Sorry for the bad picture I kinda scrambled to get it, but yeah my prof went fully into the whole "in communism you don't own your toothbrush" stuff and then put up this slide.
I'm glad that my webcam and mic was off because I couldn't stop myself from rolling my eyes at that.
edit: idk why the pic is rotated and idk how to fix it
For me personally, I tend to think of it as there are no absolute hard lines around defining any mode of production because it's all dialectical. It's true for capitalism and socialism. Marx himself talks about how the feudal MoP and capitalist MoP operated alongside each other - impacting each other dialectically - for centuries. Most of us here would agree that China and Vietnam are socialist. However if you just spend a week in a Chinese city with an open mind but not really any Marxist knowledge, you're going to have a hard time distinguishing what makes it socialist and not capitalist. And the approach the CPC takes appears to be that someone in that city would have a hard time distinguishing when it no longer seems very capitalist.
All the questions you ask are great. But I think they highlight how the development of capitalism came about at all of those stages.
I think this is the correct answer. Human societies are ver complex and there are many modes of production in use at any given time. There has always been a type of capitalist production. But was limited either by production technology(an agrarian energy source) or customary rigths.