Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished through radical means that change the nature of the society they are implemented in. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, supporters of left-wing politics "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. The philosophical difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that a united front of progressive forces in class society would lead the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than communist revolutionaries alone. This theory, in which revolutionary 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.
White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white racial and national identity. Many of its proponents identify with the concept of a white ethnostate.
Whiteness studies is the study of the structures that produce white privilege, the examination of what whiteness is when analyzed as a race, a culture, and a source of systemic racism, and the exploration of other social phenomena generated by the societal compositions, perceptions and group behaviors of white people. It is an interdisciplinary arena of inquiry that has developed beginning in the United States from white trash studies and critical race studies, particularly since the late 20th century. It is focused on what proponents describe as the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of "whiteness" as an ideology tied to social status.
The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground Marxist-Leninist, black-nationalist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed of former Black Panthers (BPP) and Republic of New Afrika (RNA) members who served above ground before going underground, the organization's program was one of war against the United States government, and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out a series of bombings, killings of police officers and drug dealers, robberies, and prison breaks.
David Gilbert is an American radical leftist who participated in the deadly 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored vehicle. Gilbert was a founder of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and became a member of the Weather Underground. Gilbert, who served as the getaway driver in the robbery, was convicted under New York's felony murder law in the killing by co-defendants of two Nyack, New York police officers and a Brink's security guard.
Labor aristocracy or labour aristocracy has at least four meanings: (1) as a term with Marxist theoretical underpinnings; (2) as a specific type of trade unionism; (3) as a shorthand description by revolutionary industrial unions for the bureaucracy of craft-based business unionism; and (4) in the 19th and early 20th centuries was also a phrase used to define better-off members of the working class.
A settler is a person who has migrated, who takes up residence on land and cultivates it, as opposed to a nomad.
Wage labour, usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power under a formal or informal employment contract. These transactions usually occur in a labour market where wages or salaries are market-determined.
Black anarchism is a term applied to a group of people of African descent who identify with the principles of anarchism. These people include, but are not limited to, Ashanti Alston, Kuwasi Balagoon, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Greg Jackson, and Martin Sostre. Critics of the term suggest that it broadly eclipses important political differences between these multi-varied thinkers and incorrectly presents them as having a shared theory or movement. Black anarchism has had a major influence on the anarchist movement, black anarchists have a 100-year history in black-led anti-fascist and anti-racist history.
Anarchism and nationalism both emerged in Europe following the French Revolution of 1789 and have a long and durable relationship going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the pan-Slavic movement prior to his conversion to anarchism. There has been a long history of anarchist involvement with nationalism all over the world as well as with internationalism.
David R. Roediger is the Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Kansas, where he has been since the fall of 2014. Previously, he was an American Kendrick C. Babcock Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research interests include the construction of racial identity, class structures, labor studies, and the history of American radicalism. He writes from a Marxist theoretical framework.
The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) was a clandestine revolutionary communist organization based primarily in the United States. MIM claimed to adhere to a radical ideology called "MIM Thought". MIM listed a sole PO box in Ann Arbor, Michigan as its mailing address. Contrary to most Maoist groups in the West, which came from a firmly anti-revisionist pedigree out of the traditional Communist Parties, the MIM was a product of elements of the American New Left student movement who formed the New Communist movement.
In Marxist theory, the Lumpenproletariat is the underclass devoid of class consciousness. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited by reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces, particularly in the context of the revolutions of 1848. They dismissed the revolutionary potential of the Lumpenproletariat and contrasted it with the proletariat. Among other groups, criminals, vagabonds, and prostitutes are usually included in this category.
Proletarian nation was a term used by 20th century Italian nationalist intellectuals such as Enrico Corradini to refer to Italy and other nations that they regarded as having the characteristics, through analogy with the proletariat, of being productive, morally vigorous, and inclined to bold action. Corradini admired revolutionary proletarian movements such as syndicalism for their tactics, although he opposed their goals, and he wanted to inspire a radical nationalist movement that would use similar tactics in service of different goals: a movement that would advocate imperialist war in place of class revolution, while maintaining the same methods of "maximum cohesion, concentration of forces, iron discipline and utter ruthlessness." Corradini associated the concept of proletariat with the economic function of production, arguing that all producers are in a moral sense proletarian, and he believed that all producers should be at the forefront of a new imperialist proletarian nation.
Herrenvolk democracy is a form of government with elections in which only a specific ethnic group has voting rights and the right to run for office, while other groups are disenfranchised. Herrenvolk democracy is a subtype of ethnocracy, which refers to any form of government where one ethnic group dominates the state, with or without elections. The German term Herrenvolk, meaning "master race", was used in 19th century discourse that justified colonialism with the supposed racial superiority of Europeans.
Maoism–Third Worldism (MTW) is a broad tendency which is mainly concerned with the infusion and synthesis of Marxism—particularly of the Marxist–Leninist–Maoist persuasion—with concepts of non-Marxist Third Worldism, namely dependency theory and world-systems theory.
The proletariat is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power. A member of such a class is a proletarian or a proletaire. Marxist philosophy regards the proletariat under conditions of capitalism as an exploited class— forced to accept meager wages in return for operating the means of production, which belong to the class of business owners, the bourgeoisie.
Fascist syndicalism was an Italian trade syndicate movement that rose out of the pre-World War II provenance of the revolutionary syndicalist movement led mostly by Edmondo Rossoni, Sergio Panunzio, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Michele Bianchi, Alceste De Ambris, Paolo Orano, Massimo Rocca, and Guido Pighetti, under the influence of Georges Sorel, who was considered the "'metaphysician' of syndicalism". The fascist syndicalists differed from other forms of fascism in that they generally favored class struggle, worker-controlled factories and hostility to industrialists, which lead historians to portray them as "leftist fascist idealists" who "differed radically from right fascists." Generally considered one of the more radical fascist syndicalists in Italy, Rossoni was the "leading exponent of fascist syndicalism", and sought to infuse nationalism with "class struggle".
Joshua Moufawad-Paul is a Canadian academic and writer from Toronto, Canada. He is a professor of philosophy at York University. A Maoist philosopher, Moufawad-Paul has written several works on the topic and regularly posts on his blog M-L-M Mayhem which focuses on his conception of the philosophy of Maoism.
