p Dear Comrades,

p No revolutionary duty is loftier than the one which has brought us to this Meeting. It is the duty to strengthen the unity of action of the communist movement and work out a common standpoint regarding the principal tasks facing all of us in the present world situation.

p This duty fully conforms with the interests of the peoples, of progressive mankind, and the vital need for more active support for the heroic Vietnamese people and all those who are fighting imperialism.

p The stronger the international unity of Communists the more eifective our struggle. There is no revolutionary fighter or politically conscious worker who does not appreciate the importance of unity as a militant weapon in the battles with the class enemies.

p The Communist Party of Chile considers that the draft Main Document and other draft documents submitted to this Meeting by the Preparatory Committee accord with the aims of our Meeting and will serve as a powerful instrument in raising the unity of action of the communist movement to a still higher level.

p We have no doubt that the Meeting will be an important milestone in the struggle for the international unity of our ranks on the basis of the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

p We should also like to underline as a very positive element the fact that the Meeting itself and the documents before it have been prepared with the active participation of the Parties represented here. Each of them has had and has the opportunity of fully stating its opinion without being limited by time.

p Divergences are not the principal thing at this Meeting. Nevertheless, existing divergences on various issues have been set forth openly and in comradely fashion, and this, in our opinion, is another service rendered by the Meeting. That different viewpoints are enunciated here does not alarm us because it is more useful to expound and compare them with other opinions. We are confident that this kind qf divergence of viewpoints will not prevent us from leaving this Meeting more united than before.

p In the draft Main Document attention is drawn to the methods employed 267 by imperialism, beginning with persecution and open violence against peoples and ending with manoeuvres to undermine the working-class movement from within. Moreover, depending on the situation, the imperialists resort to demagogy and the use of bourgeois reformism.

p Blood and mourning were left in the wake of the failure of the tour of Latin America undertaken by the oil magnate Rockefeller who met with a rebuff everywhere. The workers and students killed in recent days in the streets of Tegucigalpa, Guayaquil, Cordoba and other towns of the continent, the murders and repression in Haiti and Guatemala, mentioned at this Meeting, the genocide in Vietnam, all show that the imperialists and their agents stop at nothing in fighting the peoples.

p The imperialists are well aware, and they are not mistaken, that we Communists are unyielding foes of imperialism and that it is our purpose to put an end to it. For that reason they fight us first and foremost. Where weapons and jails cannot be used they have recourse to more refined methods. They bring their entire propaganda machine into play. And it must be admitted that this work is being conducted with increasing subtlety.

p The imperialists can no longer maintain that we Communists eat children. Now they spread other fabrications. They represent our Parties as conservative and fossilised, and give their backing to various anti-communist groups which seek to present themselves as more zealous revolutionaries than Communists are. They spread the theories of Marcuse and other ideologists, slandering the working class and trying to prove that it is being integrated into the capitalist system and is ceasing to be a revolutionary class. According to these theoreticians the main motive force of the revolution is the youth and peasants. They thus seek not only to sow confusion but also counterpose the peasants to the workers, the young people to the proletariat, the so-called youth .power to the power of the working class and its allies, and replace the class struggle by a struggle between generations.

p At the same time, in some Latin American countries the imperialists patronise and support pseudo-revolutionary movements, which are served up as an alternative to communism. An example is Christian Democracy, which has come to power in Chile under the slogan of "revolution in freedom" and, it goes without saying, did not accomplish any revolution.

p Some comrades here have exposed the reactionary nature of anti-Sovietism. This is the hobby-horse of imperialism. It is noteworthy that since the Second World War the imperialists have been trying to smuggle it into the ranks of the communist movement itself, making special use of the differences created by the leadership of the Communist Party of China, which has blown up antiSovietism to such proportions that had we not seen it for ourselves we would find it difficult to believe. On the basis of objective facts we must energetically condemn actions of this kind. This condemnation must bring die necessary clarity to the question in order to rally the entire communist movement and not to hinder or make impossible the attainment of that aim.

p In our country the paid agents of the US Embassy, reactionary political gamblers and even some bourgeois politicians who cannot be regarded as being in the same bracket with them, tirelessly allege that our Party is dependent on 268 the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. As Comrade Rochet correctly said here, the Communist Parties are independent and equal, and among them there neither are nor can be dominating and subordinate Parties, just as there cannot be one or several leading centres. Each Party works out its own political line. We Chilean Communists have daily proved and continue to prove this truth. But the reactionaries in our countries do not tire of speaking of an imaginary dependence. They go to any lengths in their quest for narrow nationalistic feelings and other vulnerable places in our ranks. Their purpose is to wrest anti-Soviet statements from our Party and compel us to act against the Soviet Union. But there they have broken and continue to break their teeth.

