to call myself a Maoist because I’m a pretty big fan of his ideas but I can’t do that.
Yeah same here, Mao is great, ‘Maoists’ suck due to tribalism taken to a absurd degree.
Its why they call us ‘dengists’ lol.
