Maoist Third Worldism promotes the idea that workers in the First World are also imperialists, or at least take advantage of the systems created by imperialism, and that there is no revolutionary potential in the First World.

There is also Third Worldism, which was a vague set of ideas and ideologies promoting that Third World countries (underdeveloped countries and newly independent countries) should not align themselves with either the United States or the Soviet Union. It is also mixed with ideas of Pan-Arabism, Pan-Latin Americanism, Pan-Africanism, and Pan-Asianism. In real life, most of these movements and governments ended up gaining the support of the Soviets, while accepting some money from the United States to develop their economies.

There was a resurgence of this in the late 1990s and 2000s in South America, with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and the eventual creation of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) in 2008. Although this ideology is often referred to as Socialism in the 21st Century or Progressivism (which in the Global South means a vague alliance of liberals, leftists, nationalists, and some conservatives against neoliberalism and the Global North), they don’t really accuse China of not being truly communist, but rather they often use China and Vietnam as good examples of socialist or leftist governments, while claiming that both the United States and the Soviet Union are bad examples to follow and that their ideologies don’t work in the Global South.