It makes sense where there hasn’t been a revolution yet because it appears to work. But it’s not MLM that works, it’s the ML bit. Trying to apply the Maoist bit outside of twentieth century China will go about as well as trying to recreate 1917 in Russia.

The problem with MLMs is a misunderstanding of the trajectory. They think it goes M&E > ML > MLM. But it’s M&E > ML. The MLM stage is not it’s own path. Like Stalin, Mao wasn’t creating something new.

This is why MLMs tend to dislike China. They think Deng and Xi betrayed Mao. But they were faithful to Mao’s adaptation of ML. Because they realised that Mao’s approach was suitable for securing a revolution but not so much for socialist construction. It would be anti-Mao to treat him dogmatically.

Maoism is not a ‘form of communism’ but an ML framework adapted to seizing power, expelling imperialists, and consolidating a dictatorship of the proletariat. Regis Debray talks about a similar problem with assuming that Castro’s approach to Cuba can be rolled out across the Americas like a flat pack, ready-to-assemble revolution.

Not directly answering your question but I was watching a guy explaining MLM the other day and the very beginning he stressed how Scientific Socialism is scientific due to falsifiability. Then much later on he does the classic “Denying MLM to uphold ML is like denying Einstein to uphold Newton” and that tickled my brain.

So ML is scientific because it has successfully led to revolutions, but MLM is even more scientific because it has successfully done… what exactly? Temporarily occupied rural areas with guerrillas? Even if you buy their position that the ML states reverted to Capitalism, it’s not that much of an improvement.

Honestly I just think it’s obscurantism. Most MLM’s I’ve found would start the explanation with “some aspects of the Cultural Revolution are universal” but then flounder in explaining which specific ones those were. Probably because if they peg one down they’ll cause dogmatic splits in their groups. But then they get to claim that you just don’t understand, it’s all peak Marxism, and all other Marxists aren’t real Marxists. I’ve been doing a lot of reading on different authors this year and major difference between (most) ML authors and (most) MLM authors is that the former are actually pretty intuitive while the latter were very confusing and all-over-the-place.

There once was a simple-minded farmer tending to his coconut trees. He tied the little saplings to sticks, and day by day, he routinely came with the watering can and gave all of them the water they needed. Over the years, they grew tall and cast a long shadow across the lands, yet he still did not remove the sticks or stop watering them, nor did he collect the coconuts they would begin to bear, for he believed that by continuing to do so, the trees would grow taller still and bear even bigger fruit. One afternoon, when he rested beneath a tall and luscious palm, an overripe coconut fell on his head and killed him. By continuing to treat his palmtrees like little saplings when they clearly had stopped to be, not only did he lose his own life, but he died without tasting a single fruit of his labours.

This is a purely non-antagonistic contradiction, regardless of your opinions on the PCP. As for the RGS, they maintain a political line, which you have to follow if you want to get in, like any other party.

Maybe start by studying PCP, they have multiple volumes from the 1960s till now. But for that you have to study M&E, Lenin then Mao.

As for the answer, Maoist analysis is that there is always potential of an inner bourgeoisie forming within the party, because class struggle continues under socialism, and the bourgeoisie will do anything they can to gain power back. If that is universal, then so is Maoism. Continuous purges are necessary, and the proletariat needs to get rid of the existing remenants of capitalism not just in the economic base, but in the cultural superstructure as well. I don’t think it is any different from what Stalin did, and I hold that this is the praxis of Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony.

I don’t really think anyone should look at self-identified Maoists on twitter and call them dogmatic, endless debates will not result in anything, the internet is not the class struggle. I think you should talk more with RGS, I don’t hold them in any negative way, I’ve heard decent things from them. They are student groups afterall.

From what I’ve seen, there are some MLMs who uphold everything Mao has done, with them denying his mistakes. I tend to call those people “Huaists” after the dogmato-revisionist Hua Guofeng

What do you mean by the “best” form of communism? “Best” in what way? In terms of how it complies to a set of principles you hold, such as justice and equality?

The only standard we have as communists for what is “better” is in relation to how something increases the power of the proletariat. The theses of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism surround the strategy of the achievement and strengthening of the proletarian state. Maoists believe that Cultural Revolution is necessary in order to combat the new bourgeoisie within the socialist society, that an understanding of principal, fundamental, and antagonistic contradictions is necessary in order to understand the world, that an understanding of the comprador bourgeoisie and neo-colonialism is necessary to grasp the conditions of the oppressed nations under imperialism. These are claims which are derived from practice, testable, and scientific. Maoists believe that Maoism is the most advanced proletarian science, not that it is the “best form of communism”