Communist's mistakes - mao, stalin, etc

[MJM]

We should learn from the mistakes made by the communist leaders during the last century rather than just state simplistic things like, he was a thug or they killed so many people.

So what do you all think the actual errors of these men were, in particular Stalin and Mao being the more famous.

I'm not looking for arguments as to whether they were in fact commies or not, but perhaps just opinions on where they went wrong.

Firstly I think there were two extremes, on the one hand Stalin not being diligent enough in the elimination of classes and on the other hand Maos obssession with the class war.

[peaccenicked]

Trotsky on stalin and the failure of the Chinese revolution
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/wo...37-st2/sf11.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937-st2/sf11.htm)

[red head]

excellent question comrade. its odd that you put mao and stalin on opposite sides of the spectrum seeing as how the former was greatly influenced by the latter. i think stalins faults lie in his paranoia, but one must keep in mind that he didn't have a guide to go by when constructing a communist country. mao was often too nationalistic and relied too heavily on the soviets. even though he was very quick to see that khruschev was no friend of the people, he didn't work hard enough to seperate china from the union. hence, the eventual collapse of the great leap.

[peaccenicked]

an interesting pamphlet
http://www.plp.org/pamphlets/whycommunism.html

[honest intellectual]

I agree with red head; Stalin's paranoia was his major fault. His alienation of other communist parties (Mao's included) greatly weakened world communism. "Nowhere is the power of the dark lord more visible than in the division of those who oppose him"

MJM has said that Stalin wasn't diligent enough in his elimination of classes. I think the problem wasn't that he wasn't diligent enugh, just that his efforts were misdirected.

PS I'm new, hi

(Edited by honest intellectual at 7:24 pm on Feb. 9, 2002)

[honest intellectual]

As for Mao, he seems to have also been extremly paranoid. He banned all sorts of "bourgeois decandence" such as competitive sports, ownership of pets and luuxury items like silk. He put industry before the people, making people give up every scrap of steel or iron they owned for export and confiscating all wooden furniture to make charcoal for the steel mills. Communism isn't meant to be about making people poor.

[munkey soup]

I know this is off topic, but the maoists and the soviets in bolivia both betrayed che. I'm sorry, but I had to say it.
hello Honest Intellectual, I'm new too

[TheDerminator]

The problem with apportioning blame to individual historical leaders is that unless you believe in God, there was no blueprint for the development of humankind, and this fact would give even an Adolf Hitler greater mitigation than an all-knowing God, who was indifferent to human suffering. In philosophical terms it is called subjective development and only an egoist could think they have not been affected by it. In simple terms if you possessed a time machine, you should not just save your long lost love ones, you should just maybe redeem little baby Hitler, little baby Stalin and little baby Mao, if you wouldn't, it maybe says something about your own brutality, and maybe there is no maybe. derminated.
It is a bit sad that the questioner thinks that Stalin and Mao never eliminated enough of the enemy, it shows he is one of the enemy, in that his ethos is quite fascistic. These guys developed into real bastards and it does not matter which one is the most infamous (although I would say that is Stalin), they represent everything unethical endemic in primitive socialist, which had no real conception of how to incalculate high ethical standards into its own leadership. It is not tarring them all with the same brush. Some were a lot more ethical than others, but we shouldn't really have to rely upon the personality of the individual, and herein is the poverty. derminated.

(Edited by TheDerminator at 8:38 pm on Feb. 10, 2002)

[MJM]

By elimination I did not mean extermination.

And your whole rave is exactly what I was not after. ie. a comparison of who did the most bad rather a look at the mistakes made. No one asked to apportion blame to anyone.
More Stalin and Mao bashing I'm afraid.

If the elimination of classes is not your goal, I suggest you are in fact the enemy.

[MJM]

The strenth of the party taken away and replaced by both Stalins and Maos own directions was this a major mistake? I suspect thats what was meant by Stalins and Maos paranoia.
The elimination of buerocracy and party strenth by Stalin and the construction of the Red Guard by Mao.

What I meant regarding the two extremes was probably simplistic and innaccurate. What I meant was the way Mao continuosly emphasised this where as Stalin seemed to see it as of lesser importance than other issues