Fact No.1: The famine of the great leap forward was caused not by communists, but by Liu Shaoqqi and Deng Xiaoping, the infamous capitalists in CCP (yeah there were capitalists in that party, they were called "走资派" and existed for a very long time), who ran the country like a state-owned company. The tasks of this movement delivered to local departments are based on profits and not the quality of people's lives, which soon led to corruption, starvation, and bureaucracy. Things didn't turn out well and people's life went hell.
Meanwhile, the communists in the party were struggling with the capitalists, they wrote many letters instructing how to improve the situation and end the famine, but all those letters were blocked and never reached the hands of the workers and farmers because the capitalists were not happy about it, until Mao Zedong wrote a letter (党内通信——致六级干部的公开信), directly bypassing the national information agency and connected the communists with local workers and farmers. The situation then had an improvement.
Liu Shaoqi was the chairman of China at that time, not Mao.
Fact No.2: Liu Shaoqi got overthrown by the people during the Cultural Revolution for the crimes he committed back in the great leap forward, because the people were given the power to fight against local government. There was that famous quote of Mao, "Revolution is no crime, to rebel is justified (革命无罪,造反有理)."
The party gave the people the power to overthrow authorities, so what do you expect those authorities, who were capitalists united around Liu Shaoqi to do? You think they'll just sit there and accept their fate? Of course not, they will suppress those who dare to revolt at all costs.
The revolutionary people were called "造反派", while the claws of the capitalists were called "保守派" (i.e. "联动" "西纠"). During the cultural revolution, there were countless violent conflicts between 造反派 and 保守派. And 保守派 did many mass executions of 造反派 with the intention of resisting the cultural revolution from taking their crowns, because they were the majority of those in power. There is only mass execution of communists made by capitalists, not of capitalists made by communists.
History is two-sided, subjectively-described, complex, having many turns, and with many conflicts of interest. It is pushed forward by the wills of groups of people, and can't be explained with "oh l00k a D1ct4t0r". If you don't understand this, maybe you have not reached the intellectual standard to meddle in such discussion.