p We consider that condemnation of anti-Sovietisrn is a principled stand.

p Some people among us may like or dislike vodka, or they may agree or disagree with one or another opinion of the Soviet comrades. But the fact cannot be ignored that the Soviet; Union is the bulwark of the liberation cause of peoples and that it and its Party have played and continue to play the decisive role in the history of our epoch.

p The tremendous achievements which the peoples have won and the revolutionary prospects now opening before the whole world would have been inconceivable without the existence of the Soviet Union, without its economic and military might, without its political weight in the world and its day-to-day Struggle against imperialism.

p On the other hand, how can one fail to agree with Comrade Brezhnev’s realistic presentation of the problem in his speech ? This identity of assessments is founded, naturally, on our own experience, on an objective analysis of the present situation.

p The Communist Parties are profoundly national and, at the same time, internationalist. The Chilean people have erected monuments in the capital and other towns to the founder of the Communist Party of Chile, the printer Comrade Luis Emilio Recabarren and many streets and townships bear his name. The head of the Chilean Catholic Church himself mentioned him along with three or four other great sons of Chile during a solemn religious ceremony marking national independence celebrations.

p A consistent patriot, Recabarren was also an outstanding internationalist. His condemnation of the first imperialist war, resolute support of the October Revolution, and the works devoted to it written during the period of War Communism, which was a difficult time for the Soviet people; his participation in the founding of the Communist Party of Argentina together with Victorio Codovilla and Rodolfo Ghioldi and his condemnation of anti-Peruvian chauvinism in connection with the frontier disputes between our countries—- eloquently show that Comrade Recabarren-adhered to an exceptionally clear and principled position. Our Party and the Chilean working class have been brought up in this tradition of merging the defence of national interests into a single whole with proletarian internationalism.

p In this sense, while of course observing the necessary proportions we could speak of the founder of our Party by paraphrasing the lines Mayakovsky wrote about Lenin: When we speak of the Party we mean Recabarren; when we speak of Recabarren we mean the Party.

p Patriotism and internationalism are complimentary. They are a single whole. And Communists cannot counterpose them to each other or look for contradictions between them. The working-class struggle is national in form and international in content. It is quite obvious, as the draft Main Document points out, that the cardinal internationalist duty of Communists is to overthrow the bourgeoisie in their own countries. In our time this is possible on the sole condition that national and international factors blend in the fire of the class battle and that the struggle of each people merges with the struggle of all peoples against imperialism.

p In conclusion of the above-said we consider it absolutely indispensable that the draft Main Document should be adopted in toto with its principled formulations, because the struggle against imperialism and an intensification of the joint actions of the Communist Parties can acquire the necessary revolutionary force only if they unite on a common ideological foundation and do not slide into narrow pragmatic concepts.

p Comrades, today there are unprecedented real opportunities to isolate the enemy and to unite the broadest revolutionary and progressive forces in the struggle against it. Fresh detachments are joining the working class and the Communists in the battle. Middle strata in town and countryside, young people and intellectuals are joining in the social struggle.against the injustice and crime inherent in capitalism. A sizeable section of these classes and social strata display a truly revolutionary spirit, often using working-class methods in their action, acting together with the Communists and accepting socialism as their goal. This tendency has become most pronounced in Latin America since the Cuban revolution. The urge for change is so deeply rooted in the hearts and minds of our peoples, that it is making ever wider sections of the Catholics join the struggle, and even the clergy is in the grip of an unprecedented crisis.

p Obviously it is not all gold that glitters. In these social sections we also meet with anti-communist prejudices and reservations, with clannish Leftist attitudes and alien ideology. What attitude is to be taken with respect to these riew facts and phenomena of our day, which complicate the social processes ?

p In our opinion, all this is a component part of the mounting struggle of the peoples. Ultimately, it is the result of the deep-going crisis of capitalism, the result of the influence exerted by the socialist world and the activity of the Communist Parties. We take a positive view of these phenomena and are prepared to co-operate.

p The Communist Party of Chile consists in the main of workers; at the same time, it is proud that in its ranks are a great number of intellectuals and students, men and women from every walk of life. We are striving to carry on a dialogue and joint action with the most diverse strata of the people, we carefully study their constructive proposals, and are prepared to examine the new phenomena. We do not believe that such an attitude contradicts loyalty to principles or that we have to make ideological concessions to take joint action with these masses.

