Analysis of the decentralisation of Maoism as applied to historic European political discourse

 The Storming of the Bastille- French Revolution painting by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand (1789).

Something that never ceases to amaze me is how a supposedly people centric and class conscious set of communitarian and socialist economic principles can somehow ironically be responsible for the development of some of the most inegalitarian societies that have existed globally. This can be reflected through observing the case of France at the time of the French Revolution during the mid to late 18th century (and even still, to some degree, in more recent times). This was, arguably, the point in time by which the greatest reconstruction and reformation of the social and political dimension of Europe took place, its ever present and significant imprint continuing to be felt throughout the centuries that followed.  

While Mao presented the need for the “true” people, as in the workers and peasants, to rebuild society, this was achieved through undemocratic and authoritarian means by the preservation of the influence of a Leninist society led by the Bolsheviks being formed to repress and exert influence on the Mensheviks in a feudal society, in which peasants aspired to emulate the bourgeoisie as the ultimate in emancipation and gaining social influence. This seems very much reminiscent of the resultant reduction in democracy and lack of individual and collective liberty amongst the masses in the French Revolution.

It would perhaps also prove to have somewhat acted as the foundation of many contemporary political constructs of the authoritarian hard left tradition, and to have acted as an important source of inspiration for the decentralisation of Maoist ideology that rose in popularity in the second half of the 20th century. These in turn have proven to mirror the French revolution in regard to the methods, thought processes and intentions of many 18th century revolutionaries. However, many of these ideologies have arguably perhaps moved to extreme nationalism, fascism, and other more radical extreme ideals reminiscent to those central to  authoritarian far right leadership. An example of this would be Franco Freda's brand of "Maoism" (which came at the time of the far-right Italian Social Movement in the 1940s, a time at which the Western world was polarised by the ever powerful Soviet union, and the comparatively more democratic American led states at war with each other), which appeared to have been backed by many staunch supporters of Mussolini, and inspired by the rhetoric of the likes of Hitler, Giovanni Gentile, and Nietzsche. With Freda’s advocacy for terrorism considering it to be effective in dismantling existing liberal bourgeois power structures and achieving revolution through the subjugation and manipulation of the Italian people so as to detach them from this society, striking similarities between  sentiments evident amongst far right and neofascist landscape of the time. He put this down to his support for accelerationist principles claiming that one must achieve revolution through the use of violence so as to “hasten the collapse of the government, create disorder, and trigger widespread societal unrest”. These would also prove to be important in directly targeting other opposing communist groups as well as the liberal bourgeoisie, as well as firmly standing against the US who supposedly were responsible for the unwanted social and cultural change observed for Europe that was acting as a source of fear for many ultranationalists and social conservatives, with him echoing many of the antisemitic and anti internationalist sentiments of the Nazis, with little to differentiate his ideals and those of the tradition of Strasserism. He was noted to refer to these changes as “ideological infections” contracted by Europe when it “whored in all the brothels” as an “old hussy” whose womb had “conceived and engendered the bourgeois revolution and the proletarian revolt: whose soul was possessed by the violence of merchants and the rebellion of slaves”. This could thus further undermine the truly socialist and class conscious dimension of his aims in achieving social and economic revolution. As a result, the point of blurring of lines between the authoritarian hard left and the extreme right as applied to Maoist dialect would prove to be hard to notice with many neo-Maoist ideals arguably being closer to the latter than they are to the former (as can be effectively depicted in the political compass I have created shown below).

This could be perhaps illustrated by the depiction of Maoist and hard-left and socially conservative nationalism through Mao-Dadaism, an art movement which rose in popularity in Italy a couple of decades after this era. An early and non-technological movement mirroring present day techno feudalism, this featured the use of art with nihilistic and anti-establishment undertones to reflect on Maoism as an important means of achieving cultural revolution. This would be achieved by “playfully undermining the linguistic and cultural norms of both capitalism and socialism”, so as to ridicule all forms of organised politics and call for revolution. The global sex and drugs culture of this era was implemented into this artistic movement as a means of reflecting on this society that needed reformation.

This links back to the ironically inegalitarian and anti-socialist nature of many revolutionary movements such as those in France during the period of the French Revolution, which ironically failed to achieve its leftist intentions, and so merely further exacerbated the issues posed by a capitalist society. These continued to become even more ever-prevalent within political systems in today’s modern world, with technocratic authoritarianism, by which technology and the media is used as a means of oppression and manipulation of the population globally aiming to help them to succumb to fascist ideals, as touched upon by Yanis Varoufakis and represented by the US of today after Elon Musk’s influence. This acts as a constant reminder of the importance of a true egalitarian and socially conscious society led by the people in combatting the damage caused by an economically liberal bourgeois society, the influence of which can only be further increased to through corruption of power of the other side under  hard left authoritarian rule.