Without specifics, a sweeping statement like that carries basically zero weight in a debate. Which is not to say (as I already pointed out) that his ideas were in fact full of flaws, but you need to do better than just these empty one-offs.
They have, but not for that reason at all. These ideas worked (and continue to work) just fine for a very small number of people who agree to abide by them, such as the population of a kibbutz or an ashram. They fail for larger populations only because there's always someone who wants all the power for himself.
Exactly. Even ignoring his ludicrous ideas regarding the nature of history, social order, and morality, the simple fact of the matter is that Marx's theories almost completely ignore human nature, opting for a strictly deterministic approach instead. That has been shown time and again to be false.
Human beings simply are not an "egalitarian" species, nor are they inclined to think in strictly "egalitarian" terms. More dominant personalities are always present, and they have a strong tendency to take disproportionate amounts of power for themselves.
Besides which, Marx's ideas can't even really be said to "work" on a small scale either. Every commune I'm aware of has basically broken down and gone extinct after a generation or two.
The vast majority of people just are not interested in living by the rules Marxism sets forward.
Don't try to paper over the fact that both Republican China and Tsarist Russia killed plenty of their own people with whom they were unhappy.
The USSR and Red China killed more by an order of a magnitude. They imprisoned, tortured, exiled, and repressed massively larger portions of their populations as well.
There is really no comparison.
To judge the relative merits of governments exclusively by body count is just silly.
In the longer term, the ordinary peasants turned out to be somewhat better off under Stalin and Mao than they were under their predecessors.
Not in the least. The
only benefits brought about by either the USSR or Red China were indirect results of industrialization.
Again, that was accomplished largely
in spite of the ideology embraced by these regimes, rather than because of it. It was also not a development which necessarily required "revolution" in the first place.
Plenty of underdeveloped countries have made that transition peacefully. Tsarist Russia was actually well on it's way to industrialization before WW1 even broke out.
If anything, the damage caused by the Russian Revolution and subsequent Communist economic incompetence slowed the process down.