Right now, the next obvious step to me is market socialism. Eventually the market should yield to spontaneous mutual aid, but that will take time.
Why do you think that the market should yield to spontaneous mutual aid? I haven't seen any historical evidence that free markets tend to do anything other than concentrate wealth. This is a (mild) ideological disagreement I have even with left-market anarchists.
if I could snap my fingers and instantly give everyone class consciousness and a stable anarch-communist society, I would
That's...not what it means to be an anarcho-communist. Obviously we cannot change the entire world in a day (unless you have access to a gamma ray burst 😆). Anarcho-communism isn't against stepwise processes, but our critique of state socialists is that the State is structurally incapable of bringing about communism within any time bound. Put simply: the State is a hierarchy that needs to be destroyed. Strengthening it, even in pursuit of noble ends, is a step backwards for proletarian freedom.
When we say that ends should match the means, we do not mean to live our ideal lives immediately as if capitalism never happened. What we mean is that the solutions we pursue should reflect the values and priorities of the world we actually want to see. Since we want to see a world without hierarchy and authority, and as a corollary a stateless world, it makes no sense from an anarchist perspective to support a "socialist" state as part of the transition to anarchy. I.e., we should not build systems that we will have to revolt against in the future.
Consequentially, I presently advocate Democratic Socialism. Once we have that, I'll take another step towards anarchy, rinse and repeat.
But that's not a step towards anarchy almost at all. That's a step towards something else.
I think this perspective underestimates the strength of the forces opposing us. Not just the actual individuals deliberately working against us, but also the alienated and propagandized working class.
I am painfully aware that my views are minority views. Literally all my family and friends are not even socialists at all; most of my family are Trump supporters. Anarchists are doing huge jail sentences for protesting at Prarieland. The
settler-colonial project is openly targeting anarchists. My own family would be thrilled to watch me burn if they knew my actual views. And I yell on Lemmy all the time about how the current bourgeoisie are some of the worst creatures ever born, and I am constantly watching news and reading about the vile things the bourgeoisie are capable of, e.g. the Gaza genocide. I'm aware. My comrades are aware. If they weren't aware of the abuses the capitalists foist upon us...they wouldn't be anarchists.