So the communist party only accepts the most advanced elements of the proletariat, people with the highest class consciousness. How does the party educate the rest of the population if it is that picky with who they let in?
I was told that the difference between the Bolsheviks and the Menscheviks was that the Menscheviks let anyone join, but the Bolsheviks only let people with advanced class consciousness join. How does that give popularity to a party if it is so exclusive?
Well to give an off-the-cuff answer its not a matter of 'accepting' everyone into the Party, but rather that the Party is an expression of class-consciousness, which coupled with the vanguard of the proletariat in a leading & organized position is able to organize the revolution from the level of a strategist. Through an organic chain of links it is able to generate organizations for the middle-strata of the proletariat. Crucially, the Party maintains a mediated relationship with the masses. To accept everyone into the Party is to lose the necessary strategic element of revolution, prostrating itself to spontaneity, subordinating ideology to politics. It is, in a word, opportunism.