Mao-spontex was inspired by both the spontaneous action of the Movement of March 22 in France and subsequent protest movement and the Cultural Revolution in China,[1] and came to represent an ideology promoting some aspects of Maoism, Marxism, and Leninism, but rejecting the total idea of Marxism–Leninism.[5] Lenin's work What Is To Be Done? was especially targeted for criticism since they rejected Lenin's critique of spontaneity.[6] The idea of democratic centralism was supported as a way to organize a party, but only if it stays in constant contact with a mass worker's movement to remain revolutionary.[1] The main party vehicles for Mao-spontex were the French political party Gauche prolétarienne and the group Vive la révolution.[2]
The tendency falls under the wider current of Western Maoism[7][8][9] that existed after the emergence of the New Left.
^Bourg, Julian (2017-11-28). From Revolution to Ethics, Second Edition. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 86. doi:10.1515/9780773552463. ISBN978-0-7735-5246-3. It did not take long for the GP-ists to become known as 'Mao-spontex', or Maoist-spontaneists. The name was originally an insult—Spontex was the brand name of a cleaning sponge—intended to belittle the group's embrace of anti-authoritarianism as an element of revolutionary contestation. The marxisant tradition had long criticized spontaneism as an anarchistic error.
