The clearest difference between Maoism and other forms of Marxism is the question of the peasantry. Karl Marx clearly saw the peasants as an oppressed class, but saw them as incapable of transforming society due to material conditions. Maoism is based on the idea that revolutionary change can come from the peasant classes and that a revolutionary guerilla army will be the agent of change. Before we can really explore the dynamics of Maoism as a theoretical tendency, we must have an understanding of the political environment from which it sprang.

From the years 1925-1927 China was gripped in a revolutionary ferment. Mass strikes and boycotts rocked the foundations of China. The Chinese Communist party (CCP) was well integrated into the working class and active in the struggles of the day. The largest organization in China during this time was the Nationalist Coalition, named the Guomindang (GMD). Chaing Kai-Chek, the GMD leader, began to purge all Communists from leadership positions in the GMD. He would later apologize, saying it was due to a "misunderstanding.” The CCP was quick to forgive him. In 1927, GMD troops approached the city of Shanghai. Six hundred thousand workers, anticipating Chiang's arrival put down their arms at the request of the CCP and opened the city to the approaching Nationalist army. When Chiang entered the city he joined forces with local rulers who recognized his dictatorial power, and at once proceeded to execute thousands of trade unionists and suspected Communists. More than 50,000 were butchered, and baskets containing the heads of Communist leaders were hung on lampposts across the city as a warning to others.

Mao Ze Dong and the remnants of the CCP saw the abandonment of the cities and the relocation of Communists to the remote countryside as the only possible means of surviving the repression. After the GMD crackdown, Mao, along with a few thousand communists fled to China's central Jiangxi province. Not a single significant working class communist organization remained. From 1928 on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would consist of peasant fighters led by middle class intellectuals.

The move to the countryside was accompanied by a new CCP analysis, which viewed the peasant classes, and not the workers, as the central force for revolutionary upheaval. The Chinese communists attempted to apply Marxism to rural China and redefined urban class constructs to fit the countryside.

When Mao and his guerillas eventually took power they instituted many progressive reforms. Foot binding and forced prostitution were abolished along with many other antiquated forms of oppression. But these changes were handed down from above, and not fought for and won by the people themselves. This method of change imposed from above depends on the benevolence of the party leaders to act in the interest of the people. In the Maoist model, without the self-activity of the people the only foundation for a government is the guerilla army, which operates on a highly disciplined authoritarian model.

Karl Marx (Marxism)

Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Germany. He was and avid student of politics and philosophy as a young man. His early ideologies were based on the ideas of Friedrich Hegel. Marx eventually expanded on and transformed Hegel’s philosophy of the dialectic, the idea that two opposing forces come together to form a new entity. Marx was the first to take dialectics out the realm of pure philosophy and apply it to the material world, Marx believed that the formula was especially applicable to class relation. Because a natural antagonism exists between classes, the two sides are constantly exerting pressure on one another producing new and ever changing outcomes. Marx made the famous statement “Philosophers have attempted to interpret the world, the point is to change it.” Over the course of his life Marx along with Frederick Engels developed the theories of human liberation known as Socialism, and Communism. Marx believed that the newly formed industrialized working class had the potential to change society. The high concentration of workers into factories and cities gave them a strength that the peasants and serfs of feudalism didn’t have. Not only were the workers concentrated into cities, so was the wealth in the form of factories and other means of production. The workers effectively controlled the means of production but did not own them or reap the rewards of their production. The idea is that an organized working class could seize the means of production and form a new society based on human needs, not the drive for profits that propels capitalism. This idea is put simply in Marx’s statement that a socialist revolution must be the “self emancipation of the working class,” not an elite group of rebels taking power on behalf of the workers and peasants, a belief held by many who claim to be Marxists. The basis of a new society would have to be profoundly democratic with many more decisions made by the majority than under capitalist democracy. Another way to describe Marx’s communism is “worker’s democracy”, or “economic democracy.” Many people claim that Marx’s ideas “sound good on paper, but will never work”. This same argument was made by generations of European royalists, who claimed that democracy sounded good, but society needed the strength of a Royal family to maintain order.

