I think people who say this just think about communism as being central planning of the economy. Theyre not thinking about abolishing private property or dictatorship of the proletariat or any of that

Edit: Also, I think it makes sense that people have this idea, because the countries that are supposedly communist basically have central planning by the state, and little of the other things. If we think about China, they don't really have a worker controlled economy, they work a lot and are not allowed to form unions and so on. I even personally get the impression that their successes in dealing with covid came from central planning and not communism. Btw I basically haven't read any theory, feel free to educate me