• Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Mao was a mixed bag. Life expectancy was doubled under Mao, and land was near totally equally redistributed among the peasantry from the previous landlords, but the Cultural Revolution was a mess and he was rightly removed from power. Still, concepts like the Mass Line are immensely useful, as are his writings.

    The Kim family is fairly mixed, though we must consider that the DPRK was bombed into oblivion by the US and took decades to recover, and are doing much better now. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but better than the majority of Capitalist countries in the Global South.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        The USSR drastically reduced wealth inequality:

        Additionally, they went from pre-industrial feudalism to space in half a century, had free healthcare and university-level education, doubled life-expectancy, had more vacation days than the US, and earlier retirement ages than the US. Read Blackshirts and Reds.

        Pol Pot was a US-backed fascist that denounced Marxism and was stopped by Communist Vietnam, so no, Pol Pot was a monster and the US’ support for genocide was once again stopped by Communists.