Marx’s theories consisted mostly of criticizing capitalism and it’s exploitation and international inconaitancies. He believed that there was an inevitable progression from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism, mostly because the internal inconsistencies of capitalism would lead to collapse. In my opinion, he was right about the internal inconsistencies of capitalism, but wrong about that this would necessary lead to a workers revolution. One such breaking point of capitalism was the great depression in 1929, where a some states actually went the opposite route and fell to fascism. Facism ensured, that the working class was pacified with making the lives of minorities worse, which was almost as good as actually making their own lives better. Capitalists could continue what they were doing and after Germany was defeated, they could roll back the worst excesses of facism and call it progress (Fyi: I am obviously not saying, that it was not progress in comparison to facism, what I am saying is that facism successfully prevented a workers revolution in Germany).
So you could criticize Marx for predicting this wrong.
Another aspect, that you could criticize Marx for is that he never really specified how a revolution would exactly work. This seems to be the core of your confusion. He only said, that the workers would rise up, establish majority rule by workers, seize the means of production and finally abolish the state. He never specified how they would do that. That was also the reason, why it was so easily abused for establishing essentially facism in China or the Soviet Union. Because Marx was much more clear about what capitalism was than what Communism was and especially how we could get there.
Like I said, most of his work was focused on analyzing the inconsistencies of capitalism and establishing a framework for historical analysis of societies and economical systems (historical materialism, dialectical materialism).
A revolution in itself is neither necceraly authoritarian nor violent. If you want an example for that, just look at how the Soviet Union fell. The revolution there was actually quite peaceful. It was also anti-authoritarian, because it destroyed a facist, authoritarian state. By your definition, it would be authoritarian though because it forces the view of the revolutionaries on the other people, that liked the Soviet Union (yes, there were a lot of them aswell), or did I understand you wrong there? Because that is not how authoritarianism works, maybe you should look it up.
Anarchists are also not necessarily opposed to violence (as long as it is against our oppressors, because our oppressors enforce a much more violent system), we are opposed to hirarchy and state violence. Unfortunately, pacifism, which you seem to think anarchism is, just doesn’t work in a world like this.
One point, I will specifically respond to is your claim about Marxism. This random article neatly summarizes the views of Marx towards revolution: https://polsci.institute/western-political-thought/marx-vision-capitalism-to-communism/#the-proletarian-revolution.
Marx’s theories consisted mostly of criticizing capitalism and it’s exploitation and international inconaitancies. He believed that there was an inevitable progression from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism, mostly because the internal inconsistencies of capitalism would lead to collapse. In my opinion, he was right about the internal inconsistencies of capitalism, but wrong about that this would necessary lead to a workers revolution. One such breaking point of capitalism was the great depression in 1929, where a some states actually went the opposite route and fell to fascism. Facism ensured, that the working class was pacified with making the lives of minorities worse, which was almost as good as actually making their own lives better. Capitalists could continue what they were doing and after Germany was defeated, they could roll back the worst excesses of facism and call it progress (Fyi: I am obviously not saying, that it was not progress in comparison to facism, what I am saying is that facism successfully prevented a workers revolution in Germany).
So you could criticize Marx for predicting this wrong.
Another aspect, that you could criticize Marx for is that he never really specified how a revolution would exactly work. This seems to be the core of your confusion. He only said, that the workers would rise up, establish majority rule by workers, seize the means of production and finally abolish the state. He never specified how they would do that. That was also the reason, why it was so easily abused for establishing essentially facism in China or the Soviet Union. Because Marx was much more clear about what capitalism was than what Communism was and especially how we could get there.
Like I said, most of his work was focused on analyzing the inconsistencies of capitalism and establishing a framework for historical analysis of societies and economical systems (historical materialism, dialectical materialism).
A revolution in itself is neither necceraly authoritarian nor violent. If you want an example for that, just look at how the Soviet Union fell. The revolution there was actually quite peaceful. It was also anti-authoritarian, because it destroyed a facist, authoritarian state. By your definition, it would be authoritarian though because it forces the view of the revolutionaries on the other people, that liked the Soviet Union (yes, there were a lot of them aswell), or did I understand you wrong there? Because that is not how authoritarianism works, maybe you should look it up.
Anarchists are also not necessarily opposed to violence (as long as it is against our oppressors, because our oppressors enforce a much more violent system), we are opposed to hirarchy and state violence. Unfortunately, pacifism, which you seem to think anarchism is, just doesn’t work in a world like this.