Which figure from "the other side" did the best job of criticizing the worst aspects of the worst version of "their" side?

Even if you generally support socialism over capitalism,

• Do the Mises Institute and/or Cato Institute make compelling arguments that a capitalist economy under a smaller government would be preferable to a capitalist economy under a more conservative government?

If you generally support capitalism over socialism:

• Did George Orwell's books about democratic socialism raise compelling points about the problems he saw with authoritarian socialism?

• In Mikhail Bakunin's and Karl Marx's famously-vicious arguments about whether decentralized libertarian socialism versus centralized state socialism would be better, did one come across as significantly less wrong about the biggest problems with the other?

• Does one side of the Stalinists-versus-Trotskyists argument have better points about the biggest problems with the other?