Editing Maoism (section)

=== Differences from Marxism ===
[[File:Pekín 1978 18.jpg|thumb|Beijing, 1978. The billboard reads, "Long Live Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought!"]]
Maoism and [[Marxism]] differ in how the proletariat is defined and in which political and economic conditions would start a [[communist revolution]].
# For Marx, the proletariat was the urban [[working class]], which was determined in the revolution by which the [[bourgeoisie]] overthrew [[feudalism]].<ref>Sandmo, Agnar. ''Economics Evolving: A History of Economic Thought'', Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.</ref> For Mao Zedong, the revolutionary class was the millions of peasants he referred to as ''the popular masses''. Mao based his revolution upon the peasantry. They possessed, according to him, two qualities: (i) they were poor and (ii) they were a political blank slate; in Mao's words, "[a] clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it."<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Gregor |first1=A. James |last2=Chang |first2=Maria Hsia |date=1978 |title=Maoism and Marxism in Comparative Perspective |journal=[[The Review of Politics]] |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=307–327 |doi=10.1017/S0034670500028527 |issn=0034-6705 |jstor=1407255}}</ref>
# For Marx, the [[proletarian revolution]] was internally fuelled by the capitalist mode of production; as capitalism developed, "a tension arises between the [[productive forces]] and the [[mode of production]]."<ref>Sandmo, Agnar (2011). ''Economics Evolving: A History of Economic Thought'', Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.</ref> The political tension between the productive forces (the workers) and the owners of the [[means of production]] (the capitalists) would be an inevitable incentive for the proletarian revolution, resulting in a [[communist society]]. Mao did not subscribe to Marx's theory of inevitable cyclicality in the economic system. His goal was to unify the Chinese nation and so realise progressive change for China in the form of communism; hence, a revolution was needed at once. In ''The Great Union of the Popular Masses'' (1919), Mao wrote that "[t]he decadence of the state, the sufferings of humanity, and the darkness of society have all reached an extreme."<ref>Mao, Zedong. [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_04.htm "The Great Union of the Popular Masses"]. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124035624/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_04.htm|date=2021-01-24}}. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Retrieved 25 April 2019.</ref>