i think they were doing a communist "would you rather" and trying to make compromising of ideals sound attractive so its a compelling question

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Enlai

It is said that, just before the Sino-Soviet split, Nikita Khrushchev had a tense meeting with Zhou Enlai at which he told the latter that he now understood the problem. “I am the son of coal miners,” he said. “You are the descendant of feudal mandarins. We have nothing in common.” “Perhaps we do,” murmured his Chinese antagonist. “What?” blustered Khrushchev. “We are,” responded Zhou, “both traitors to our class.”

That being said, I don't think you could realistically be a bourgeois communist while still maintaining your wealth and exploitation. But really, is there such a huge difference between a landlord collecting income out of their tenants' pockets, and politicians living off taxes? Genuine question, my best answer is that the difference is the landlord is directly placing themselves in a position where they provide no value at all to society and still leech off of people who need housing, while politicians at least nominally are civil servants.