I myself do not really view “What is to be Done?” as a great beginner work for Marxists, since it mentions a lot of obscure philosophers or groups that a modern audience (with their cursory knowledge of Russian history being from the lips of liberals, or worse, conservatives) would hardly know the context of, and I am reading a version that has notes on these people!
That is not to say that it is not an influential or essential work of Lenin (I think it might be up there with “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” and “The State and Revolution” in terms of either factor), but one has to be willing to trudge through Russian names that you will likely never hear again.
I think Mao gets a bad rap for stuff that happened during his later years.
I’ve seen a lot of people who kinda just melancholically say he would’ve been remembered better had he not led China through the 50s and 60s. I guess I get it, but is that what we care about? Legacy? Everyone should just hang up their hats when they make a bad decision?
Additionally, i think in any case, it’s hard to blame Mao and Mao Zedong Thought for the problems that occurred specifically during the era. Establishing a new proletarian state us hard, establishing one of the first ones ever is even harder, establishing one in China was a miracle. The economy grew at similar rates before before reform and opening up as it did after, and without that initial foundation of independence there could never have been an independent reform and opening up. I also think the red book is one of the most important texts for beginners and should be one of the first reccomended.
Additionally, like I’ve said in other threads, I’m not one for discussions on morality. I think i got empathy overload [edit: more like empathy burnout] at some point and have just accepted bad things are going to happen no matter what when things get violent. If you just boil it down to “is hurting x necessary to establish socialism? Yes? Then it’s moral. If not then it’s immoral” then life becomes much simpler. I’d kill the entire Romanov family 20 times over personally if that was the decision that needed to be made to save the USSR. I would lie, cheat, and consort with the worst to establish socialism, and that’s the attitude that’s needed to do so. I will argue at length about what is necessary–materially–to establish socialism [I don’t think the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki were necessary, so they were immoral] but individual sob stories are pointless and I’m glad I’m becoming numb to them. Maybe your grandpa wasn’t a counter revolutionary, but the wider purge was necessary to save the people from the blackest era of reaction. So it was moral. Life is very much a play of averages and odds. Unfortunately it will be that way until the last capitalist is dissolved. Edit: However this also applies the other way. I don’t really care about justice if its unnecessary. It’s not about what people deserve, it’s about living, about science, and about the natural coarse of human events
Lastly, the Jacobins are more than just Bourgeois revolutionaries. I wouldn’t go as far as to describe them as proto-socialist or anything, but there was a difference between them, the Girondins, thermadorians, etc. The jacobins were the Bourgeoisie who aligned themselves with the journeyman proto-proletariat and the peasantry. This is opposed to people like Cromwell in Britain who aligned themselves with the lower landowners against the peasants. It’s why we appreciate Sun Yat-sen more than Chiang Kai-Shek, or Thomas Paine than George Washington, etc.