Alright, thanks for responding! There are a bunch of misconceptions here, like I thought there would be, but I assume you already knew that due to your admission as such, and the purpose is to rectify those.

First, I won’t really correct your Capitalist explanation, we both are familiar with Capitalism enough to know what it looks like.

Second, Marxism-Leninism. In all AES countries, it is not “party leadership” that dictates production, just like Joe Biden doesn’t do any of the planning involved with the Post Office. “Party Leadership” tends to deal with overarching issues, foreign policy, and more. Industrial planning is done by Economic Planners, much like how you can get a job as a City Planner or Civil Engineer in the US. Engineers are subservient to their managers, much like in Capitalism, only the goal isn’t profit but fulfillment of Use-Value. The importance of this is that administrative roles are a necessity for large, mass-scale complex production.

The education of the Engineer was provided by the government, with standards set in place at the government level by the Education Administration (or equivalent government body). These don’t need to be party members, just regular people. The purpose of the party is to be made up of the most politically educated of the working class, unlike in Capitalism where party members are subservient to Capital. The Party is made up of the working class and is voluntary to join, and can purge opportunists and spies who seek to sabotage the Socialist system.

In Anarchism, I believe you’re assuming too many things. Who decides “consensus?” Is every commodity at the whim of direct vote? Or do you have elected delegates, trusted to handle economic planning? If the former, how would we trust these people to not be under-planning or over-planning, if the latter, what’s the difference from the government in Marxism-Leninism beyond name? Furthermore, where do educational standards come from for Engineers? Best practice? Is everything equally decided by everyone? If you don’t formalize a body to exert some kind of authority to prevent malpractice, then you have malpractice. If you do, you agree with the Marxist-Leninists, your only objection being labeling this formalized group a “party” rather than a “committee,” as though language changes form.

For the QA worker to have any genuine authority, it needs to be backed, and this backing cannot be purely voluntary or else it isn’t actually authority, and can be ignored freely. Moreover, if you are talking smartphones, such a production process can involve many thousands of people, does everyone need to be involved over every QA issue, or do we make the concession that production would grind to a halt in a day if we did that and instead administration should be embraced?

Quick diversion to the Withering of the State: it isn’t magic at all, rather, for Marxists the State is the instruments within government that uphold class distinctions, like Private Property. Upon making all property Public, there are no classes, so there isn’t a need for private property rigjts, hence the “withering away.” Government and administration remain, and things like the police change more to be social workers and armies are superfluous as Communism is global. That’s the “withering away” of the State for Marxists.

Alright, onto your questions.

1. “State Capitalism” can best be used to describe the NEP, not Socialism in general. Parties are not classes, and central planning isn’t done for the profit of party members. This is a confused understanding of Marxism.

2. Democratic Centralism and the Mass Line are core concepts to ML structure, along with Recall Elections in the case of removing opportunists.

3. Socialism is fundamentally different from feudalism and Capitalism because the basis is on a fully Publicly Owned economy. Just like managers are not a separate class, neither are administrators and officials, production doesn’t all funnel into their pockets but is directed for the fulfilment of the needs of society. There’s a lot of literature on the economies of AES countries I can link if you want. These aren’t “benevolent kings,” they can be opposed (and frequently were).

As for Stalin, there’s historical record of him attempting to resign no fewer than 4 times, he wasn’t unopposable and wasn’t a God-King. He certainly wasn’t a perfect man either, but he was elected and frequently opposed through the institutions of the Soviet Union.

4. Administration is a separate skill from manufacturing. I’m not sure what your point is here, most Socialist democratic structures work like building blocks, a local council elects a representative for a regional council, then an area council from them, national, international, etc, with as many and as few rungs as needed.

Does that answer your questions?