What if we are able to attain communism for social/economical reasons, but unable to switch to it for political reasons - because capitalist elites so far are strong enough to prevent it?
I don't think that's really a possibility. No matter what, we laborers are still a vital part of the functioning of capitalism, no matter how far technology advances. Even if everything is built by robots, then someone has to design the robots, maintain them, and so on. And that gives us the decisive power over capitalists: they
need us; we don't need them.
May be the question is not about feasibility of communism, but rather about development of relations of production to the level which makes capitalism unfeasible? I mean, capitalism was able to survive through XX century despite all challenges, by using force or adaptation of some socialistic elements. It may be less progressive, but at the moment it seems stable enough to prevent global emergence of communism, for whatever reasons. What if technological development will eventually cause structural crisis of capitalism - may be it can facilitate switching to communism?
Capitalism is constantly creating crises to which communism is the answer. Waiting for capitalism to hit a crisis that will cause us to stumble into communism is a fruitless venture: capitalism thrives on crisis. At times the contradictions of capitalism are heightened by crises and minimized during booms, but they are never absent.
As technology becomes ever more advanced, these contradictions, the mythology and folklore used to justify and maintain the capitalist mode of production and all the inequalities and structural problems it brings (including crises) will become ever more apparent. Take the above example as a sort of climactic end-point: once everything gets made by robots and repaired by robots such that humans are basically removed from the equation (really stupid thing to do IMO, but hey I'm not in charge now am I), then that's about as bare as the contradiction can become, isn't it? At that point there is literally zero explanation for the disparities of wealth and power in society, no justification, nothing to stand on or hide behind, it's just there, in the open, for everyone to see and stare at. That's kind of the logical end-point, isn't it? That would make it the easiest to cause a revolution: everything would be at stake, nothing would be lost by losing, and there would be no excuse for not seeing the necessity of the revolution. So I guess we're slowly moving toward that point, or one just like it, a sort of "singularity for the revolution," if you will. So I think that technology is definitely going to heat things up in the coming years more than it did before, because we are in essence entering a situation where we are literally inventing jobs for people to do in order to stay busy and justify long work days, rather than simply freeing up hands in one job to go to other jobs that need doing, as it was in the past. Not all of us need to work in order for everyone to have everything they need. Perhaps only half or us, or we only need to work half as much as now, if not less. So that contradiction is growing stronger, and I think that makes it easier and easier to talk about how capitalism doesn't put people first and doesn't make our lives better. But I don't think we're going to wake up one morning and accidentally be in communism, because communism is far more than availability of goods, it's also about social power, and the ability and the right of people to have a say in the forces and affairs that govern their lives, chief among which is the distribution of goods and the disposition of social resources like labor, and that kind of power isn't going to be surrendered by the capitalist class without a fight.
You already said that, and I didn't give an analysis. I asked: encircled by what?
I've already answered this question. Encircled by capitalist imperialist powers seeking to undermine and destroy them. Or did you miss the entire 20th century?
