Adi Shankara

Hey mate, kinda currious, what were the "pointless and unnecessary pictures and comments" that needed to be purged from the 'Marxist criticisms of anarchism" thread?

My Favorite is Nausea.

I haven't heard to much by them, but for the most part I do.

I like your signature:

"In Communism, the government in the form of the people own business;
in Capitalism, business in the form of government own the people."

This is so true.

//Mao actually was the dictator though; he controlled things top down, and nothing was done without the stroke of his pen...and everything waited on his command. he was an absolute dictator of China, whereas Thomas Sankara was just the chairman of the Burkinabe Revolutionary Council//

That's not true. If Mao was in complete control, why did he feel the need to launch the Cultural Revolution to overthrow the capitalist roaders who were seizing control of the party?

Mao was a leader with a lot of prestige. People listened to him, both in the party leadership and at the grassroots level. But he did not have absolute power - you need to do more study of China using sources that aren't coming from a bourgeois perspective. I used to think the same way as you.

If I was using your method of analysis I would point out that Sankara was a military officer elevated to power in a military coup de'tat.

Mao Zedong died in the late 70's, and within months (or at the very most a few years) of his death, almost all of his gains had been reversed by a bourgeois elite and military under Deng Xiaoping.

Of course, your analysis is slightly flawed in that neither Thomas Sankara nor Mao Zedong were *personally* responsible for any of these 'gains' - a mass movement of workers and peasants was in both cases behind the revolutionary transformations and the benefits that came as a result.