How to judge the top dogs or communist leaders of the past and how to persuade people towards Marxist-Leninist socialism [A quick guide]

Persuasion is vital for any movement.

There is a kind of deontological way to think about stuff that most liberals and conservatives are taught to - That: if a person violates a single human right or takes any innocent life even for the greater good, then that is horrible or wrong or murderous, etc. etc., and it doesn't matter all the good things a person (doing that deontic horrible action) did.

Furthermore, the presumption of "doing vs allowing" distinction, that is, "oh... I didn't really kill the child, I just let that child drown even though I could have saved the child. It is not my responsibility that someone has bad luck" - leads to liberal and conservative thought. As you would notice, for the liberals and conservatives, not murdering or harming someone is enough. But for communists like us, it is a grave, heinous thing that a billionaire can keep buying big yachts while children still die of hunger or starvation.

As Mark Twain would say - "There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror — that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves." - Mark Twain (1889), "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court"

This heuristic is generally valid for many people because, in most cases, it is helpful given the legal system that needs to be created and enforced for common folks who have nothing to do with public policy making. But making this general heuristic or rule of thumb an absolute rule and then applying this heuristic to every single figure or person regardless of power and responsibility would lead to the condemnation of absolutely every top dog ever (regardless of communism, liberalism, conservatism, etc.). And through this way of thinking (doing vs allowing distinction, and absolute deontology), they arrive at stuff like Stalin or Mao were irredeemable monsters!

But when you judge these figures in the consequentialist way, that is, the way that says - you get the total value of what someone did by summing the positives and the negatives, such that the positives add up and the negatives subtract from the total. So, for the consequentialist, you maximize good minus bad (that is, maximize the good and minimize the bad. If the total is positive, then the figure did overall good, and if the total is negative, then the figure is overall bad. And if it is 0, then the figure was "meh"). So, you get XYZ figure was overall good or overall bad or had almost exactly mixed or "meh" contribution. Mao already did this with Stalin when he said that Stalin was 70% good [Defeating the Nazis, reactionaries, fascists, rapidly industrializing the USSR, increasing total wellbeing and life-expectancy in the USSR using public health, education, etc., systematizing Lenin's work, etc.] and 30% bad [rude behavior or anger management issues, some Lysenkoist stuff, (probable) homophobia, dysfunctional family relationships, etc.][1].

When Lenin (it is controversial if Lenin authorized that though...) or basically any top Soviet figure allowed or even signed the killing of the Tsars, including their children, a deontologist would say - "This is so over! We are done! Revolution is over! Lenin should be in jail! Our top revolutionaries killed children!" But a consequentialist would say - "Let's actually consider the outcomes only and for what reason they did what they did, and what outcome would be there if Lenin or some of these top figures were punished or are punished now? Would it lead to the destruction of everything that revolutionaries have done and chaos again? If yes to the last question, then immediately, punishing any top figure such as Lenin is out of the question now because punishing these top figures would lead to enormous suffering and deaths, and a worse system for a long time! You don't burn down the house because of one small stain on the wall!"

To persuade liberals or conservatives to move further left, Losurdo basically brings the reader to what liberal democracies have done throughout history in both his books, "Stalin" and "Liberalism: A counter-history." This is an example of a Marxist-Leninist utilizing consequentialism to undermine liberalism and conservatism.

Consequentialist thinking is also clear in Deng's cat theory - "it doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, if it catches mice it's a good cat (不管黑猫白猫，能捉到老鼠就是好猫)".

[1] - The stuff in the square brackets is my interpretation of Stalin's good and bad stuff, and NOT Mao's, but I share Mao's percentage number that he got, which seems correct to me.

Even if you read the books from mainstream historians, you would see the liberal presuppositions somewhere and deontological thinking, even if all the facts are correct.

For me and many people (who aren't exactly cool with deontology), the strongest (or most persuasive) argument that liberals and conservatives have IS precisely the bajillion or gorillion deaths under communism instead of some deontological stuff. Once people get past that misleading death statistic, they are more easily persuaded. For example, when I was a liberal, the strongest argument was just that "communism led to a lot of suffering and deaths. They didn't deliver better results than capitalism."

Liberals and conservatives have used all sorts of ways to persuade, such as human rights deontology, and consequentialist bajillion deaths statistic, and property rights violation stuff, bad incentives due to the welfare state, etc., etc. So, ultimately, the procedure to persuade people towards Marxism-Leninist socialism is to -

First, convince them of consequentialism.

Second, convince them of the merits of Marxist-Leninism by using comparative historical-empirical arguments that highlight the flaws in the structure of liberal democracies and the hidden oppression and murders done by liberal democracies, or the skeletons in the closet of liberals (and conservatives). [Try using some mainstream sources and some ML sources to show good faith and remember - seek truth from facts]

Side note regarding the second step, so, with respect to anarchists, just point out that they pretty much have no empirical evidence for their view of socialism and communism as they reject AES states. Recent book called "If We Burn" by Vincent Bevins shows how decentralization is not some good consequentialist or even intrinsically good approach to protesting and fighting capitalists. You need an organized, centralized, and hierarchical command structure to lead the way in gaining more and more ground.

That is it. This is the procedure that worked on me and that convinced me of ML socialism.

Check out this excellent article (by comrade Glaznaruost u/Sugbaable) implicitly following this procedure here - https://strikewire.xyz/Wu4AE.html[it doesn't convince the reader of consequentialism explicitly, but the structure of the argument is very consequentialist and comparative rather than deontological and condemnatory towards Mao]