I have tried for quite a while to critique the Marxist legacy from the left, along with its outcomes, Bolshevik, and in the Chinese case, and others. The realm of Marx had really bad luck, and the Bolshevik case (with the Chinese basically in that category) produced a distortion that is almost impossible to deal with short of starting over with new and very careful use of terms. China emerged very closely matched at the start with Bolshevik then Stalinist thinking. It has always been so.
It is time face reality: The CPC is a pseudo-communism, authoritarian, fascist, ethnocentric, neo-colonialist and racist, genocidal gangster operation tied to and strangely a colony of neoliberal capitalism. The left raised on Marxist dogmas cannot discriminate between interpretations of a 'shared' Marxist jargon universe. All we can do is leave the Chinese case behind and start over, however reluctant many would be to accept that. Here we have dropped for good the term 'communism' for neo-communism, to keep one step ahead of cognitive dissonance.
The fault we must consider lies with the original Marxist corpus, mindful that can be unfair. And yet there is a vein of flawed thinking in the Marx legacy, which is depressing in its total failure to produce any successes.
You may call this extreme, but what is the alternative? Communism in any real sense requires overthrowing the Chinese monstrosity and starting over. As we have noted many times, part of the problem is the use of slogan nouns, like socialism, undefined and which then refer to doomed realizations. We must have a new and rigorous terminology. Part of the problem lies with 'stages of production' theory, which prophesies communism to come after capitalism. But the historical theory behind that is not science in any sense, and it has led to a complacency about the inevitability of postcapitalism when the stark reality is that an intelligent left of some sort has to define what that means and do the job right, not so simple, and beyond the capacity of cadre Marxists who imagine solidarity with the CPC.

The world is waiting anxiously and short of conviction for a new path to socialism. But that is not so simple given monstrosities like the CPC and its Bolshevik sources.

Within and outside DSA, many on the Left have aligned themselves with the Communist Party of China (CPC). Guest author Travis S. submitted this piece to Tempest in the interest of furthering debate on the question of how the left should relate to the CPC. He explores the contradictions and implications of tying the Left to the ruling party of China.

Source: Building a mass movement with no apologism - Tempest