Marxism-Leninism Shared Required Industrial society for proletariat Vanguardism (Leninism) 'advanced' sections of the proletariat class organise as the revolutionary vanguard. Class struggle between lower and bourgeois/capitalists Foco (foquismo), Guerrilla warfare for revolution Called 'People's War'. Mao believed "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" "Dictator of the Proletariat" the intermediate stage in Marxism between capitalism and communism where the revolutionary party seizes production and is able to stabilise society and prevent counterrevolutionaries. To Maoism Believed it could work in agricultural/feudal society with peasants. "Mass Line", described as "From the masses, to the masses." Three phases: - Gathering diverse ideas of the masses. - Reframing ideas to a revolutionary Marxist frame of view (false consciousness) and scientific analysis of the situation. - Returning the now revolutionary ideas to the masses. This is to be constantly reapplied for 'Higher thought' Cultural revolution: The proletariat revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't eliminate bourgeois ideology. This is achieved by purging capitalist ideology Contradiction: "Without contradiction nothing would exist". Focuses on ideological correction to prevent antagonistic members in the revolutionary movement. (more to be added)
Contradiction[edit] Mao drew from the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin, in elaborating his theory. Philosophically, his most important reflections emerge on the concept of "contradiction" (maodun). In two major essays, On Contradiction and On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, he adopts the positivist-empiricist idea (shared by Engels) that contradiction is present in matter itself and thus also in the ideas of the brain. Matter always develops through a dialectical contradiction: "The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist". [43] Mao held that contradictions were the most important feature of society and since society is dominated by a wide range of contradictions, this calls for a wide range of varying strategies. Revolution is necessary to fully resolve antagonistic contradictions such as those between labour and capital. Contradictions arising within the revolutionary movement call for ideological correction to prevent them from becoming antagonistic. Furthermore, each contradiction (including class struggle, the contradiction holding between relations of production and the concrete development of forces of production) expresses itself in a series of other contradictions, some dominant, others not. "There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions".[44] The principal contradiction should be tackled with priority when trying to make the basic contradiction "solidify". Mao elaborates further on this theme in the essay On Practice, "on the relation between knowledge and practice, between knowing and doing". Here, Practice connects "contradiction" with "class struggle" in the following way, claiming that inside a mode of production there are three realms where practice functions: economic production, scientific experimentation