Recognize that class struggle is real, and therefore the conquest of power by the working classes is necessary. This requires educating the working classes on political theory, history, and practice. It also requires agitating, being at the front line of struggle, and coherently leading the working classes to higher levels of political awareness in an all-sided struggle. It also requires organizing, forming a revolutionary party, a media apparatus to spread ideas, forming and improving worker and tenant unions, and more.

The simple fact is that Russian oil production hasn't actually been impacted the way Kiev is posturing. Rather than "Putin math," the idea that production is in shambles is "Kiev math."

Probably will see an influx of new accounts, then some will drift away and some will stay.

I don't know why you think communists are submissive and simply want powerful people to tell us what to do. Communists want the working classes to control and direct society, not a tiny class of wealthy capitalists. I also don't get what you mean by "Russia's loss," it's a war of attrition and at this point, even if Kiev surrendered right now, they are facing immense population collapse and crisis and an unstable government. Russia doesn't have the same problems.

All states are authoritarian, so what matters is which class the state served, as all states serve a definite class. China's ruling class is the proletariat.

Animal Farm's chief critique is that workers are stupid and helpless, and doomed to go along with whatever a leader says. It's deeply anti-human.

What exactly do you mean? It makes sense that leftists would support socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, especially in a country that used to thrive under socialism.

I don't mean it as a moral condemnation, or an expectation to be "better," but as an explanation for why we are in disagreement on certain aspects.

You misinterpret Marx's statement. I'm fully aware of Marx's views on the Russian commune movement, the problem is that you assume the Soviet model is what Marx was referring to, and that a more classically Marxist understanding of socialism was not what he meant. Marx was fairly explicit in what a socialist state would be, one where public ownership is principal and the working classes control the state. The Russian peasantry could have bypassed the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and went straight to a dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, but they would not be able to avoid the problem of transitioning small ownership to large, industrialized ownership without the aid of markets.

The fact of the matter is that private property existed de facto in the USSR. One of the mistakes of former socialism was merely trying to punish private ownership, rather than subordinate it to the public sector. Marx analyzed markets as being enormously useful in stitching together all of the small owners and building up productive forces, and public ownership as being superior at running large industry.

Stalin ending the NEP early was a matter of survival, and was correct. China's conditions are different, and now occupies a more classically Marxist economy. It isn't even the same as the NEP, China was closer to the NEP under Mao, the socialist market economy of China is a more classically Marxist economy, with the ability to be so precisely because the imperialists cannot afford to decouple from them.