Atlas / Comparisons / Maoism vs UK Conservative Party
Maoism and UK Conservative Party
Measured distance across six axes
Opposed programmes with little shared ground. They agree within three points on ID. They diverge by eight points or more on EC, AU, CH.
Axis by axis
| Axis | Mao Zedong Thought | Tories | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | −10 | +06 | 16 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | −02 | +05 | 7 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +10 | +02 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +09 | +03 | 6 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +04 | +03 | 1 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +10 | −05 | 15 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
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.
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.
Tories · EC +06
Coded +6 today. The same party in 1975 supported nationalised rail, coal, steel and utilities and would have been coded near −2.
- Documented act or statutePrivatisation of telecoms, gas, water, electricity and rail between 1984 and 1996.
- Programme textThe 1970 and February 1974 manifestos accepted the nationalised industries as settled.
Mao Zedong Thought · AU +10
At the ceiling, with the distinctive feature that the party's own institutions were destroyed from above and below.
- Documented act or statuteThe head of state was purged and died in detention in 1969 without trial.
Tories · AU +02
Coded +2: parliamentary in method, with several recent confrontations with legal constraint.
- Documented act or statuteThe 2019 prorogation of parliament was ruled unlawful by the supreme court.
- Documented act or statuteJudicial review was narrowed and legislation was introduced to disapply parts of human rights law in specific policy areas.
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.
Maoism
1949–1976 · China
Peasant-based revolution, continuous class struggle after the seizure of power, permanent mobilisation against the party's own institutions.
UK Conservative Party
1834– · Britain
Fiscal restraint, national sovereignty, property ownership, controlled migration, gradualism.
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.
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