Uploaded are the notes I took from a session on contemporary Maoism, held by actual Maoists no less, back when I attended the Saturday sessions of Left Forum in New York City on a summer weekend in 2015. I already uploaded previous session notes and I thought I'd upload these as well. This is a redacted version out of respect for speakers' privacy.

1. Sessionbackground
Left Forum fourth session on Saturday, May 31, 2015, 5:10 PM to 6:50 PM (in actuality, the
session probably began at 5:20 PM and then ended 7 PM. One of the presenters said that the
panelists were waiting for additional fellow Maoists to enter the room from a previous session)
Session title: Contemporary Topics on Maoism
Web page on the session: http://www.leftforum.org/content/contemporary-topics-maoism
Key concepts (as written on the board and as mentioned during the session):
1) people’s war v. protracted people’s war.
2) proletarian feminism
3) mass line
4) the party
5) two-line struggle (this wasn’t written on the board but at least one of the panelists mentioned
it frequently enough that I decided to add this in)
My elaboration of a conceptual diagram that a panelist drew on the board: The revolution is a
process resting on three elements: the party (a strategic center that guides the revolution, the
military struggle, the mass struggle, and the struggle against counterrevolutionaries), the mass
line (a “class united front” which, in semi-developed countries for instance, consists of workers,
peasants, intellectuals, etc.) and the army (“We need a military organization” – one of the
panelists)
Five speakers: _______________________________________
The sessionitself
____________ (introductory speaker): The aim is to build a vanguard party in the US for
proletarian revolution. We want to unite with Maoist forces and other groups.
____________: The first people’s war was in Spain against Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces. It was
a guerrilla war.
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a break and continuity with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong
Thought. The two are not the same. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism developed in the 1970s.
Sendero Luminoso/Shining Path in Peru was the first Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party.
There are differences between Marxism-Leninism, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and Marxism-
Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
There are (or have been) debates among Maoists. E.g., is national democratic revolution possible
without a protracted people’s war (according to ______________, no)?
Build areas of revolutionary control (base areas, liberated areas).

2. Protracted struggle is the construction of dual power. This kind of struggle isn’t necessarily
military struggle.
Some people in M-L-M (apparently self-identified Marxist-Leninist-Maoists) argue that there
was a protracted people’s war between 1905 and 1917 in Russia.
[Protracted people’s war is a universal idea. It has a claim to universality. However, there are
objections to this claim of universality.]
Three objections to the claim of universality: 1) no revolution and no protracted people’s war
succeeded in the First World,
2) the method of people’s war could be universal but not the protracted people’s war, and
3) although the Bolshevik Revolution occurred, it was [historically and geographically specific].
Every struggle is a protracted people’s war.
We don’t have the forces for protracted people’s war in the core imperialist countries.
The New Communist Party doesn’t advocate adventurism or a sole focus on armed struggle. The
key goal is to organize the masses and then use arms to seize power.
_____________________________: There is a fairly new Maoist theory of proletarian
feminism. Indian Maoists such as Anuradha Ghandy developed it. It is centered on class
struggle. Relevant link: http://maosoleum.org/2015/03/08/what-is-proletarian-feminism/
If you’re not going to liberate the women, then who will you liberate?
Feudalism still exists due to imperialism. Patriarchy exists in feudal and capitalist forms.
Where patriarchy exists: 1) double standards in sexual relationships (exemplified with
prostitution, a form of commodification)
2) the family
3) violence such as sexual assault. Women seen as property, as objects. Examples to be found in
police brutality and also sexual assault by male cops.
4) the super-exploitation of wage workers. This kind of exploitation is related to the national
question (immigrant female workers, African American workers, etc.). Likewise, the gender
wage gap, although equal pay is still exploitation.
There is a need to offer something ideological to advance the struggle (not just fighting for safe
spaces, etc.).
Proletarian feminism is part of the mass line.
____________________:
Different conceptions of leadership. These conceptions are based on class positions.

3. The bourgeois conception: great men lead the masses. This conception is conducive to the
maintenance of capitalist relations. It is centered on the individual and upon the capitalist having
power over people.
The petty bourgeois conception: there is no need for leadership among the masses. This
conception is also centered on the individual. There is no accountability to the public.
The proletarian conception: for leadership among the masses. There is a mutual relationship
between the vanguard and the masses. This relationship is necessary for the revolution.
According to Mao Zedong/Mao Tse-tung/毛澤東 /毛泽东, all correct leadership is from the
masses to the masses. The leadership is oriented to the people.
If you’re not participating among and learning from the masses, you’re not actually synthesizing
“these ideas.” (presumably ideas on politics, government, law, society, economy, etc.)
Communicate with people as to their conceptions (e.g., the grains of truth in conspiracy theories.
If people think the Illuminati is exploiting them, then tell them that, in fact, the capitalists are the
ones exploiting them.).
What’s important about the mass line: practice. Talking isn’t enough. Unite with what’s correct
and criticize what’s incorrect. Create a new synthesis.
Go investigate these issues.
The mass line in and of itself isn’t adequate. A party is necessary as well.
There are misconceptions of the mass line. It’s not merely a matter of earning people’s trust. You
have to learn from, work with, and fight alongside the people. E.g., Dream Act activists oriented
themselves to the politicians but alienated the masses. Black Lives Matter is plagued by petty
bourgeois leadership – there’s no leadership but the masses want it.
Without proletarian revolutionary leadership, what’s the point of organizing in order to take
power? The mass line helps us to organize and have efficient activists.
_________________:
Is the Leninist party outdated? Yes, but not for the reasons that we generally come up with.
Conceptual diagram from the first page of these notes becomes relevant at this point of the
session: The revolution is a process resting on three elements: the party (a strategic center that
guides the revolution, the military struggle, the mass struggle, and the struggle against
counterrevolutionaries), the mass line (a “class united front” which, in semi-developed countries
for instance, consists of workers, peasants, intellectuals, etc.) and the army (“We need a military
organization” – one of the panelists).
There are thresholds: qualitative abstraction and quantitative analysis.
Voluntary discipline - we need many mass organizations for workers, women, etc.

