Atlas / Comparisons / Italian Fascism vs Maoism
Italian Fascism and Maoism
Measured distance across six axes
Different families with real common ground. They agree within three points on AU, SC, ID, CH. They diverge by eight points or more on EC, CU.
Axis by axis
| Axis | PNF | Mao Zedong Thought | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | +01 | −10 | 11 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +08 | −02 | 10 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +09 | +10 | 1 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +09 | +09 | 0 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +07 | +04 | 3 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +07 | +10 | 3 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
PNF · EC +01
Near the centre: private ownership retained, unions abolished, and a very large state shareholding built during the depression.
- Documented act or statuteThe IRI, created in 1933, gave the state the largest industrial holding in Europe outside the Soviet Union while leaving firms nominally private.
- Programme textThe 1927 Labour Charter organised employers and workers into state syndicates and outlawed strikes.
Mao Zedong Thought · EC −10
Total state and collective ownership including the abolition of household farming.
- Documented act or statuteCommunes established from 1958 abolished private plots and household cooking.
- ScholarshipThe Great Leap Forward famine of 1959–61 is estimated at between fifteen and forty-five million deaths.
PNF · CU +08
The state claimed authority over the whole of social life, with the 1929 concordat restoring the church's role in it.
- Documented act or statuteThe Lateran Treaty of 1929 made Catholicism the state religion and returned religious instruction to schools.
- Documented act or statuteYouth, leisure and professional life were organised through party bodies such as the Opera Nazionale Balilla and Dopolavoro.
Mao Zedong Thought · CU −02
Coded near neutral: radical on the family and on women's labour, and violently hostile to inherited culture.
- Documented act or statuteThe 1950 Marriage Law abolished arranged marriage and concubinage and permitted divorce.
- Documented act or statuteThe Four Olds campaign of 1966 destroyed temples, texts and artefacts systematically.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Italian Fascism
1922–1943 · Italy
The nation as an organic whole realised in the state; violence as regenerative; liberalism and Marxism both to be destroyed.
Maoism
1949–1976 · China
Peasant-based revolution, continuous class struggle after the seizure of power, permanent mobilisation against the party's own institutions.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
Open in the atlas