If we're following Marx's historical materialism (that society has transitions has a society, roughly being feudalism -> capitalism -> socialism -> communism), I think the next best step is a transition from capitalism to socialism is union ownership. Personally, I think worker co-ops and general syndicalism with a competing in a market for the worker owned businesses would be a great in between step that would not involve a crushingly oppressive state. The goal should be to keep it decentralized so one power structure being consumed by corruption doesn't sink the fleet

Achieving communism thru the state (called vanguard parties) isn't all that well liked by many types of socialists and communists, especially those of us in the west. A lot of us prefer to take inspiration from mid-1900s labor groups who, while not achieving socialism that we want, created infinitely better working conditions and power dynamics for working class people. Most of the people who ran those organizations were socialists/communists in and of themselves, and they often times relied more upon collective direct action than just electoralism.