4. Along with the mass organizations, we also need a strategic center, cadres, and professional
revolutionaries.
Mutual relationship between democratic centralism and the mass line.
The Leninist party also lays out the basis for socialist construction.
The first political threshold was set by the Paris Commune.
Learn from the past and other tendencies (later tendencies, since 1871, have not passed the first
threshold).
Charles Bettelheim writes on the contradictions of taking power.
There must be an essential balance between the mass line and the party. E.g. the need to reduce
the personality cult. The personality cult existed to some extent in the People’s Republic of
China.
Two-line struggle [is necessary] among the cadres.
There is no Maoist vanguard party yet. The goal of the NCP’s liaison committee is to unite all
Maoist forces and consolidate a political line. This will be a long struggle.
There are rebellions, but a party is necessary to provide leadership and take power.
Sessionfor questions and answers
First questioner, _________: [In a talk with a Trotskyist, the Trotskyist mentioned that New
Democracy leads back to capitalism. Can there be armed struggle in the First World? In urban
settings?]
______________ answers, it’s possible to have urban and armed people’s war. There are
examples from the 1960s urban US struggles as well as the Irish and Basque struggles.
Second questioner, ____________: Maoism led to more working-class defeats than victories
(e.g. Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka). (The moderator quickly shut her down, claiming that she
exhausted her time. She had gone into extensive detail and I could tell, from the number of
paragraphs on her legal pad, that she already prepared her intervention in advance. Just as the
moderator told her to stop, she identified her affiliation with the Spartacist League)
Third questioner, unnamed: How many actual Maoist parties are there?
According to one of the panelists, the Revolutionary Communist Party is no longer Maoist, but
the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (unclear as to which one) tried to be Maoist.
To build a party anywhere is a protracted process.
Fourth questioner, _________________” Started talking about New Democracy but was quickly
shut down. The session’s moderator pretty easily figured out that ___________ was attempting
an intervention on behalf of the Spartacist League. However, ____________ responded, rather
harshly, that Trotskyism has accomplished nothing in terms of reaching out to the masses and

5. therefore it has been, and remains, a political failure. (I think it’s pretty clear that the Spartacists
and the NCP/Maosoleum Maoists have clashed before, thus explaining the quick shutdowns as
well as _______________ demeanor)
My own questions: Have there been any attempts by people in the contemporary Maoist milieu
to extensively research and study 19th and 20th century Chinese history? Also, have there been
attempts to bridge the language gap, such as becoming proficient in Mandarin Chinese, in order
to communicate with the neo-Maoist Chinese New Left (I didn’t add that such proficiency would
be important for consulting primary historical sources, but I think this connection would be easy
to make)?
___________ answers me: The New Communist Party is only a year old. We’d like to develop
ties with Chinese-American Maoists but we haven’t been able to. We’d also like to develop links
with Maoists in China because we know the Chinese struggle matters. However, the struggle also
matters in the US. (Quick, cautionary note: I’m reconstructing his response based on memory as
I didn’t transcribe everything he said)
Furthermore, the 1949 revolution was a national liberation revolution, not a socialist one. The
Cultural Revolution was a mass mobilization of the people. There were thousands of strikes.
There was the Shanghai Commune. The current Chinese Communist Party is not capitalist. The
People’s Republic of China has not been socialist for decades. (These parts of his response came
from my notes. However, I may have made a mistake by writing that he said the current CCP is
not capitalist. He may have said that the CCP today is capitalist.)
[a few other questions follow along with answers, but I did not transcribe them]
After the Q&A phase and thus the entire session
_________ approaches me as I depart and we talk. Apparently, he thought I asked some
interesting, substantive questions. I ask him if he’s familiar with writers such as William Hinton
and Edgar Snow, both of whom published seminal works for the “overseas” Maoist movements
of the New Left years. He backed down, as if intimidated or surprised, and said, “I’m not a
theorist.” He says that he and his comrades of the New Communist Party are actually critical of
Mao, precisely, Mao in the 1970s during the PRC-US rapprochement. Furthermore, he said that
Sheng Wu Lien is a source of inspiration (apparently for the NCP and Maosoleum alike). He also
said that other Maoist groups view him and his comrades as “ultra-left.” I asked him about how,
during the Cultural Revolution, Mao and Lin Piao/Lin Biao/林彪 initially went after the “right
deviationists” and then went after the “ultra-left.” He merely told me that “We’re not Lin
Biaoists” or “We’re not fans of Lin Biao.” Presumably, he was referring to the later years when
Lin Biao fell out of favor with Mao (as Simon Leys writes about).
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to ask him about the reception of Simon Leys’s books (especially
The Chairman’s New Clothes) in the current neo-Maoist milieu. Nor did I press him about
William Hinton’s condemnation of the “ultra-left,” and thus echoing the Mao-Lin “line,” in
volumes such as Hundred Day War and Turning Point in China (both published by Monthly
Review in 1972).

6. While leaving Left Forum and reaching the subway, the Spartacists also approach me.
Apparently and ironically, like ___________, they found my questions to be substantive and
serious. At least the Maoists and the Trotskyists agreed on one thing from that session. We talked
for a while and became somewhat acquainted with ______________ who I identified in the
Q&A section.