Editing Maoism (section)

== Criticism and implementation ==
[[File:ForbiddenCity MaoZedongPortrait (pixinn.net).jpg|thumb|Despite falling out of favor within the Chinese Communist Party by 1978, Mao is still revered, with Deng's famous "70% right, 30% wrong" line]]
Maoism has fallen out of favor within the Chinese Communist Party, beginning with [[Deng Xiaoping]]'s reforms in 1978. Deng believed that Maoism showed the dangers of "ultra-leftism", manifested in the harm perpetrated by the various mass movements that characterized the Maoist era. In Chinese communism, the term "left" can be considered a euphemism for Maoist policies. However, Deng stated that the revolutionary side of Maoism should be considered separate from the governance side, leading to his famous epithet that Mao was "70% right, 30% wrong".<ref>{{Cite web |author-first1=Helwig|author-last1=Schmidt-Glintzer|date=10 August 2017 |title=70 per cent good, 30 per cent bad |url=http://www.ips-journal.eu/in-focus/the-politics-of-memory/article/show/70-per-cent-good-30-per-cent-bad-2216/ |url-status=live |website=International Politics and Society|publisher=Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200814080617/https://www.ips-journal.eu/in-focus/the-politics-of-memory/article/show/70-per-cent-good-30-per-cent-bad-2216/ |archive-date=2020-08-14 |access-date=2017-11-04}}</ref> Chinese scholars generally agree that Deng's interpretation of Maoism preserves the legitimacy of Communist rule in China but simultaneously criticizes Mao's brand of economic and political governance.

Critic Graham Young says that Maoists see Joseph Stalin as the last true socialist leader of the Soviet Union but allows the Maoist assessments of Stalin to vary between the extremely positive and the more ambivalent.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Young |first=Graham |year=1982 |title=On Socialist Development and the 'Two Roads' |journal=The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs |publisher=University of Chicago Press |volume=8 |issue=8 |pages=75–84 |doi=10.2307/2158927 |issn=0156-7365 |jstor=2158927 |s2cid=147645749}}</ref> Some political philosophers, such as Martin Cohen, have seen in Maoism an attempt to combine Confucianism and [[socialism]]—what one such called "a third way between communism and capitalism".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cohen |first=Martin |title=Political philosophy : from Plato to Mao |date=2001 |publisher=Pluto |isbn=0-585-43378-X |publication-place=London}}.</ref>

[[Enver Hoxha]] critiqued Maoism from a Marxist–Leninist perspective, arguing that New Democracy halts class struggle<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |title=Enver Hoxha: Imperialism and the Revolution (1979) |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201215063423/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm |archive-date=15 December 2020 |access-date=19 September 2019 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref> and allows unrestricted capitalist exploitation,<ref name=":4" /> that the theory of the three worlds is "counter-revolutionary",<ref>{{Cite web |title=Enver Hoxha: Imperialism and the Revolution (1979) |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch4.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210127064521/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch4.htm |archive-date=27 January 2021 |access-date=19 September 2019 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref> and questioned Mao's guerilla warfare methods.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Enver Hoxha: Imperialism and the Revolution (1979) |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch3.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201101015124/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch3.htm |archive-date=1 November 2020 |access-date=19 September 2019 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref>

Some say Mao departed from Leninism not only in his near-total lack of interest in the urban working class but also in his concept of the nature and role of the party. On the other hand, for Mao, this question would always be virtually impossible to answer.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=44}}

