Named after the Chinese revolutionary and leader Mao Tse-Tung (or Mao Zedong, 1893–1976), Maoism is the transposition of the theory and practice of Marxism to apply to the conditions not of the urban proletariat, but of the Chinese peasantry. In some quarters in the West, especially during the late 1960s, it became optimistically regarded as the ultimate egalitarian and communitarian political ideal.