The path to communism

There are some issues in your outline of revolution. First off, it seems you define the revolution as the taking of political power by the working class, following a traditional Marxist perspective. Hence, the second point in your outline, you state “Revolutionary forces succeed in overthrowing the ruling class,” whereas anarchists and syndicalists would rather define the first act of revolution as the overturning of the mode of production, replacing capitalism with some form of socialism or communism.

I think everyone agrees on the necessity for revolutionary forces to organize their own defense, but following the Marxist definition of revolution as the taking of political power, it takes the form of a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” or a “workers’ state.” The need for defense is used as a justification for a “workers’ state” in a traditional Marxist perspective, whereas as anarchists and syndicalists don’t believe the organizing of defense by the populace is the basis of a ‘state’ of any kind.

Leading into your stage 2, you state that the revolutionary territory would be “left politically and economically isolated” after defeating counterrevolutionary forces, and that the “revolutionary territory has to find some way to survive economically whilst also ensuring self defensive capabilities.” Assuming that full communism can’t be reached in the revolutionary territory, “some compromise policy must be implemented,” meaning money and markets would have to be retained, as if those are mere tools that can be used deliberately by the populace for their own benefit. If you believe as anarchists and syndicalists do, that revolution is the culmination of a long, gradual process of development and preparation by the working class, becoming socialist or communist, what sense does it make that in the course of a revolution, they don’t change the relations between themselves, instead retaining money and markets. Your stage 2 reads as justification for keeping capitalism within the territory of a “workers’ state.” After such long preparation, during the course of revolution, socialism ought to be implemented. That is how workers collectively have power over the resources in their territory, and enabled to organize their own defense. And you can’t really have a middle ground, a mixture of some socialism and money and markets coexisting.

12. Dictatorship of the proletariat disappears as capitalist social relations are replaced by communism, money and markets are abolished.

Will it disappear? Especially after the actual construction of communism is delayed to happen until the world proletariat is unified, whereas instead a “workers’ state” with money and markets in its territory is implemented. How would that even come about? As I joked in another thread, the Marxist perspective foresees a revolution to have another revolution, the actual revolution.

And Marxists wrongly attribute to anarchists the idea that revolution would be sudden, short and sweet, when it is actually the reverse. Marxists do not even address what happens in the long lead up to a revolution, because if they did, they would know that their traditional scheme of how a revolution unfolds sounds like nonsense.

Interesting thought experiment, but I'm not entirely sure if any future revolutionary situation would neatly conform to what's outlined here, though maybe in broad terms. It would probably be worth considering a revolutionary outbreak in a specific place—or on second thought it's probably best to avoid that for obvious reasons... I think one of the issues with visualizing some localized revolutionary uprising like the Paris Commune is that such an uprising would be much easier to crush today than it was for Thiers. If there were some militant uprising, then it would probably have to be larger than just a small territory (i.e. encompass a lot of people!) and also involve the desertion of a sizable number of military forces to revolutionary lines. Otherwise, it's really difficult to imagine an isolated Commune-type militant rebellion lasting for very long against modern states and weaponry.

It's probably easier to imagine non-militant protests/occupations like Chaz-Chop Seattle, which was an innocuous spectacle for the most part, though it definitely had its communistic or admirable aspects. Protests in general can also always gather steam and take new directions rather than just remaining localized or non-threatening to the ruling order, as they often have; it just depends on the particular circumstances.

It might also be worth looking at historical regime changes or the fall of past governments in terms of understanding how states can collapse, such as the Maidan Uprising/Coup. One important factor in the Maidan Uprising was that it encompassed a sizable number of pro-Maidan protesters and militants in the Western regions of Ukraine, where Russophobic sentiments were/are also the strongest (e.g. the capital Kiev itself). In that context it's not really surprising that the overthrow of the Kiev government was successful despite facing off against Yanukovych's forces. Of course there were also other factors that contributed to the collapse of the Yanukovych regime, but the sizable opposition in Kiev was likely one of the key elements. (Sorry if "there's gotta be a lot of people" is not saying much...)