Joshua Moufawad-Paul is a Marxist academic and writer from

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. He is a professor of philosophy at

York University York University (), also known as YorkU or simply YU), is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, ...

. Moufawad-Paul espouses Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, seeing Shining Path's 1980s-1990s "

People's War People's war or protracted people's war is a Maoist military strategy. First developed by the Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976), the basic concept behind people's war is to maintain the support of the population ...

" against the Peruvian state as "heroic."

Bruce Gilley dispute

In 2020, Moufawad-Paul received media attention when he started a petition in response to publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an American independent academic publishing company founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns ...

's planned "Problems in Anti-Colonialism" series. The petition urged the publisher to withdraw Bruce Gilley's book ''The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns’ Epic Defense of the British Empire''. Gilley had earlier written a controversial essay entitled ''The Case for Colonialism''. The publisher ultimately scrapped the series. and Gilley's own book was published by Regnery Gateway instead.

''Continuity and Rupture''

''Continuity and Rupture: Philosophy in the Maoist Terrain'' is a 2016 book written by J. Moufawad-Paul. The book provides a philosophical analysis of the theoretical foundation of

Maoism Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic o ...

, the Marxist school of thought developed by Chinese revolutionary

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

. Moufawad-Paul argues that the political ideology of Maoism, despite being formulated in the 1960s, only achieved full theoretical maturity in 1988 in Peru.

Synopsis

The book is introduced as an attempt by Moufawad-Paul to reclaim

, as a contemporary political ideology and contest the negative conceptualizations by

Trotskyists Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as a ...

and

Anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...

s in the political left. For Moufawad-Paul, Maoism must be understood as being both a ''continuation'' of

Leninist Leninism (, ) is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the Dictatorship of the proletariat#Vladimir Lenin, dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary Vangu ...

political, philosophical and strategic positions, while simultaneously, acting as a ''rupture'' from the dogmatic orthodoxy and theoretical limits of standard Marxism–Leninism, thus Maoism is characterized as both continuity and rupture. Throughout the work, Moufawad-Paul offers a critique of contemporary and historical Maoist organizations, such as The Revolutionary Communist Party USA, The Shining Path, The Naxalite insurgency in India, and The New People's Army, as well as contemporary Marxist intellectuals, Slavoj Zizek,

Alain Badiou Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault ...

, and Tom Clark (author of ''State and Counter-Revolution'').

Reception

J. Moufawad-Paul's work received a positive reception among Marxist critics. Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and social activist Gabriel Kuhn both provide positive blurbs of the book in the cover section. Hamayon Rastgar in ''Marx and Philosophy'' gave a positive review of the book, writing, "Moufawad-Paul makes an appealing case for a return to the revolutionary kernel of communism through understanding the most contemporary stage of the development of the ideology and science of revolution, namely Maoism." Nicholas Marlatte wrote a positive review for '' Socialist Studies''. In ''The Platypus Review'', Marc Todoroff concluded that the book presented a persuasive defence of

protracted people's war People's war or protracted people's war is a Maoist military strategy. First developed by the Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976), the basic concept behind people's war is to maintain the support of the population a ...

and revolutionary violence: "War is present; war is being waged against us. It is important to understand that socialism or barbarism really means 'socialism or planetary destruction.' State monopoly on violence cannot be allowed to persist." The website ''Struggle Sessions'' (associated with the

Red Guards The Red Guards () were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolition in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a ...

) published a negative assessment of Moufawad-Paul's work in 2018.

Publications

* ''The Communist Necessity'' (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2014) * ''Continuity and Rupture'' (Winchester: Zero Books, 2016) * ''Austerity Apparatus'' (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2017) * ''Methods Devour Themselves'' (with Benjanun Sriduangkaew) (Winchester: Zero Books, 2018) * ''Demarcation and Demystification'' (Winchester: Zero Books, 2019) * ''Critique of Maoist Reason'' (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2020) * ''Politics In Command: A Taxonomy of Economism'' (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2022)

References

External links

* *https://web.pdx.edu/~gilleyb/LexingtonMob2020/ChangePetition_Against%20Bruce%20Gilley_at5Oct2020.pdf {{DEFAULTSORT:Moufawad-Paul, J. 21st-century Canadian essayists 21st-century Canadian philosophers Canadian male essayists Canadian Marxist writers Canadian Marxists Canadian political philosophers Living people Maoist theorists Marxist theorists Naxalite–Maoist insurgency Shining Path Writers from Toronto Year of birth missing (living people) York University alumni