Marxism vs. Sectarianism by Alan Woods is a very good reply to all the points you have raised I would think. I have taken the liberty of quoting it at some length:
Marxism and the Mass Organisations
When the ultra-left groups attack us on the question of our work in the mass organizations, they believe that they are attacking our weak side. As a matter of fact, they are attacking one of our strongest sides - that side that always distinguishes a genuine Marxist tendency from a sect: our firm and persistent orientation towards the mass organizations of the working class. When we hear this kind of criticism, we merely shrug our shoulders. It is ABC that a Marxist tendency must always strive to conduct revolutionary work in the mass organizations of the proletariat. This was explained by Lenin and Trotsky (or, for that matter, by Marx and Engels) a long time ago. A child of six should be able to understand this. But since the leaders of the PO do not understand it, we are obliged to restate some of the fundamentals.
The ultra-left groups are fond of quoting Lenin's writings from the period 1914-17, when he insisted repeatedly on the need for an independent revolutionary party and call on the British Marxists to leave the Labour Party. This was answered in advance by Trotsky when he wrote. "But Lenin had in mind a break with reformists as the inevitable consequence of a struggle against them, and not an act of salvation regardless of time and place. He required a split with the social patriots not in order to save his own soul but in order to tear the masses away from social patriotism." (Trotsky, Writings 1935-36, p.156.)
The need to build an independent revolutionary party is ABC for Marxists. However, after the ABC, there are more letters in the alphabet, and a child who only repeated the first three after a few years at school would not be considered very bright. In the present epoch, the revolutionaries are faced with powerful mass reformist organizations - both mass parties and trade unions - which have the support of millions of workers. Our ability to grow depends decisively on our ability to win over the base of these organizations, especially the trade unions, but also the mass reformist parties.In the founding document of the Marxist movement, The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explain that the Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties:
"They have no interest separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
"They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
"The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only: 1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
"The Communists are, therefore, on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others: on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement." (Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol.1, pp.119-120).
These remarks are a closed book for the PO leaders, yet they express the essence of what separates real Marxism from a sectarian caricature. The ultra-left groups always forget that the mass forces of the Communist International were only formed on the basis of great events, in the period 1917-23. In most cases, the mass parties of the new International were formed out of splits in the old parties of the Second International. Moreover, in some cases the Communists actually won a majority of the old organisations, as in France, Germany, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.
A sectarian attitude to the old reformist mass organizations was characteristic, not of Lenin and Trotsky, but of the ultra-lefts in Holland, Britain and Italy, against which Lenin and Trotsky waged a relentless struggle. Although they tried to quote Lenin's writings of the period of the First World War against him, they had understood nothing of Lenin's dialectical method. Lenin's book "Left Wing Communism - an Infantile Disorder" was written in the early days of the Communist International to answer the arguments of the "Lefts", which re-appear at every stage in the writings of the ultra-left groups. Lenin explained that it was a crime to split away the advanced workers from the mass, and that such tactics, far from undermining the trade union bureaucracy, actually serves to strengthen it:
"To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labour aristocrats, or workers who have become completely bourgeois...
"If you want to help the 'masses' and win the sympathy and support of the 'masses', you should not fear difficulties or pin-pricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the 'leaders' (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations - even the most reactionary - in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.31, p.53.)
Luis Oviedo suffers an apoplectic attack when the mass trade union confederations in Argentina (CTA and CGT) are mentioned, let alone the Bolivian Workers' Union (COB). They are "bureaucratic", you see. Yet Lenin explained how the Bolsheviks even conducted illegal work in the "Zubatov" unions, set up by the Tsarist police to keep the workers away from revolutionary ideas. Without knowing it, the leaders of the PO are repeating the arguments, not of Lenin and Trotsky, but of the "Left Communists" whom Lenin criticized so ferociously in the early years of the Communist International. At the Second Congress of the Comintern, Lenin and Trotsky waged a struggle against the "infantile disorder" of ultra-leftism. The Manifesto of the Second Congress, written by Trotsky, states that:
"The Communist International is the world party of proletarian uprising and proletarian dictatorship. It has no aims and tasks separate and apart from those of the working class itself. The pretensions of the tiny ultra-left groups, each of which wants to save the working class in its own manner, are alien and hostile to the spirit of the Communist International. It does not possess any panaceas or magic formulas but bases itself on the past and present international experience of the working class; it purges that experience of all blunders and deviations; it generalises the conquests made and recognises only such revolutionary formulas as are formulas of mass action." (Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Comintern, Vol.1, p.131.)
The same document adds: "Waging a merciless struggle against reformism in the trade unions and against parliamentary cretinism and careerism, the Communist International at the same time condemns all sectarian summonses to leave the ranks of the multi-millioned trade union organisations or to turn one's back upon parliamentary and municipal institutions. The Communists do not separate themselves from the masses who are being deceived and betrayed by the reformists and the patriots, but engage the latter in an irreconcilable struggle within the mass organisations and institutions established by bourgeois society, in order to overthrow them the more surely and the more quickly."
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