This is not how any communist views authority or the state. All communists are in favor of abolishing the state. This requires erasing the basis of the state, which is class society, and that requires collectivizing production and distribution. With production and distribution collectivized, class doesn’t exist, and as such the state withers as it loses its reason to function.

It isn’t about “giving the state power.” It’s about taking state power from the capitalist class, and creating a working class state. This socialist state does not have “more power” than a capitalist state, the class it serves is what’s distinct.

Leftists usually fall into the Marxist umbrella or anarchist umbrella. Marxists are for collectivization, while anarchists are for communalization.

When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.

For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.

For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.

Anarchists obviously disagree with this, and see the state more as independent of class society and thus itself must be abolished outright.

This is not at all about being more “authoritarian” or “libertarian.” It’s a fundamentally different understanding of class and power dynamics, and both seek a liberated society. The political compass cannot depict this, even if the liberal view of anarchism and Marxism wants to point them as two extremes on a tidy graph with most people in the middle of them. What’s important is that politics is not a bell curve, Marxism and anarchism are consistent ideologies with specific tendencies under them that fundamentally contradict. People don’t just pick what they like from each (usually), because then they cease to be internally consistent.