Tbh everything I said above could be applied to Mao as well. He had the genius insight that the path to power in China lay in a military struggle mobilizing the peasantry when everyone else in party leadership thought that was crazy and un-Marxist, but then when that insight translated into running China he did not do a good job and should have listened to his fellow party members.
And looking throughout Chinese history, there hasn't been a leader as leftist as Mao since Mao either. In present day China, the Maoist Communist Party of China (and basically every anti-revisionist communist party) is banned.
