That's two different definitions of Communism. Anarchist Communism can be likened to Commune-ism, ie a decentralized network of communes, while Marxists want Communism as a fully publicly owned and planned global economy, one that requires centralization.

yes, anarchists want communism straight away without going through socialism first.

mostly because they identify the state itself as the main problem, not capitalism or imperialism per se. socialists view this the other way around.

I mean kind of yes but most people would not call them synonymous

Central authority is a tool. In different hands it does different things, but if you disarm yourself you'll lose.

If you do not choose your leaders they will choose themselves. We tried the whole leaderless, decentralized anti-authority thing throughout the 2010s. At best you might be able to collapse the central authority of the currently existing government regime, but what comes after that is always much much worse: civil war, invasion, or an even more repressive government regime. But, more likely, the movement will just collapse because it lacks the structure to actually sustain itself.

We need to be centralized and we need to be ready to assert our authority when the old one is destroyed, or we will lose.

Ok so lets say you get rid of the central authority in one fell swoop. What happens when the millions of people who really really benefitted from that authority or atleast believe themselves to benefit decide they want it back. Can a decentralized stateless society truly win political or military battles against them? I can tell you from history that everyone who has tried this eventually resorted to their own centralized authority in order to survive, failed, or both. Communist do not see centralized authority as good, we see it as a means to survive.

You know how a certain faction in the USA keeps screaming about "states rights?”

In my view, central and decentralized authority have their issues. And here come the down votes. The way the Russian voting system was explained to me by the good people of .ml makes a lot of sense and circumvents the worst issues of both.

I think long term we could find a place for those who wish to live in a decentralized commune free of hierarchy. I understand that the centralized vision of communist human progress essentially requires hierarchy but I think we will progress to a point where that becomes undesirable for a large amount of people. Eventually we will reevaluate what it means to even progress.

All economies are mixed, the difference in designation of "Capitalist," or "Socialist" depends on which aspect of the economy is principle, private or public. Communism is a post-Socialist society, a highly developed form of Socialism where private ownership becomes redundant and economically unviable.

Social Democracy is just Capitalism with welfare, all of the "good" Social Democracies in the eyes of Social Democrats like the Nordic Countries depend on Imperialism to function and are seeing sliding welfare and worker protections as a function of being dominated by Private ownership.

Socialism IS democratic production, thus the political systems can reflect as such. Maybe more regional control, as I'm led to understand the Swiss cantons function like. Please correct me if I'm wrong.