Mao-Spontex

Mao-spontex, also known as Maoist spontaneism, was a Maoist tendency of the French New Left which upheld spontaneous action as a revolutionary strategy. Drawing from Mao Zedong's concept of the mass line, Mao-spontex developed a libertarian approach to Mao's political thought following the suppression of the May 68 protests. Mao-spontex activists rejected hierarchy, dogmatism and the political party form, which they associated with orthodox Marxism-Leninism. Mao-spontex was mainly represented by two political organisations: the Proletarian Left (GP) and Vive la Révolution (VLR). The movement effectively dissolved following the murder of Pierre Overney, a Mao-spontex activist of the GP, in 1972.

==Background== ===Theoretical foundation=== In What Is to Be Done?, Vladimir Lenin argued that, although the material conditions of the working class made them naturally more receptive to socialism, they would not spontaneously become socialists due to these conditions, and thus had to be politicised through their introduction to revolutionary theory. On the contrary, in Anarchism or Socialism?, Joseph Stalin argued that the development of class consciousness was necessarily determined by workers' material conditions, in a process described as "social spontaneism". Mao Zedong later developed on this social spontaneism, replacing Stalin's own economic determinism with a theory that placed the production of knowledge in the political sphere. Mao argued that, as revolutionary agents were liable to confuse their own advancement with that of the common good, any revolutionary vanguard would have to take its orders from and hold itself accountable to the masses. This theory of the mass line was particularly appealing to French revolutionaries, who had built on a decades-long history of anarcho-syndicalism, which advocated for workers' self-management. Maoism provided French radicals with a means to break from the bureaucracy of traditional socialist parties and the guilt associated with French colonialism. It also offered a new revolutionary tradition, drawing from the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, at a time when many socialists felt stifled by "real socialism".