Mao-spontex
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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] 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[6][7][8] that existed after the emergence of the New Left.
See also
[edit]- Armed Nuclei for Popular Autonomy
- Autonomism
- La Cause du peuple
- Libertarian socialism
- May 1968 events in France
- Murder of Pierre Overney
References
[edit]- ^ 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 1984, pp. 155–156.
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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
Bibliography
[edit]- Abidor, Mitchell (2018). May Made Me: An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France. AK Press. ISBN 9781849353106.
- Boyer, Cyrus; Brenez, Nicole (2024). "Jacques Kebadian, From One Revolution to Another". Aniki: Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento. 11 (1): 204–223. doi:10.14591/aniki.v11n1.1019.
- Cordoba, Cyril (2022). "What did Swiss Maoism stand for? The loyalty of the KPS(ML) to Beijing in question". Twentieth Century Communism. 22 (22): 47–70. doi:10.3898/175864322835917856.
- Debouzy, Marianne (1973). "The Influence of American Political Dissent on the French New Left". In Den Hollander, Arie Nicolaas Jan (ed.). Contagious Conflict: The Impact of American Dissent on European Life. Brill. pp. 50–68. doi:10.1163/9789004621831_005. ISBN 9789004621831.
- Dutton, Michael; Healy, Paul (1985). "Marxist Theory and Socialist Transition: The Construction of an Epistemological Relation". In Brugger, Bill (ed.). Chinese Marxism in Flux, 1978-84: Essays on Epistemology, Ideology, and Political Economy. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315495170-2. ISBN 9781315495170.
- Fields, Belden (1984). "French Maoism". Social Text (9/10): 148–177. doi:10.2307/466540. ISSN 0164-2472. JSTOR 466540.
- Idier, Antoine (2018). "A Genealogy of a Politics of Subjectivity: Guy Hocquenghem, Homosexuality, and the Radical Left in Post- 1968 France". In Häberlen, Joachim C.; Keck-Szajbel, Mark; Mahoney, Kate (eds.). The Politics of Authenticity: Countercultures and Radical Movements across the Iron Curtain, 1968-1989. Berghahn Books. pp. 89–109. doi:10.1515/9781789200003-006.
- Lee, Joseph Tse-Hei; Nedilsky, Lida V. (2012). "Appeal and Discontent: The Yin and Yang of China's Rise to Power". In Lee, Joseph Tse-Hei; Nedilsky, Lida V.; Cheung, Siu-Keung (eds.). China’s Rise to Power. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1–29. doi:10.1057/9781137276742_1.
- McGrogan, Manus (2010). "Vive La Révolution and the Example of Lotta Continua: The Circulation of Ideas and Practices Between the Left Militant Worlds of France and Italy Following May '68". Modern & Contemporary France. 18 (3): 309–328. doi:10.1080/09639489.2010.493931.
- McGrogan, Manus (2014). "Militants sans frontières? Fusions and frictions of US movements in Paris, 1970". Contemporary French Civilization. 39 (2). doi:10.3828/cfc.2014.12.
- Piotrowski, Grzegorz (2024). "Insurrectionary Anarchism in Poland: The Case of the People's Liberation Front". Anarchist Studies. 32 (2): 75–102. doi:10.3898/AS.32.2.04.
- Reid, Donald (2004). "Etablissement : Working in the Factory to Make Revolution in France". Radical History Review. 88: 83–111. ISSN 1534-1453.
- Wise, David (2014). "The Late 1960s and King Mob". King Mob: A Critcal Hidden History. Bread and Circuses Publishing. ISBN 9781625174031.
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