Vladimir Lenin (Leninism, Bolshevism and the Russian revolution)

Vladimir Lenin was a Russian Marxist who attempted to put Marx’s ideas into practice. Lenin was a founding member of the Bolshevik party. The need for a revolutionary party that could organize the working class into an effective force for change was an aspect of Marx’s theory that had not yet been put into practice. Lenin and the Bolsheviks attempted to build such a party based on the principles of “democratic centralism,” which maintains the slogan, “democracy in debate, unity in action”. Lenin was a leading member of the Bolsheviks, but didn’t have control over the party and was outvoted on key questions. In the years leading up to the Russian revolution of 1917 independent workers councils sprang up in cities across Russia— they were known as “Soviets”. The Soviets first thought they could pressure the state to make reforms in the interest of the people. They became increasingly revolutionary over the course of 1917. Eventually they elected representatives from the Bolshevik party as their leadership, and in October they voted in favor of an insurrection against the government. The revolution that followed was quick and relatively non violent. The government troops refused to fire on the workers and often broke ranks to join the revolutionary forces. The revolutionary government immediately ended Russia’s participation WWI, legalized homosexuality, abortion, and divorce, also women were granted the right to vote. Both Lenin and Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky knew that Russia could not survive alone. They had said from the beginning that if the revolution didn’t spread to Western Europe that the Russian revolution would surely fail. What they did not know was that their failure would mean the rise of Stalin and his despotic brand of authoritarianism.

Leon Trotsky (Trotskyism)

Leon Trotsky was a Russian revolutionary and contemporary of Lenin. He was for a time a member of the Menshevik party (a revolutionary party that competed with the Bolsheviks for influence within the working class). Trotsky was an independent thinker who spent much of his career aloof from any party. He was often an opponent of Lenin and the two had many fierce debates. Trotsky eventually joined the Bolshevik party shortly before the 1917 revolution. He and Lenin settled many of their disagreements, and effectively synthesized their political theories. After Lenin’s death Trotsky fought hard to prevent Stalin from rising to power. But the devastation of the civil war created a situation so bleak that Stalin was able to usurp the democratic principles of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was exiled from Russia in 1929, and was later assassinated by a Stalinist agent while living in Mexico. Not long before his death Trotsky said “a river of blood runs between Bolshevism and Stalinism” and indeed by the mid 1930s Stalin had executed over 80 percent of the original members of the Bolshevik party, attempting to erase even the memory of the democratic ideals the party had once stood for. The Trotskyist brand of Socialism stands in the tradition of the Russian revolution, but firmly rejects the idea that the Soviet Union under Stalin was a socialist society. The Trotskyist writer Tony Cliff developed the idea that the Soviet Union was in fact a new form of Capitalism that he called “State Capitalism.” The army of bureaucrats that controlled the Soviet Union formed the new ruling class and benefited from the exploitation of the majority of Russian people. The state held a monopoly on all industries, but competed on the world market with other Capitalist forces. Troskyists maintain that Marxist philosophy is profoundly democratic and that any system lacking democracy can be neither socialist, nor communist.

Joseph Stalin (Stalinism)

By the time Joseph Stalin rose to power in the mid 1920s, the aspirations of the working class, which had been embodied in the Russian revolution had been crushed by a combination of disastrous circumstances. The workers state had been under siege by the white army (pro Czarist forces) and foreign fighters since shortly after the October revolution in 1917. People starved and production ground to a halt due to lack of raw materials. The economy and indeed the working class had been decimated by the civil war. The Bolshevik party now found themselves in an impossible situation. The Bolsheviks had been depending on the highly developed Socialist parties of Germany to lead a successful revolution and come to the aid of their Russian comrades. The German socialists became divided and by 1923 had been soundly defeated. This left the Bolsheviks completely isolated.

It was in this context that Stalin ascended to power. Once a faceless Bureaucrat, Stalin maneuvered for power within a party that had lost its sense direction. Stalin argued for a new nationalist form of Socialism (a contradiction in terms by the Marxist definition), and many of his opponents were assassinated or imprisoned along the way. Once in power Stalin attempted to rapidly industrialize Russia. This meant reinvesting as many resources as possible directly back into the state. This was accomplished by squeezing workers for longer hours and less pay. Instead of a self-governing worker’s society, Russia was now ruled by a new class of bureaucrats. Political dissidents where silenced through execution or imprisonment.

For those who saw the events of 1917 Russia as a step towards international revolution and human liberation, the realities of Stalinism were hard to reconcile. As time went on and the despotism of Stalin became impossible to ignore many socialists withdrew their support from the Soviet Union. Others continued to defend Stalin, saying that “hard times called for hard measures,” rationalizing Stalin’s brutality. Often they claimed that many of the worst atrocities were created by imperialist propaganda.

Members of communist parties across the globe found themselves used as pawns by the Soviet Union, and in response many rejected communism. It is in this way that Stalinism de-legitimized Marxism in a way that the left has yet to recover from.

This article attempts only to lay the most basic historical context for Marxism and its different interpretations. Further reading includes, What is the Real Marxist Tradition? by John Molyneux. This and many other titles are available at Haymarketbooks.