58. Global Maoism

Mao Zedong thought illuminates the whole world red with its boundless radiance With 19 separate national sections providing information on and primary documents from anti-revisionist movements, organisations and parties, the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line is the first web stop for any historical investigation of global maoism. EROL maintains this history that had faded into obscurity. In providing the source material from the movement it provide documents so that those studying them can draw their own conclusions on that period.

Other useful sites to explore include the MLM library provided by Redspark website that provides a developing collection of documents and author specific writings from the maoist perspective.

For many varied reasons (explored here) there was for self-identifying Maoists a distinct lack of an international experience similar to the structure and authority of the Comintern. Following the death of Mao Zedong however the identity of Maoism outside China splintered under ideological offensives launched from Albania and by organisations quickly critical of developments within China that principally grouped in RIM.

There were concerted efforts to unite global maoism into embryonic international associations like the (now defunct) Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and the broader International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations (ICOR) both in its pro-Hoxha and maoist variants http://www.icor.info/about-icor .

There is an online posting of a collection of materials by and about the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement [RIM], including their official documents, statements by the Committee of RIM [CoRIM], and issues and articles from their unofficial and now defunct magazine A World to Win.

These sites are purposeful, in the words of a committed blogger:

“it is important to examine the strengths and limitations of revolutionary organizations that were once significant so as to avoid repeating past errors.  Often we tend to repeat the past’s mistakes, even when we think we are forging a new path, and there is sometimes little to know historical memory over an experience that can and should teach us something about how to organize as communists now.”

Learning From Documents of Past Struggle (continued) May 31, 2013

Contemporary Maoist organisations across the globe engage in the slow process of rebuilding an internationalist constellation on a shared understanding. In the aftermath of the demise of RIM, there were interventions on the need for a regrouping of international co-thinkers. Here is a selection of documents on the debate  in the international communist movement at that period that provides the broad outline of the arguments of the varying self-declared competing Maoist trends.


The interest in Maoism outside of China and beyond the Global South has also attracted an academic interest and growing body of literature. Some of the more accessible commentary on various aspects of global maoism include:

 Alexander Cook, ed. (2014) Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History  Cambridge University Press

 Global Maoism and Cultural Revolution in the Global Context. Comparative Literature Studies Vol. 52, No. 1, Special Issue: (2015) Penn State University Press


Thesis

Cagdas Ungor    REACHING THE DISTANT COMRADE: Chinese communist propaganda abroad (1949-1976). Binghamton University (State University of New York) 2009

 Zachary A. Scarlett   CHINA AFTER THE SINO-SOVIET SPLIT: Maoist Politics, narratives and the imagination of the world. Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts) March, 2013

Matt Galway   BOUNDLESS REVOLUTION: Global Maoism and communist movements in South East Asia, 1949-1979. University of British Columbia (Vancouver) July 2017


Journal Articles

Matt Galway

Global Maoism and the Politics of Localization in Peru and Tanzania. Left History Vol 17, No 2 (2013)

https://lh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/lh/article/view/39276

Dr. Matthew Galway  A SHINING BEACON: Global Maoism and Communist movements in PERU and CAMBODIA, 1965-1992

http://www.asiaamericalatina.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AAL_4_GALWAY_UNA_ALMENARA_RESPLANDECIENTE.pdf

Julia Lovell  The Cultural Revolution and Its Legacies in International Perspective  . The China Quarterly, Volume 227 September 2016, pp. 632-652

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741016000722

Dr Julia Lovell     The Uses of Foreigners in Mao-Era China: ‘Techniques of Hospitality’ and International Image-Building in the People’s Republic, 1949-1976.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 25 (2015): 135-158. Downloaded from: http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/13758/

Dr Julia Lovell. Global Maoism  Podcasts / produced by Simon Brown, 29th March 2017

Dr Julia Lovell of Birkbeck, University of London, discusses the role and significance of Global Maoism in the development of the Cold War

Arif Dirlik (2014) Mao Zedong Thought and the Third World/Global South, Interventions, International Journal of Postcolonial Studies Vol 16 No. 2, 233-256. DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2013.798124

Quinn Slobodian (2018) The meanings of Western Maoism in the global 1960s The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties Chapter 5

Dr Evan Smith (2018) Peking Review and global anti-imperialist networks in the 1960s.

https://hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/peking-review-and-global-anti-imperialist-networks-in-the-1960s/

Kevin Pinkoski  Maoism in South America: Comparing Peru’s Sendero Luminoso with Mexico’s PRP and PPUA

https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constellations/index.php/constellations/article/viewFile/18861/14651

Matthew Rothwell   (2013)   Transpacific Revolutionaries: The Chinese Revolution in Latin America. Routledge

Matthew Rothwell   Secret Agent for International Maoism: José Venturelli, Chinese Informal Diplomacy and Latin American Maoism

http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1531961/1/Rothwell_RA.pdf

Matthew Rothwell  
The Chinese Revolution and Latin America: The Impact of Global Communist Networks on Latin American Social Movements and Guerrilla Groups  http://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/7.3/rothwell.htmlDr Alpa Shah • Judith Pettigrew     Windows into a revolution: ethnographies of Maoism in South Asia. Dialect Anthropol (2009) 33:225–251. DOI 10.1007/s10624-009-9142-5

Nielsen, Ryan D., “Maoism in South Asia: A Comparative Perspective On Ideology, Practice, and Prospects for the 21st Century” (2012). Honors Projects. Paper 12. http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/intstu_honproj/12

Ahmed, Ishtiaq. (2010) “The Rise and Fall of the Left and the Maoist Movements in Pakistan.” India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs 66.3: 251-265.

Hirslund, D. V. (2017). Urbanising Maoism: Reconceptualising the transformation of revolutionary movements. Paper at SASNET Seminar, University of Lund, Sweden.

Miguel Cardina (2016) Territorializing Maoism: Dictatorship, War, and Anticolonialism in the Portuguese “Long Sixties”. Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 11.2, Fall 1, 2016.   DOI: 10.1177/0022009415580143

Sebastian Gehrig (2011) (Re-)Configuring Mao: Trajectories of a Culturo-Political Trend in West Germany . Transcultural Studies, No 2 (2011) http://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/transcultural/article/view/9072/3106

Jason E. Smith (2013) From Établissement to Lip: On the Turns Taken by French Maoism   https://www.viewpointmag.com/2013/09/25/from-etablissement-to-lip-on-the-turns-taken-by-french-maoism/

Dhruv Jain (2017) Theorists and Thieves. Monthly Review https://monthlyreview.org/archives/2017/volume-69-issue-04-september/

 Alexei Volynets (2013) Towards the History of Maoist Dissidence in the Soviet Union https://afoniya.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/towards-the-history-of-maoist-dissidence-in-the-soviet-union-an-article-by-alexei-volynets-part-1/


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