First: Communists aren't principled. Their position is to seek power. They do not need consistent, or even coherent, positions.

Second: The Old Left vs. The New Left strategy differences. The Old Left (Revolutionary Socialism) sought about the Leninist strategy of killing your way up and replacing the elites. Your dependent classes are your literal stormtroopers and literal enforcers. The New Left (Fabian Socialism) works off of subversion. Your dependent classes are a political base which you use to pressure policy change. You re-orient the institutions of society so that they can be your dependent class of managers and activists.

It's one of the reasons why people don't understand that violence doesn't have to be a policy when dealing with the Fabians. They fight through soft-power legitimacy. If we were fighting Leninists, then yeah, you just have to join the White Russians or the Polish Army and shoot at them until the Red Horde draws down from sheer attrition or they'll literally kill everyone. But that's not how the Fabians operate.