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The term Mao-spontex or Maoist spontaneism refers to a syncretic Maoist and libertarian Marxist political tendency in France that arose after the 1968 Mass Protests and lasted until around 1972.[1][2] The name Mao-spontex is a portmanteau of Maoist and spontaneist,[3] while the reference to Spontex, a French cleaning sponge brand, is a re-appropriation of name-calling which disparaged the movement's anti-authoritarian approach to revolution.[4]
Mao-spontex was inspired by both the spontaneous action of the Movement of March 22 in France and subsequent protest movement and the Cultural Revolution in China,[1] and came to represent an ideology promoting some aspects of Maoism, Marxism, and Leninism, but rejecting the total idea of Marxism–Leninism.[5] Lenin's work What Is To Be Done? was especially targeted for criticism since they rejected Lenin's critique of spontaneity.[6] The idea of democratic centralism was supported as a way to organize a party, but only if it stays in constant contact with a mass worker's movement to remain revolutionary.[1] The main party vehicles for Mao-spontex were the French political party Gauche prolétarienne and the group Vive la révolution.[2]
The tendency falls under the wider current of Western Maoism[7][8][9] that existed after the emergence of the New Left.
- ^ a b c "Investigation into the Maoists in France". Marxists.org. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
- ^ a b "Cahiers du cinéma's Maoist Turn and the Front Culturel Révolutionnaire". Zapruder World. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ^ Fields, Belden (1984). "French Maoism". Social Text (9/10): 148–177. doi:10.2307/466540. ISSN 0164-2472. JSTOR 466540.
- ^ Bourg, Julian (2017-11-28). From Revolution to Ethics, Second Edition. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 86. doi:10.1515/9780773552463. ISBN 978-0-7735-5246-3.
It did not take long for the GP-ists to become known as 'Mao-spontex', or Maoist-spontaneists. The name was originally an insult—Spontex was the brand name of a cleaning sponge—intended to belittle the group's embrace of anti-authoritarianism as an element of revolutionary contestation. The marxisant tradition had long criticized spontaneism as an anarchistic error.
- ^ "La Ligue Communiste S'en Prend Aux 'Mao Spontex'". Le Monde (in French). 1969-05-21. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
- ^ "Why has the ISO collapsed? | Workers' Liberty". www.workersliberty.org. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
- ^ Slobodian, Quinn (2018), "The meanings of Western Maoism in the global 1960s", The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties, Routledge, pp. 67–78, doi:10.4324/9781315150918-7, ISBN 978-1-315-15091-8, retrieved 2023-12-07
- ^ "'Imperialism runs deep': Interview with Robert Biel on British Maoism and its afterlives". Ebb. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
- ^ Graber, Lauren; Spaulding, Daniel (2019-11-18), Galimberti, Jacopo; de Haro García, Noemi; Scott, Victoria H. F. (eds.), "The Red Flag: The art and politics of West German Maoism", Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Manchester University Press, doi:10.7765/9781526117472.00011, ISBN 978-1-5261-1747-2, S2CID 209562552, retrieved 2023-12-24