It's because many Maoist formations completely abandon legal avenues of building workers' power like participating in bourgeois elections and organizing labor unions within the confines of what's legally permissible. It's easy for them to fall into a trap where nothing they do is legal, meaning some charismatic cult leader can swoop in and say, "What we're doing here is completely illegal and the feds will kill you for it, so you need to completely cut ties with your family and friends because you never know if one of them will rat you out to the pigs," socially isolating and trapping people within a cult.
You can't have much of a mass line in imperial core countries without a legal aboveground org because most imperial core workers still have faith in their institutions. Hell, even most Global South workers have residual faith in institutions to the point where you can't just skip participation in bourgeois politics. It only worked during the Chinese Revolution because the ROC existed in name only when it was actually ruled by various warlords. You're obviously not going to vote out a warlord who isn't even recognized by the ROC. At that point, it isn't even the ballot vs the bullet since there's no voting booth to vote out the warlord. People who hate the warlord are far more willing to take up arms against the warlord or any other faction because that's literally all they have.
But when Western Maoists try to apply what Mao did in Warlord Era China to Western countries where people have faith in their governments, they just come off as ultraviolent extremists even if the theory is mostly solid. This pushes people away and it goes back to what I said earlier about them falling into the trap of everything they do being illegal.
These are good points. Additionally, from our general understanding and historical application of theory, most communist revolutions are successful in moments of severe crisis. Regardless of your approach, it appears that the state must be toppling on its own before you, with proper organization, can kick it down.
What that means in the long run in the imperial core here is unclear, as the domestic economy is mostly run through a smoke show, which means it could theoretically weather an infinite amount of crisises until some outside force or state decides to make us put our mouth where our money is. However, at this point we are likely decades, if not over a century away from that actually occuring.
That being said, domestic political instability is increasing and at some point something will probably break. My bet is on the people breaking first, not the system, but when the people break, it sucks all life and invention out of the system, which can then no longer response effectively to crises. Basically, if you alienate your future Henry Kissinger, because it is easier and more profitable to be a Ben Shapiro or Tucker Carlson, eventually you can't do the proper geopolitical maneuvers required.
Sometimes I think there is a good reason that the Romans saw actors as lower than prostitutes.
Probably cult of personality, which I believe Maoists and Marxists of all stripes have acknowledged as something to be avoided but can nonetheless result in condition of revolution and siege / capitalist encirclement.
Also maybe just bad theory, Gonzalo was a self styled thought leader that synthesized his own theory, so there could have been fundamental errors in his theory, or it could have just been his own personal failings reflected by the actions of the shining path due to cult of personality. I don’t know enough to say.
The Khmer Rouge leadership at some point admitted they had no understanding of Maoist theory and were only adopting it as aesthetic and for support from China.
dialect differences between Maoist Standard English and Maoist Traditional English
(don't ask what the difference is, it will just start another struggle session)
