If you guys would drop the AES support then left unity might stand a chance.

Ah, I see. So in order to achieve "left unity" all we have to do is:

1. Abandon support for every socialist project that was even moderately successful

2. Refuse to learn from their successes and failures because we have to write them off entirely as if they weren't genuine movements

3. Allow blatant propaganda and falsehoods to be spread about them unchallenged, for fear of being associated with them.

Of course, if we did that, especially the last one, we'd be associated with them anyway - they called Obama a communist, they'll apply the label to anyone. If every attempt at building socialism was an unmitigated failure that just made everything worse and resulted in things just as bad as the Nazis, then why the hell should anyone want to be a socialist? Why should we even be socialists?

And don't try to pretend that it's only uncritical support you're talking about. If you have a good word to say about any of them, if you challenge accusations and call them out when they lack evidence, then you'll be labelled a "tankie." Y'all are obsessed with punching left and demonstrating your anticommunist credentials, and have been for the last 80 years, "If we just toss all the Reds out of the AFL/CIO, then people will see we're not like them and they'll be on our side, that we're 'one of the good ones,'" and then guess what, they call you Reds anyway, and when they come for you you'll have alienated people who would've actually fought back. This is how we got to the point where even "liberal" became a dirty word, of being "too far left."

Yeah, thanks but no thanks on that one. I'm going to continue critically supporting AES states and examining their success and failures and refuting misinformation about them - focusing on what's actually true, rather than on trying to "prove" that I'm sufficiently anticommunist to pass some red scare purity test.

I only have a surface level understanding of all this stuff, but don't marxism and anarchism both aim for a stateless, classless society?

Marxists are aligned on support for AES, though, outside of fringe tendencies like Trotskyists and Gonzaloists. In my experience, it's more of a hot topic among Anarchists, having spoken to firmly anti-AES Anarchists and critically supportive Anarchists.

Further, when you call AES states "Capitalist in most respects," that just isn't accurate from a Marxist stance on what Capitalism and Socialism are. AES states are where large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly controlled, while the private sector is dominated by small firms, sole proprietorships, and cooperatives of non-essential industries. This is because Marx viewed the only real way to achieve full public ownership is developing into it, rather than simply decreeing it.

The divide more tends to be among the stance on what the real obstacles in the way of progressing beyond Capitalism is, and those in support of AES tend to agree that that obstacle is currently the US Empire.