Truths about Maoism and why it was/is never viable in a democratic context
Readers, it has recently emerged that the couple arrested for enslaving women for many years in a small house in South London were key members of a Maoist cult called the 'Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought' which only existed for a few years in the 1970s. Police raided its premises in 1978, and the group went underground and effectively ceased to exist.
This Maoist cult does not tell British people (whatever Tariq Ali and the Guardian say) all about the far-left (which include more than just Maoists!); it just tells us what many seasoned socialists already know-Maoism would never in a democratic context expand beyond cult status. British Communist Party leader Robert Griffiths is right to denounce this Maoist cult as 'more of psychiatric interest than political interest, which had nothing to do with mainstream left-wing politics of the day'. The same could be said of most Maoist cults, in my honest opinion.
Maoism was only ever implemented by force from Mao Zedong himself (he was never elected, of course), and only in one nation-China. (The Nepalese Communist Party, despite apparently having some Maoist ideology, acted democratically and not in the way Mao Zedong did) The brutality of Mao's rule and the famines resulting from it became well known, and this was one of many factors that prevented it from becoming remotely viable elsewhere. Maoism was also never really socialist either, and after Mao died and Deng Xiaoping took over in China, Mao's ideas were twisted into a particularly brutal, authoritarian form of state capitalism which persists in China today. The derisory votes of purely Maoist parties across democratic societies are testimony to Maoism's unviability.
I am thus thankful that almost all socialists worldwide have wisely steered clear of Maoism, and have understood the real principles of socialism-equality,fairness,opportunity,and cooperation.
Alan.
This Maoist cult does not tell British people (whatever Tariq Ali and the Guardian say) all about the far-left (which include more than just Maoists!); it just tells us what many seasoned socialists already know-Maoism would never in a democratic context expand beyond cult status. British Communist Party leader Robert Griffiths is right to denounce this Maoist cult as 'more of psychiatric interest than political interest, which had nothing to do with mainstream left-wing politics of the day'. The same could be said of most Maoist cults, in my honest opinion.
Maoism was only ever implemented by force from Mao Zedong himself (he was never elected, of course), and only in one nation-China. (The Nepalese Communist Party, despite apparently having some Maoist ideology, acted democratically and not in the way Mao Zedong did) The brutality of Mao's rule and the famines resulting from it became well known, and this was one of many factors that prevented it from becoming remotely viable elsewhere. Maoism was also never really socialist either, and after Mao died and Deng Xiaoping took over in China, Mao's ideas were twisted into a particularly brutal, authoritarian form of state capitalism which persists in China today. The derisory votes of purely Maoist parties across democratic societies are testimony to Maoism's unviability.
I am thus thankful that almost all socialists worldwide have wisely steered clear of Maoism, and have understood the real principles of socialism-equality,fairness,opportunity,and cooperation.
Alan.
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