you lack understanding of dialectical materialism and are thinking in eternal absolutes. marxists don’t oppose or support any one thing in particular as inherently evil or counter revolutionary. and in the context of deng it certainly should be supported. you cannot know what stalin would have thought, and even if he did does not mean he was right, for all the good things he did there is always the chance of error. the ussr fell, but china is still standing and upholding tens of millions of working class people.

The proportion of planning to market forces is not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. A planned economy is not equivalent to socialism, because there is planning under capitalism too; a market economy is not capitalism, because there are markets under socialism too. Planning and market forces are both means of controlling economic activity. The essence of socialism is liberation and development of the productive forces, elimination of exploitation and polarization, and the ultimate achievement of prosperity for all. This concept must be made clear to the people. Are securities and the stock market good or bad? Do they entail any dangers? Are they peculiar to capitalism? Can socialism make use of them? We allow people to reserve their judgement, but we must try these things out. If, after one or two years of experimentation, they prove feasible, we can expand them. Otherwise, we can put a stop to them and be done with it. We can stop them all at once or gradually, totally or partially. What is there to be afraid of? So long as we keep this attitude, everything will be all right, and we shall not make any major mistakes. In short, if we want socialism to achieve superiority over capitalism, we should not hesitate to draw on the achievements of all cultures and to learn from other countries, including the developed capitalist countries, all advanced methods of operation and techniques of management that reflect the laws governing modern socialized production.

— Deng Xiaoping, 1992, Excerpts from Talks Given in Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai.

To attempt to answer yes or no to the question whether any particular means of struggle should be used, without making a detailed examination of the concrete situation of the given movement at the given stage of its development, means completely to abandon the Marxist position.

— V.I. Lenin, Guerrilla Warfare (1906)