p A blend of loyalty to principles and broad scope of work, of the most vigorous defence of national interests and proletarian internationalism, far from weakening, has in fact strengthened our Party. Such is our experience.

p Despite the efforts of anti-communism, we are the main force of the working- 270 class movement. At the last Congress of the United Working People’s Trade Union Centre, which has in its ranks all organised workers and employees in the country, the 3,500 delegates attending elected a leadership in which all trends are represented, with the Communists in the majority. Communist influence has increased in the countryside, which makes real the possibility of an alliance between workers and peasants. We have become the main force among working-class and student youth, We have long since become such a force among writers and artists, and also in the country’s two main universities. At the last parliamentary elections we won more than 16 per cent of the poll and in almost one-third of the provinces—over 20 per cent. Of the total of 150 deputies and 50 senators, 22 and 6 respectively are Communists.

p In the last four years, under the Christian Democratic government, we worked in complex political conditions, fighting our adversaries who act in our own field, among the people, and secured an 83 percent increase in our Party’s membership.

p We naturally face many problems in building up a mass Communist Party both from the standpoint of its growth and from the standpoint of its ideological and political grounding, so as to face up to the experienced domestic enemy, who, incidentally, still has large reserves at his disposal and enjoys strong support from imperialism.

p The main direction of our policy is to unite all the democratic and anti- imperialist forces so as to establish a people’s government capable of putting through the revolutionary changes which are on the order of the day and whose ultimate aim is socialism.

p We encounter considerable difficulties in pursuing this policy. Apart from frontal action by the class enemy this policy comes up both against Leftistsectarian attitudes and against bourgeois-reformist and Right-wing opportunist trends.

p The great number of votes won by our comrades in France, who raised the banner of their people’s combat unity, and the ignominious failure of the Leftist splitters at the polls, will, we believe, promote a timely understanding in our country of the acute necessity for unity of all the popular forces. Such unity is equally, if not more so, necessary in Chile, because it should be borne in mind that apart from defeating the internal enemy it is also necessary to withstand interference by imperialism and provocations by Pentagon-fostered military juntas.

p Comrades, unity of action against imperialism is a dictate of our time. For the Latin American peoples this is as clear as daylight because our continent’s history in this century has been marked by brazen US imperialist interventions, including armed intervention. Take only the last few instances, such as the abortive invasion of Cuba, the marine landing in San Domingo, economic sanctions and other threats which are now being applied to Peru.

p At the recent sitting of the Preparatory Committee, we tabled various amendments to the draft Main Document. Some were adopted, others were not. But we do not feel offended. We think it quite natural that all proposals put forward cannot be adopted. We shall not insist on them in the Drafting Committee or at the sittings of our Meeting, although we should prefer to see 271 a change in some formulations, such as, for instance, the one about the ways of revolution. In our conditions, we have long since ceased speaking of a peaceful or non-peaceful way, and prefer to speak about "an armed or non-armed way". To be more precise, it is not quite right to call peaceful a struggle like the one being waged in Chile—and in other countries also, we believe—where the working people and the masses often resort to national strikes, take over plants and seize land to build homes, stage street demonstrations, which usually lead to clashes with the police. Thus, many of the people’s gains are secured or maintained at the price of blood and lives.

p We are absolutely sure that this Meeting will open the way to new and more resolute joint action against imperialism. We are all agreed that greater cohesion of the communist movement will result from a process in which joint action, bilateral and multilateral meetings, joint studies of concrete problems, and, naturally, time, will play their part.

p To the best of our abilities we are striving to translate these intentions into practice. We found useful the meetings we have had with the various Parties, including those of Europe. We shall strive for an exchange of opinion, for joint action with all Parties attending this Meeting, and as far as possible with those which are not attending. In particular, we want to strengthen our ties with all our brother Parties in Latin America and, it goes without saying, with the Communist Party of Cuba as well.

While the imperialist propagandists are talking about "the decline of ideology", in an effort to make the people abandon revolutionary thinking and to enmesh them in the web of conformism and subordination to the injustices of bourgeois society, while madcap ideas are being spread about the proletariat losing its identity and the distinctions between classes being blurred, which allegedly dispenses with the need to change the existing system, there arises the need to stoke up with fresh vigour the flames of proletarian ideology, of Marxism-Leninism, work for their purity, and apply their truth to the analysis of the kaleidoscopic flight of history, to the new processes in life which is far from static. We are sure that the celebration of the centenary of Lenin’s birth will help all of us in our creative application of his behests, and will operate as a new factor in uniting the international communist movement, and mounting united anti-imperialist action by all peoples.