1) I would agree that class consciousness is incremental with great leaps at particular periods. I would say that post-recession we've had, historically speaking, a great leap in class consciousness and it won't stop because the neo-liberal economic model won't allow the more naked oppression to stop. From Wisconsin to Occupy, to the Sanders campaign, with the concurrent social unrest over police terror and LGBT rights and the rise of Trump's proto-fascism involving oppressed groups. there has been a progressively more militant response by the working class and the oppressed. But the widespread nature of these responses has shown the bankruptcy of incrementalism as a SOLUTION to these problems. As long as capitalism remains in place, NO GAIN BY THE WORKING CLASS IS SAFE!
2) Revolutionary socialism hasn't worked out so well BECAUSE the opposition to socialist revolution has been orchestrated by the USA for the most part. Which is why the USA is and always has been, a lynchpin in the struggle. Only without American opposition or at least neutrality, will any other country be safe to attempt socialism. In addition, the temporary measures (War communism) that were introduced by Lenin and Trotsky to defend the October revolution and which were never meant to be permanent became the "role model", more or less, for all subsequent socialist states. A temporary bureaucracy created for immediate defense of the revolution was never meant to permanently replace the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.
3) Any incremental gains were not won "through the institutions", they were won with militant demands OUTSIDE of the institutions which the institutions were forced to acknowledge. And those demands, as I said above, are not and never will be "safe" as long as there's super profit to be made in special exploitation.
I don't disagree with the replacing the institutions of capitalism with alternatives, but it can be done while capitalism is still in place. That was Trotsky's method. He called it creating a "dual power" situation, which is what the soviets were. That will also be a means to gauge the level of class consciousness. But the very success of "dual power" institutions will create a contradiction for bourgeois governments that can only be resolved by revolution. Or the "smashing" of the state. Because the more successful alternative institutions are, the more they will come under attack BY the bourgeoisie.
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