Stalin and Mao both outnumber the deaths of the holocaust by many magnitudes more.
That is A) because the holocaust was more visible. It was made visible intentionally (by the victors) while the other 2 were not (because there were no Victors)
Als B) the difference is, that while hundreds of thousands death by Stalin or Mao were intentionally, the millions mostly died of errors.
I already told about the farmers killed their livestock to meet the meat quota and, of course, had nothing left to meet it the second year.
but modern day Communist advocates say was not communism.
You don't need to be a communist to see that "this" was not communism, if the center point of communism - the ownership of the means of production by the working - was not met.
It was simulated quite good sometimes, though.
Simulations are limited by the minds of those that design the simulation. I make lots of simulations, but I can only put into them the things I mentally am aware of and can perceive. The variance in humans adds a lot of chaos that is not properly represented in simulations. This also makes central planning and quotas difficult to be accurate as well. Yet that is a completely different issue. :)
And because the simulation was always flawed, there never was communism, because communism only is realized when the plans work.
QED ;)
Which can be said of ANY ideology. That is also a person saying MY PERCEPTION of X is the real X and anything not X is well you know... not X.
Kind of a bullshit excuse and argument in my opinion. Also a common one. :)
Like I said every person thinks differently so X is a moving target.
So who owned the means of production? The idea of ownership in communism is community, the community owned that, granted it was on the scale of a nation, not of a "factory", otherwise it would have been a co-op, and a co-op is not what "owning the means of production" was about. Maybe I am mistaken but isn't that what communism is, no ownership..