ABSTRACT
The relationship between communist revolution and the transformation of nonindustrial systems into modern societies has always posed problems for Marxists. Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin refused to recognize the value of the national struggle apart from its international context. China was not the only system in which national liberation served as a focal point for communist movements. The essence of Maoism as a form of national communism is its unrelenting commitment to revolution through a process of increasing mass mobilization by a leadership constantly in contact with its peasant base. The irony of the post-Mao era in China is that the apparent repudiation of Maoist revolutionary practice in favor of what is viewed as a more national model of economic modernization has put China back on the course of national development that Mao Zedong himself charted. Mao's rural-based revolutionary strategy, his penchant for mass mobilization, and his antibureaucratism were undoubtedly dramatic departures from the Lenin-Stalin model.
