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If communist parties are so exclusive how do they become popular with the masses? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 5 days ago by SovietReporter@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml

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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?

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[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 5 days ago

I think maybe a decent way to understand this is to compare it to a hospital. For the sake of analogy, we'll assume a hospital that is for the public good, not one that is gutted by capitalist privatization (otherwise, the analogy gets screwy).

With a hospital you:

Recruit from "the masses", but you don't let just anyone be a medical specialist. They have to go through training and experience to hold an important role in the hospital. Both "theory and practice" are required before they can take on an important role without supervision.
In spite of the hospital's most important services being administered primarily by specialists (as opposed to just anyone who will volunteer), it is notably still a service that exists for the people, not for the personal advancement or enrichment of the specialists at the expense of the people.
Patients generally can still make choices about what happens to them (the medical professionals are not just dictating everything to them, though there may be situations where they take charge if it's bad enough).

Not a perfect 1:1 thing, but trying to get at the idea of how there can be times when a kind of benevolent institution can exist without simply being "dictatorial" in the way people consider scary and also has to be somewhat strict in who does the actual roles (else it loses what makes it successful as an institution).