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. The name Mao-spontex is a portmanteau of Maoist and spontaneist, while the reference to Spontex [fr], a French cleaning sponge brand, is a re-appropriation of name-calling which disparaged the movement's anti-authoritarian approach to revolution.
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, and came to represent an ideology promoting some aspects of Maoism, Marxism, and Leninism, but rejecting the total idea of Marxism–Leninism. 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. The main party vehicles for Mao-spontex were the French political party Gauche prolétarienne and the group Vive la révolution.
The tendency falls under the wider current of Western Maoism that existed after the emergence of the New Left.
See also
- Armed Nuclei for Popular Autonomy
- Autonomism
- La Cause du peuple
- Libertarian socialism
- May 1968 events in France
- Murder of Pierre Overney
References
- ^ "Investigation into the Maoists in France". Marxists.org. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
- ^ "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
- 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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