I was practicing Spanish today on app called Ablo and a Venezuelan complained to me about how Maduros is worth millions of dollars while people starve all over his country.

This prompted me to search the net worths of famous socialist leaders in history and present

Chavez - 1B
Castro - 100-200M
Mao - 1B
Raul Castro - 100M
Gaddafi - 6B (Forbes 200B claim was BS; but gaddafi stated publicly 6B which might be an understatement)

They all grew up pretty modest to poor (besides Castro) and became incredibly wealthy in life as public figures of socialism/advocates of eventual communism

Shouldn’t these guys be much poorer just based on the principles of the system they run/ran?

Not only did they consolidate their own personal wealth but likely they ensured power structures and political allies (who were lesser known figures) were well paid too. Likely similar to America many public officials have a large sum of hidden wealth.

Can someone well read on socialism explain without thinking this post is meant to attack them

No mames y donde encontrase los numeros, esos sitios web siempre están equivocados y anticommunista

Gaddafi number came from himself but it’s pretty evident in the lifestyle of his family anr himself too

Castro’s figure best estimate came from a former personal staff of his who saw his spending habits and private use of different facilities. Big grain of salt here but accomodations/residence in villas/payment of lifestyle gives decent perspective.

Chavez figures comes from his families stake in PDVSA. This was a claim primary from insiders and US intelligence agents (bias fairly held for the latter). However it doesn't look good when you have confirmed receipts of his successor Maduros and his family spending 50k plus on trips abroad. Just a bad look there.

Those are thtee, others could look into more.

Seems legit

Okay disregard the figures if you want but the spending/lifestyles of some of these people is fairly documented and out there.

Because of the consolidation of power/necessary establishment of the pro. How do you assess the inherit risk of bad actors abusing their positions of public office in what's supposed to be a transitional government into offical Communism? They're placed in objectivity better positions in all aspects than the majority of the population. Why would this large group choose to dilute their wealth/influence/power?

what’s the source of the Mao net worth?

And you know pockets on whatever jeans, forever green

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Castro was forced to work in his fathers fields because he was an illegitimate child my guy.

Do cached page trick to get past paywall

google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/news/china/article/1233041/mao-zedongs-granddaughter-among-chinas-richest-people

His relatives and descendents spoke on the assets he owned and private lifestyle

Can you post sources on these people’s net worth? After all, we live in times where propaganda is everpresent and I’d rather be sure of the facts rather than hear trillion billion again

The theory of cultural revolution is supposed to solve that. That the communist party would produce two lines, one the red line, and the other the revisionist line. The Revisionist line is basically a new capitalist class forming within the communist party, and this line should be struggled against. The Cultural Revolution doesnt have to be like the bloody brutal one that happened during China, I'm pretty sure that theory was developed a bit too late within the political development of the Communist Party of China with the Capitalist Roaders gaining a lot of power and the way it turned out was rushed, and not really planned out. Well this is according to the Maoist tendency other tendencies might have different explanations or whatever.

whats the cached page trick?

Totally real numbers

Lenin owned 1 trillion dollars

Source: Forbes magazine

great question.

i mean they did considerably dilute wealth and vastly improved living conditions (for most examples here), i feel like it's kind of disingenuous to focus on whatever wealth the leader had, when they're actively trying to better the population of the people (as opposed to regimes focused on capital). ofc it's different if the people are starving and they're rich, but this is hardly the case. i feel like this argument can be made for any hierarchical society

and again, if we look at the new democracy of mao, we can see the merger of bourgeois, prole and peasant, and that has never been done before. it resides on the fact of marxist education, class consciousness, a dictator of the proletariat to enforce and the willingness for the bourgeois to commit classicide

I wonder why the ultra wealthy Forbes family who made all their money being paparazzi of the capitalist class for almost two hundred years would have any incentive to invent phony numbers about Mao being a billionaire and not getting his head cut off by the same angry mob that propelled him into power

Thomas Sankara was the richest person of all time

Also every leader of capitalist country lives on welfare

Source: Just trust me bro

Money aside, Why do they even own property?

Every economic system invariably ends up with a Pareto distribution of wealth. For socialism, the wealth goes to government bureaucrats; for capitalism, corporate overlords.

personal property is guaranteed under socialism

concept of vanguard as applied to resource scarcity etc etc

They were not

Okay jordan peterson

Socialism is when you don't own stuff

Not even ur toothbrush