[[Jung Chang]] and [[Jon Halliday]] contend that implementation of Maoist thought in China was responsible for as many as 70 million deaths during peacetime,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Chang |first1=Jung |title=Mao: The Unknown Story |title-link=Mao: The Unknown Story |last2=Halliday |first2=Jon |date=2005 |publisher=Jonathan Cape |isbn=978-0-224-07126-0 |pages=3 |language=en}}</ref> with the [[Cultural Revolution]], the [[Anti-Rightist Campaign]] of 1957–1958,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Teiwes |first=Frederick C |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315502816 |title=China's Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Great Leap Forward, 1955-59: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Great Leap Forward, 1955-59 |date=2016-07-01 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-315-50281-6 |edition=1 |language=en |doi=10.4324/9781315502816}}</ref> and the [[Great Leap Forward]]. Some historians have argued that because of Mao's [[land reform]]s during the Great Leap Forward which resulted in [[famine]]s, thirty million perished between 1958 and 1961. By the end of 1961, the birth rate was nearly cut in half because of malnutrition.<ref>{{Cite book |last=MacFarquhar |first=Roderick |author-link=Roderick MacFarquhar |url=https://archive.org/details/originsofcultura0000macf |title=The Origins of the Cultural Revolution |date=1974 |publisher=Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, The East Asian Institute of Columbia University and the Research Institute on Communist Affairs of Columbia University |isbn=978-0-231-11082-2 |pages=4 |language=en}}</ref> Critiquing discourses on deaths under Maoism, academics Christian Sorace, Ivan Franeschini, and Nicholas Loubere observe that these discourses attribute responsibility for deaths in manner not typical of discourses on other ideologies, such as liberalism.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Sorace |first1=Christian |title=Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi |last2=Franeschini |first2=Ivan |last3=Loubere |first3=Nicholas |date=2019 |publisher=[[Australian National University Press]] |isbn=978-1-760-46249-9 |location=Acton, Australia |pages=4–5 |chapter=Introduction |jstor=j.ctvk3gng9.3 |jstor-access=free}}</ref>

Active campaigns, including party purges and "reeducation", resulted in imprisonment or the execution of those deemed contrary to the implementation of Maoist ideals.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Link |first=Perry |author-link=Perry Link |date=18 July 2007 |title=Legacy Of a Maoist Injustice |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR2007071701486.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190106043143/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR2007071701486.html |archive-date=6 January 2019 |access-date=1 April 2018 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]}}</ref> The incidents of destruction of cultural heritage, religion, and art remain controversial. Some Western scholars saw Maoism as specifically engaged in a battle to dominate and subdue nature and was a catastrophe for the environment.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shapiro |first=Judith |title=Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China |date=2001-03-05 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-78680-5 |language=en}}</ref>

=== Populism ===
Mao also believed strongly in the concept of a unified people. These notions prompted him to investigate the peasant uprisings in Hunan while the rest of China's communists were in the cities and focused on the orthodox Marxist proletariat.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=43}} Many of the pillars of Maoism, such as the distrust of intellectuals and the abhorrence of occupational speciality, are typical populist ideas.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=44}} The concept of "people's war", central to Maoist thought, is directly populist in its origins. Mao believed that intellectuals and party cadres would first become students of the masses and teachers of the masses later. This concept was vital to the aforementioned "people's war" strategy.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=44}}

=== Nationalism ===
Mao's nationalist impulses also played a crucially important role in adapting Marxism to the Chinese model and in the formation of Maoism.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=42}} Mao believed that China was to play a crucial preliminary role in the socialist revolution internationally. This belief, or the fervor with which Mao held it, separated Mao from the other Chinese communists and led Mao onto the path of what [[Leon Trotsky]] called "Messianic Revolutionary Nationalism", which was central to his philosophy.<ref name="Meisner, Maurice 1999. Page 44" />{{Rp|page=43}} German post–World War II far-right activist [[Michael Kühnen]], a former Maoist, once praised Maoism as a Chinese form of [[Nazism]].<ref name="Lee2013">{{Cite book |last=Martin A. Lee |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sZ_cAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA195 |title=The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists |date=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-28124-3 |pages=195– |access-date=2021-03-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418081323/https://books.google.com/books?id=sZ_cAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA195 |archive-date=2021-04-18 |url-status=live}}</ref>