IDEOLOGY OF THE MAOIST TENDENCY
By Livio Maitan
(This is the second and concluding part of the transcript of the report on the developments in China given by Livio Maitan to a recent plenum of the International Executive Committee of the Fourth international. For the first part, see World Outlook, August 25, 1967.]
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It is useful at this point to give some attention to the ideology of the Maoist tendency. Whatever its merits as an ideology, it exerts an influence on sectors of the Chinese masses and, most of all, on sectors of the militants and cadres. Moreover, it has an unquestionable attractive power for some vanguar elements (chiefly among the youth) which are close to the circles we work in ina number of countries.
It must be noted first of all that there is little that is new in the themes now being put forward by the Mao group, not only in relation to more recent propaganda but also in relation to the propaganda of earlier periods in the Chinese Communist party's history. It is no coincidence, moreover, that the Chinese press and