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> Maoism, the antithesis, is wildly revolutionary in word if not in deed. It is also highly emotional. A modern echo of classic Chinese opera, Maoism whines in shrill hyperbole. Rigidly doctrinaire, Chinese Communism retains the traditional belief that a clash with capitalism is inevitable; it calls for wars of national liberation throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. Mao, who immodestly considers himself a Communist innovator on a par with Marx and Lenin, sees the development of world revolution as a repetition of the strategy used by the Chinese Communists to achieve power in 1949. At that time, mass peasant armies surrounded the cities where the government held power, and finally seized them. Mao envisions the peasant masses of the underdeveloped world encircling and ultimately conquering the industrial nations. As the Cultural Revolution illustrated, Maoism within China glorifies perpetual revolution to enable the party to avoid the barnacles of bureaucracy that have encrusted Soviet Communism.
Mao did succeed in destroying the bureaucratic system, but it is an open question whether he can now create an alternative system through which he can govern China and promote its industrialization. At present, he must rely largely on the army to help him run the country. Outside China, Maoism commands the allegiance of only one ruling party, in Albania, and a handful of insignificant parties (including those in New Zealand, Burma, Thailand). But Maoist factions and splinter parties exist in many countries, and Mao has become a hero to the New Left.
> Castroism is essentially romantic, evoking the image of the lone defiant man, bristling with machismo, who dares to shake his fist at the citadel of capitalism. Castro competes with Mao in dedication to fomenting revolution. Like Mao, he generalizes from his own success when he and a small band of guerrillas from the Sierra Maestra were able to take power. But unlike Mao, Castro contends that not a mass party, but a handful of armed intellectuals is sufficient to spark revolution among the Latin American peasantry. Bragging that he would turn the Andes into the Sierra Maestra of South America, Castro hoped to export revolution to all of Latin America. Indeed, twelve governments have accused him of exporting subversion and supplying arms to guerrillas in their countries; nowhere did he score a real success. In 1967, his dream of victory was punctured by the Bolivian army bullets that killed Che Guevara, his longtime aide and strategist. In the wake of Che's death, Fidel slowed down his revolutionary activity, and his threat to Latin America began to wane. One reason was that local Communists regarded Castro as a competitor and did not help his guerrillas. Also, Russia was not sympathetic to Castro's calls for drastic action. Its strategy calls for a via pacifica in Latin America. The Soviets hope that local conditions, abetted by U.S. blunders, will play into their scheme of things. At present, their great hope is for making serious inroads in Peru, where the nationalistic military junta is pointedly turning to the Soviets to step up its feud with the U.S. over the American-owned International Petroleum Company. Though Castroism has caused fewer factions in Communism than the other currents, Fidel remains an important influence and a hero to many of the world's youth.