Maoism in the Developed World

Finally, in 1963 the Chinese party decided to take the controversy to the world Communist movement in general. They welcomed the support of the handful of parties that had aligned themselves with the Chinese in the dispute, and undertook to encourage splits in the parties whose allegiance still lay with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The present volume deals with that Chinese effort to split the world Communist movement, insofar as the parties in the developed countries—United States and Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand—are concerned. Although the most substantial parties to side with China were in the developing world—in the countries contiguous to China, in Latin America, and in some parts of Western Asia—Maoism was by no means confined to them. As we shall see, one of the first Maoist parties to be established was in the United States. For reasons of its own, the traditional New Zealand party joined the Maoist ranks from the beginning (the only former member party of the Comintern to do so), and there were schismatic Maoist parties established in virtually all of the West European countries. The Japanese party wavered in its allegiance for some time, and a three-way division finally occurred there.

Chinese support for schismatic Maoist Communist parties continued as long as Mao Tse-tung was alive. However, Mao was not only the leader of the Chinese Party, but also controlled the

Chinese government, and over time his evolving policies in the latter role had an unsettling effect on the Maoist parties outside of China. This was particularly the case with his development in the early 1970s of a rapprochement with the United States.

For a short while after Mao’s death, the Chinese party, under the leadership of Hua Kuo-feng, continued the policy of encouraging International Maoism. However, Hua’s showdown with the so-called Gang of Four (Mme. Mao and three colleagues), which brought about their imprisonment, caused further problems for the Maoist parties outside of China. Some of them split between groups still loyal to the Chinese party leadership and those who supported the Gang of Four.

A further complication was presented by the Albanian party. It had remained loyal to Mao so long as he lived, but was unwilling to support his successors. Before long, it even began, in retrospect, to be highly critical of Mao Tse-tung himself, thus promoting even more dissidence within the ranks of the Maoist parties.

The Albanians began their attacks on Mao by taking issue with the so-called Three Worlds Theory, contained in a document issued by the Chinese leadership soon after Mao’s death and attributed to him. According to it, the world was divided into three segments: the “first world,” consisting of the two “super-powers,” that is, the United States and the Soviet Union; the “second world,” consisting of the Western European nations and Japan; and the “third world,” made up of the developing countries, the leader of which was China.

From their repudiation of the Three Worlds Theory, the Albanian leadership extended their attacks on Mao to the whole body of his theory and practice. Some hitherto Maoist parties in other countries aligned themselves with the Albanians.

There thus came to be three identifiable tendencies among the parties making up International Maoism: those still loyal to the new ruling Chinese group, those supporting the Albanians, and those proclaiming themselves the “true Maoists,” who continued to preach the doctrine of the Mao of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” and declared their support for the Gang of Four.

However, with the ascent of Teng Hsiao-ping to power after 1978, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party lost virtually all interest in International Maoism. Teng and his colleagues turned their attention principally to the economic development of their country, took large strides towards establishing a market economy, and had little further interest in the International Communist Movement, Maoist or otherwise.

Although by the 1990s International Maoism had not ceased to exist, it had come to be confined to a small group of small organizations, principally in Asia and South America, the most notable of which was the so-called Sendero Luminoso Communist Party of Peru. Among the developed countries, many of the Maoist parties had disappeared and others were much weakened.