Deviationism

Deviationism is the term committed Marxists use to describe heretical doctrines that waver from the "true," or "correct," Marxist-Leninist line of thought, reasoning, and action. It can be considered a capital crime among Marxists, sometimes with deadly consequences.

Trotskyism

Also known as "social fascism" and the "theory of the Permanent Revolution." Named for its founder, Leon Trotsky believed that Lenin's pre-1917 idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" needed to be re-worded to emphasize the importance of the proletariat's leadership in such an alliance, because the peasantry were dialectically less capable of leadership. In order to finish a socialist revolution, the revolution would have to be world-wide. This is in sharp contrast to Stalin's idea of "socialism in one country;" Trotsky felt that if a socialist nation-state was isolated, it would soon be destroyed by outside imperialist forces. Trotsky emphasized the importance of soviets (independent councils of workers) and the idea that a communist society will be a "workers' democracy."

Accordiing to Trotskyite doctrine, the Soviet Union became a "degenerated workers state" and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) as "bureaucratic centralist." Trotskites considered the Soviet degenerated workers state still as "revolutiorary workers' state" or "proletarian dictatorship." As such, the Soviet state was "historically progressive" in relation to "reactionary capitalism." Hence it was the duty of revolutionists in all nations, even if they were opponents of Stalin and his regime, to defend the Soviet Union against any "imperialist" state, including their own fatherland. Another revolution was necessary however to unseat the Stalinists, who would destroy the workers state until it became fully capitalist.

Browderism

Communist Party USA (CPUSA) had always received directives and funds from the Soviet Union via courier. Moscow's most effective control had been through Comintern representatives. General Secretary Earl Browder from 1930 to 1945 executed Moscow's insgtructions to steer the party from anti-Roosevelt militancy, to pro-Roosevelt Popular Front, to anti-Roosevelt isolationism during the Hitler-Stalin pact and the early days of Lend-Lease, and back to pro-Rooseveit war unity after the Soviet Union was attacked. During World War II there had to be greater reliance on conditioned reflexes, prodded by Pravda or War and the Working Class or Radio Moscow. Browder developed the doctrine of indefinite collaboration with capitalism and the Harry Bridges doctrine of postwar extension of the no-strike pledge.

The wartime coalition gave Browder the vision of an Americanized Communist Party working with other American parties to solve the urgent questions facing the Nation. To this end he began a policy of naturalizing the party, relaxing its discipline, and moderating its sectarianism. He transformed the wartime tactic of national unity into a postwar strategy and argued the possibility that progressive capitalism, to save itself, would embark on policies favorable to the workers at home and to the Soviet Union abroad.

In April 1945, however, Jacques Duclos of the French Communist Party, formerly high in the Comintern, published a repudiation of Browderism. Publication of the attack by the New York World-Telegram panicked the CPUSA into drastic action against Browder and he was unceremoniously expelled in February 1946.

Titoism

Titoism is a form of Leninism based on the regime of Marshal Tito post-World War II in Yugoslavia. While formerly heading a Comintern liberation movement, after the war Tito broke with Moscow and insisted Yugoslavia was to be non-aligned with neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. Tito called for "national unity" and "self-management" which enabled Yugoslavia to form relationships independent of the Superpowers with other governments during the Cold War.

Maoism

Maoism mixes orthodox Stalinism with Populism. Named after its originator Mao Zedong, the ideology relies on militant, insurrectionary and populist strategies in movement organizing (People’s Wars, Cultural Revolution, Peasant Uprising, etc). Once in power, however, Maoists tend to install a traditionally corrupt Stalinist regime — bureaucratic, totalitarian, militaristic, and dictatorial. Like Stalin, Mao’s China relied on Five-Year Plans, the best-known of which was the Great Leap Forward," later renamed the "Three Years of Disasters." Maoists also believe that the world socialist revolution will begin in the "Third World."

The Maoist strategy for world revolution is based on the global version of the strategy employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which led to Mao's victory in 1949. The analogy went like this: through "peoples war" the CCP forces who contolled the countryside of China encircled the cities of China, isolated the foe, and destroyed it piecemeal. The logic followed that the countryside of the world as a reaction to the super-exploitation suffered at the hands of the city of the world would become united and defeat the latter, and in the process establish a world socialist order.

This grand design would come about not through the struggles of working classes in revolutionary fervor inside the advanced capitalist countries as prescribed by Marx, but through the vehicle of national liberation struggles of teh colonial and former colonial peoples of the Third World.

This view of the CCP contrasted sharply with the view of Moscow whose ideology was in line with orthodoxy of historical materialism of Marxism's early prophets, that is socialist societies must be preceded by capitalist societies, which would provide the material basis for a socialist economy. This orthodox theory of Marxism frelied heavily on which relied heavily on a dialectical "force of history" that would inevitably bring about the "objective conditions" necessary for a proletarian revolution to succeed. Any ideological concepts running counter to this thesis, that is, a ny formulations which called for skipping stages of historic development were considered in the orthodox view as adventuristic and counter revolutionary.

Maoist deviationism inspired students and other young people who looked to the Chinese Red Guards as a model of activism. While some of these young activists were drawn to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), the full flowering of American Maoism would not come until the proliferation of new groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Weather Underground (WUO), Black Panthers (BPP) and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (CP-ML) after 1969.