Atlas / Organisations / Maoism
Maoism
Mao Zedong Thought · 1949–1976 · China · Communist · Held state power · coding confidence high
Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
Peasant-based revolution, continuous class struggle after the seizure of power, permanent mobilisation against the party's own institutions.
Economic model
Land redistribution then full collectivisation into communes; state ownership of all industry; the Great Leap Forward famine.
Organisation of powers
Single party, personality cult, mass campaigns used to destroy the party's own bureaucracy during the Cultural Revolution.
Reading note
Unusual among communist regimes in periodically attacking its own state machinery — mobilisational rather than merely bureaucratic.
Check a claim about Maoism. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe evidence for every score
All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored −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.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored −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.
AU · Organisation of power · scored +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.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +09
Highly centralised in command with mobilisational campaigns executed locally.
- Documented act or statuteProvincial and county cadres were bound to centrally set steel and grain targets during the Great Leap.
ID · Rule of membership · scored +04
Coded moderately positive: class background was hereditary in practice and determined life chances.
- ScholarshipClass labels assigned in the land reform were inherited and governed schooling, marriage and employment for decades.
CH · Method and tempo · scored +10
Coded at the ceiling because the regime repeatedly used mass mobilisation to attack its own institutions.
- Documented act or statuteThe Cultural Revolution from 1966 closed universities and destroyed party and state bodies from below on the leader's instruction.
Where it came from, and what came after
- takes its doctrine fromBolsheviks
Founded with Comintern assistance in 1921 and doctrinally independent from the 1930s.
- takes its doctrine fromThree Principles of the People
The Chinese Communist Party was founded inside the united front with the Nationalists.
- becameDeng-era CCP
The same party, reversing the economic programme and keeping the political monopoly.
- gave doctrine toKhmer Rouge
Its leadership was trained in Paris and in Beijing and applied an accelerated version of the commune model.
- gave doctrine toShining Path
Its founder styled the movement the fourth sword of Marxism after Marx, Lenin and Mao.
- gave doctrine toNaxalite Movement
Named for the 1967 Naxalbari uprising and organised on the Chinese model.
- gave doctrine toNepali Maoists
Fought a ten-year people's war on the Maoist model and then entered parliamentary politics.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
Countries
Arguments this entry is used in
Claims in circulation that turn on where this organisation sits. Each gives the strongest case for it, the strongest case against, and the measurement.
Cite this page
Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.