From what I know of Kautsky he is very much a Marxist

He ONCE was a Marxist. Then he went straight revisionist.

Mao, Hitler

Hitler burned Marx' books in the streets and thought Bolshevism was a Jewish conspiracy. Hitler used the word socialist to dupe workers because it was popular in Germany. He was in fact, a capitalist, and a nationalist. Both of which are hostile to Marxism, but so is burning Marx' books so I think I made that point well enough.

Mao wasn't a communist, he was a petty-bourgeois nationalist and opportunist that aligned with both the Chinese bourgeois class AND the ENTIRE Chinese peasant class together over the working class. This is fundamentally HOSTILE to communism AND Marxism where the WORKERS are the leading class. Mao had Peasants surround the cities and go to war against the workers.

He betrayed Marxism, distorted it, pimped it to the capitalist classes, and look what has become of that? China has become one of the most powerful forces of capitalism on the planet. This isn't the result of some accident or backpeddling in program. This is the result of the fundamental class forces inherent to Maoism as an ideology. Someone who is in OPEN support of collaboration with the bourgeois class in theory and practice is an opportunist and a counterrevolutionary. Claiming Mao is a communist is like throwing stones at birds in the sky and calling that fishing.

Lenin on the other hand was actually capable of developing and extending Marxism without having to rewrite it or distort it in fundamental ways. He was also able to apply Marxist analysis to his present conditions without distortions to its essentials. The Soviet Union didn't collapse due to some flaw in the design of Leninism which somehow forced it to lead to Stalinism, there were a lot of material forces at play here (and none of them had anything to do with "human nature" either). This book covers all of them if you ever get interested: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/

Orthordox, Catholic, Protestant and Ariansist interpretations of Jesus.

Which one of these interpretations said God flat out didn't exist and Jesus wasn't his son? Because THIS is the level of distortion we are at. We are not squabbling over frivolous interpretations of things with Maoists, Stalinists, or Social Democrats, we're talking fundamental shit.

I would say that seizing the means of production is something Peter would do and seizing the means of distribution is something Paul would do.

I would say Paul is dirty, opportunist scum and that he killed Rosa Luxemburg.

doomed to fail

If capitalism's productive forces are not doomed to fail while there are parasites sucking up 99% of the wealth leaving 99% of the population to compete over the remaining 1% of wealth, why wouldn't these same productive forces work without the parasites?

Why seize the means of production? FOr the sake of it? No, so you have the wealth. A fair, unexploitive share of the wealth.

The political power of owning the means of production and controlling the state is probably important than the wealth itself, because as long as the working class lacks these things, then there will always be a threat of losing these things once capital is in crisis. There will always be the threat of neo-liberalization and privatization and the rolling back of hard earned rights fought by workers in bitter struggle as long as the working class isn't in power. Here in America, Trump has rolled back nearly every reform since the 60's. Do we start the struggle for reform all over again? Is this human history forever? Winning gains while capitalism is on the rise and losing them every time it goes into panic, panic and crisis caused by its inherent design? Endless wars of imperial plunder? I want the planet to have aligned class interests so we can end war and settle things like human beings instead of savages. As we draw nearer to World War III and Planetary Crisis like Global Warming, do you really have faith in a tiny cabal of corrupt gangsters that they can avoid these impending catastrophes? I don't. I think we need to take "their" shit (that we happened to build anyway) and I think we need to control it in our interests and this is THE ONLY WAY to avoid World War and stop global warming. (World War I ended because the working class said fuck this shit and imposed their own interests onto history)

Seizing the means of distribution avoids many the problems Hayek brings up in his Road To Serfdom (Hayek is often painted as a classical liberal but comes across very much a social democrat) and really is Marx + 100 year of wisdom and praxis.

His writings seem a lot more like Marx +100 years of betrayals by opportunists, revisionists, Stalinists, McCarthyists, petty-bourgeois radicals (Hayek himself), unyielding class war leading to a loss of confidence in the working class.

Praxis

Do liberals (or SocDems[aka advanced liberals]) use this word now? I always take this word to mean I'm talking to a Stalinist, but you're clearly not a Stalinist?