I don’t think you know what authoritarianism is

I think we do know what you think it is: “horseshoe theory”; Arendtian “totalitarianism.” https://lemmy.ml/comment/17774014

the idea of paying a scientist of any kind the same as a cashier at a gas station is ridiculous.

This isn’t even a straw man; it’s an allusion to an unstated straw man. No one is suggesting that everyone should be paid the same, and AFAIK no socialist state has ever done it.

I think that's a poor counter to my argument, I do know what authoritarianism is. All states are authoritarian, all are instruments by which the ruling class oppresses the other classes. In the US and EU, those are the Bourgeoisie, specifically the Monopolist Imperialist bourgeoisie. In Russia, the ruling class are the Nationalist bourgeoisie, in the PRC the ruling class is the Proletariat, as it was in the USSR as well. Each ruling class uses the power of the state, the power of authority, to cement itself, and displays greater use of force the more that status is called into question.

The way to move beyond authoritarianism is to move beyond class society. The way to move beyond class society is through Socialism, by which all property can be sublimated into common ownership and direction, to fulfill use rather than need. This is the path to Communism. Countries like the PRC that are already Socialist exert their authority to enforce the interests of the Proletariat, and thus their use of authority is more progressive than the US and EU, who use their authority as Imperialists to keep the system by which the West plunders and brutalizes the world for profit to keep going.

Russia and Iran play the role of self-interested nationalists working against the Imperialists, just as the small business owners, ie petite bourgeoisie, can side with the Proletariat out of their own self-interest in revolution. They are certainly not world leaders of Socialism by any stretch of the imagination, but work with Socialist countries as they have no other option than surrender to Western Imperialism and be decimated like Russia was following the dissolution of the USSR before the Nationalists kicked out the West.

Your last point about equal pay for a scientist and a cashier is a non-sequitor, Marxists are not equalitarians.