'''Maoism''', officially '''Mao Zedong Thought''', is aan varietyadvancement of [[Marxism–Leninism]] that [[Mao Zedong]] developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Republic of China]] and later the [[People's Republic of China]]. A difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a [[united front]] of progressive forces in class society would lead the [[vanguardism|revolutionary vanguard]] in pre-industrial societies<ref>Mao, Zedong. [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/ch06.htm "On Guerilla Warfare"]. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Retrieved 11 April 2023.</ref> rather than communist [[revolutionaries]] alone. This theory, in which revolutionary [[Praxis (process)|praxis]] is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary, represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as [[Marxism–Leninism–Maoism]] to distinguish it from the original ideas of Mao.<ref name="World History 2000. p. 769">Lenman, B.P.; Anderson, T., eds. (2000). ''Chambers Dictionary of World History''. p. 769.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Moufawad-Paul |first=J. |author-link=J. Moufawad-Paul |title=Continuity and Rupture: Philosophy in the Maoist Terrain |title-link=Continuity and Rupture: Philosophy in the Maoist Terrain |publisher=Zero Books |year=2016 |isbn=978-1785354762 |location=New York City}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Lovell |first=Julia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kx1-DwAAQBAJ |title=Maoism: A Global History |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |year=2019 |isbn=978-0-525-65605-0 |access-date=2020-05-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200805201555/https://books.google.com/books?id=kx1-DwAAQBAJ |archive-date=2020-08-05 |url-status=live}}</ref>
From the 1950s until the [[Chinese economic reform]]s of [[Deng Xiaoping]] in the late 1970s, Maoism was the political and military ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and Maoist revolutionary movements worldwide.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Meisner |first=Maurice |date=Jan–Mar 1971 |title=Leninism and Maoism: Some Populist Perspectives on Marxism-Leninism in China |journal=The China Quarterly |volume=45 |issue=45 |pages=2–36 |doi=10.1017/S0305741000010407 |jstor=651881 |s2cid=154407265}}</ref> After the [[Sino-Soviet split]] of the 1960s, the Chinese Communist Party and the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] each claimed to be the sole heir and successor to [[Joseph Stalin]] concerning the correct interpretation of Marxism–Leninism and the ideological leader of [[world communism]].<ref name="World History 2000. p. 769" />
