Memes

we need an authoritarian state with a monopoly on violence

We already have one. Americans just need to keep believing the monopoly is working for them, rather than for their bosses, or the system of compliance falls apart.

There's an ideological ocean between utopian socialism and actually-existing socialism, yes. There's a reason why there's not been a successful historical instance of socialism in which workers collectivised without taking the power of the state in their hands.

Calling it "authoritarian state" kinda portrays lack of knowledge at democratic power structures and mechanisms in former socialist countries. Examples for the USSR: highest unionisation rates in the world, announcement/news boarboards in every workplace administered by the union, free education to the highest level for everyone, free healthcare, guaranteed employment and housing (how do the supposedly "authoritarian leaders" benefit from that?), neighbour commissions legally overviewing the activity and transparency of local administration, neighbour tribunals dealing with most petty crime, millions of members of the party, women's rights, local ethnicities in different republics having an option to education in their language and widespread availability of reading material and newspapers in their language... Please tell me one country that does that better nowadays

I mean this with all sympathy, after all, I used to share views similar to your own before I started taking Marxism seriously, and to dismiss you would be to dismiss myself, and thus the capacity for change. When you simplify Marxism to "workers should collectively own the Means of Production," you remove the entirety of Marxism, as such a thought was common even pre-Marx. When you simplify AES to "authoritarian states with a monopoly on violence to enforce Communism," you assume greater knowledge of the practice of building Socialism than the billions of people who have worked tirelessly to bring it into existance for the last century from the inside, not criticizing from afar.

With all due respect, and no "I've read more than you so my power level is higher" nonsense, have you read Marx?