Asklemmy

Claiming I support states where the workers have no power, without doing the legwork to explain how that's the case, is just smearing. It isn't a point. The socialist states I support are those that are broadly recognized as such by socialist and communist organizations and states, I am not acting out of the ordinary for doing so.

Marxists have described the withering of the state. From Engels:

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: "a free State", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.

To Lenin's State and Revolution, which centers this very issue. Marxists have written about the state and how it withers away upon collectivization for centuries, this isn't a new thing. Administration is not the same thing as a state. Further, the PRC is democratic:

The rest of your comment is a baseless, unsupported rant about socialist states supposedly being "just as bad" as capitalist states, despite the opposite being the case when it comes to uplifting the working class. From doubling of life expectancy, to certified safety nets, to tripling of literacy rates, to certified healthcare, to decolonial action, to fighting imperialism, socialist states around the world are rising while capitalism is dying, and you sit on the fence and say real socialism isn't good enough for you while you live in a western country. It's social chauvanism, plain and simple.

I don't block people, nor would I announce that I am going to. I don't take ill-founded insults or libel seriously, either.

To respond to your edit, here:

Edit: To me the big mystery is why defend these states? Why aim for vanguard states? Can’t we aim for something better rather than something that has “succeeded”? Why do we have to choose between liberalism and marxism when we can instead try to work towards actual socialism?

I defend the achievements of really existing socialism, that have brought dramatic democratization and uplifting of the working class. From Russia to China to Cuba to many other countries, socialism has proven to be extremely successful at meeting the needs of the people. We need to use a vanguard because it works, and vanguards themselves will appear whether we formalize them and democratize them as they have been in AES countries, or if we ignore them and let them form naturally and unaccountably.

We should always aim for better, but when that takes the form of saying "real socialism isn't good enough," then that becomes an incredibly privledged and chauvanistic viewpoint. Workers fought and died to win socialism in their countries, and are making constant improvements. This is actual socialism, not the socialism that lives only as a perfect ideal in our heads. Rather than saying that they did it the wrong way, or that they didn't fight hard enough, we should respect the tremendous gains they've made and try our best to carry out our own revolutions, charting a path to a better world collectively.

When we oppose the working class in socialist countries for the mistakes they make, and declare these states enemies when they ought not to be, we make the same mistakes as those who oppose Palestinian liberation because they aren't very queer friendly (and I say this as a pansexual person myself). It completely aids the imperialist narrative and serves as justification for color revolution and massive setback on the path to building socialism. It's against solidarity.