Adding onto this, MLMs see Mao's contributions as a crucial modification of Marx's and Lenin's theories. The biggest change is doing away with the idea that modes of production have to proceed linearly and that peasants need to be torn from their land and made into industrial workers to be able to abolish capitalism; the theory allows for jumping straight to socialism from feudalism.

In addition to M-L-MZT (mostly the Chinese model, Marx and Lenin with lots of footnotes by mostly Chinese Communists) and M-L-M (more standardized with Mao as a key elaborator on Lenin the way Lenin was for Marx), you also have Maoist-Third-Worldists, who believe that revolution only has a good chance of happening in the Third World/Global South/periphery due to the highest level of "contradictions" (better understood as Oppositions) there, and that the core, including the workers, is bought off with the fruits of imperialism, and is irredeemable until a global wave of revolution makes its way there from poorer countries.

Maoists have several core ideological or strategic principles like Mass Line, New Democracy, and Protracted People's War.

Since the end of the Cold War, Maoists have achieved a mixed victory in Nepal, and stood their ground in India and the Philippines, which is more Ws than any other tendency can claim in the same time period, except maybe for Socialism in the 21st Century.