Like, Maoism/Mao Zedong thought or Dengism/Deng Xiaoping thought. This distinction seems to matter but I don’t understand why.
Mao and Deng didn’t create their own ideologies, But they did contribute their ideas to the overarching ideology of Marxism-Leninism. So calling their works “ism” isn’t accurate (because if you support their ideas, you’re still just supporting Marxism-Leninism), therefore, “thought”.
And no, to any libs reading this, it doesn’t have anything to do with 1984 esque “everyone have to think the exact same thoughts” either. “X Thought” is just a set of ideas contributed by that person or thing which many people collectively think are good and merit implementation, not literally “thinking exactly like Mao would”. AKA, best practice guidelines, not mind control.
I think another part of it is that ideologies inspired by a person or thing can branch off into different, often conflicting schools of thought, even going against what the original person or thing stood for. And if one name is already taken for one school of thought, you need to come up with something similar but still uniquely identifiable. Think “Free/Libre Software” vs. “Freeware”.
Ah, ok only distinct ideologies get promoted to -ism status, that makes sense.
But where do we draw the line between ideas and ideology? Because to my knowledge, Lenin also saw himself as developing Marxism and never referred to his own contributions as “Leninism”. So why isn’t it called “Marxism with Vladimir Lenin Thought”?
But where do we draw the line between ideas and ideology?
There’s basically no hard rule, because language is ultimately subjective.
