p Comrades,

p To begin with, on behalf of the delegation of the Communist Party of Honduras, I must express our surprise and indignation over the intervention of the Dominican representative. It is hard to believe that it could come from a member of one of the Latin American Communist Parties, joined by common aims in the struggle against US imperialism and viewing the Document single-mindedly as a programme of anti-imperialist action at the present stage. More than 70 Communist Parties took part in discussing the Document. Does the Dominican representative really presume that his theoretical learning entitles him to make statements insulting to the Parties gathered here?

p The Dominican delegate has not understood the situation and the conditions in which our Meeting was convened; he has not understood the aims and tasks of this communist forum. We can just imagine the rejoicing that reports of the Dominican intervention evoked in the camp of our enemies. The Voice of America is sure to broadcast it on all wave-lengths. What we ask is, does this intervention serve the interests of the Dominican Communists and those of the Dominican people? The answer to that is the core of the problem.

p Comrades, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Honduras instructed us to conyey fraternal greetings to the Communist and Workers’ Parties taking part in this Meeting. At the same time, we express our heartfelt gratitude to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party for their effort in making this Communist Meeting live up to the hopes of the peoples of the world.

p The Honduras Communists are aware of the difficulties that have had to be overcome for this. Even in the remotest corners of the world, the class enemies of the proletariat mounted an intensive campaign against the convocation of this world conference of Communists. They want to sow scepticism among the masses to wards’this event and distrust of the possibility of uniting the world’s progressive forces to invigorate the struggle against oppression and exploitation. Divisive elements are artificially magnifying and distorting the specific problems now facing the world communist movement. These distortions are the source of all kinds of pessimistic forecasts about the outcome of this grand communist assembly.

p Information forwarded to us on various occasions by the comrades whom the world communist movement entrusted with organising this forum, spoke clearly of the difficulties at hand. Members of the international Secretariat elected by democratic procedure have had to work in earnest and display profound understanding to fulfil the tasks placed upon them. We Communists of Honduras thank them and approve their painstaking work without reservations.

p The International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties is a political event of the greatest historical importance. Whatever the class enemies of the proletariat may say to the contrary, whatever they may do to foil it, the Meeting will go down in modern history as a glorious milestone in the peoples’ fight for socialism.

p This is a decisive epoch in man’s history. Our previous Meeting, which exercised a tremendous influence on the modern world, described it as "the epoch of the transition from capitalism to socialism on a world scale". Today, too, we agree with this definition without qualification. In this historical stage, against the setting of large-scale class battles, imperialism is trying stubbornly to retain its positions, using a variety of tactics ranging from reformist manoeuvres in some regions of the world to direct aggressions in others. However, the peoples of the world, increasingly conscious of the depressing reality around them and increasingly determined to fight for economic and political emancipation, are intensifying their resistance to this policy on all fronts. This means that our Meeting coincides with a period of high tide in the popular struggle, its historical impact hingeing on the aim of cementing the ranks of the world proletariat, the vanguard of socialist revolution, and orienting it on the new tasks in the fight against imperialism. Our unity is the essential foundation for other social forces already participating in the battle against man’s bitterest enemy to concentrate their democratic and revolutionary energy on goals more closely associated with the great socialist cause.

p Attaching tremendous importance to an international communist forum, our Party did not hesitate to support the idea of convening it, and made its modest contribution in that direction. With Vietnam a victim of aggression, with the succession of reactionary coups and with world peace in constant peril, our appreciation of our internationalist duty helped us realise from the beginning that the most important and most vital task transcending all differences is to rally the Communists round a fundamental action platform envisaging an intensification of the struggle against the main enemy of all peoples in this era.

p Comrade Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was very clear on this point in his calm and profound speech at this Meeting: "Building up a world-wide anti-imperialist front, the task of tasks in our time, cannot be successful without struggle for the unity of the world communist movement”.

p Today, in the concluding phase of our Meeting, we note with satisfaction that our concerns and our basic views are shared by the vast majority of the fraternal Parties. Throughout the preparatory work we witnessed a common trend highlighted by broad democracy in organisational matters and in drafting 606 and discussing the documents. All representatives of the fraternal Parties had the opportunity to express their ideas on the matters under discussion in a comradely atmosphere. The specifics of the situation in which the various contingents of the international working class are fighting for their aims were taken into consideration at all times. The collective effort was concentrated not on evading these specifics, but on taking them into account as fully as possible in the single, fundamental anti-imperialist line effective for all. As we see it, therefore, no one can accuse either the Preparatory Committee or the Meeting of disregarding the conditions and concrete problems facing the Parties represente d here.

p We find this confirmed in the draft of the Main Document, adopted as the basis for the discussion here at the Meeting. Our Party approves this Document, and doubly so after the wording of some of its paragraphs has been improved in the final stage. In our view, the Document is a thoroughly thrashed out programme of unity, rallying us for concrete aims. All four of its sections complement each other both as regards the principles and the practical tasks in the common struggle against imperialism. We Marxists, who combine theory and practice, are not prone to narrow practicalism, for we adhere in our work to principles elaborated on the basis of practice. That is why we reaffirm today that our Party opposes the proposals to reduce the Document to a simple enumeration of the anti-imperialist tasks, devoid of an ideological groundwork and of propositions of principle.

p Our principles have not grown old. They cannot grow old. True, ever new problems posed by the unprecedentedly rapid growth of society arise before us each day. However, no one need adopt postures inconsistent with the general principles of Marxism-Leninism to study these problems and work out a correct policy. The problems of the youth, the intelligentsia and other sections of society that join the struggle against imperialism, are analysed by each Party in accordance with the concrete conditions and on the basis of the general Marxist principles. These efforts are essentially creative, aimed at studying and understanding the new phenomena from the standpoint of our ever young scientific doctrine. We recall Comrade Manuilsky saying at one of the Comintern congresses that "the Bolsheviks are invincible, because they are eternally young". This means that Marxism-Leninism is a continuously developing teaching, always concrete in its appraisals.

p Neither are we in agreement with the proposal to set apart the First, Second and Fourth Sections, so that they could be signed, as was said here, by those Parties which accept them. If we followed this line of reasoning, we should have two incomplete documents, neither of them measuring up to the purpose set for the Document as a whole. We should then have an outline platform devoid of scientific arguments, on the one hand, and an assortment of doctrinaire formulas devoid of the essential section indicating the practical tasks of intensifying the struggle against imperialism throughout the world, on the other. To do so, we hold, would be to nullify all the preparatory work aud, thereby, the very purpose of this Meeting.

p The 7th plenary meeting of our Party’s Central Committee, called specially to examine the draft of the Document forwarded for study, wholeheartedly 607 approved its analysis of the relation of world forces. As we see it, that analysis cannot be considered one-sided, because it does not portray imperialism as an invincible colossus conducting an offensive against the peoples, while avoiding the error of underestimating its capability. The draft of the Document is entirely objective in warning the peoples that, despite imperialism’s not having grown stronger as a world system, it is still a serious and dangerous adversary. This standpoint gives no grounds whatsoever for fighters for peace, democracy and socialism to succumb to defeatism and pessimism or for nourishing groundless optimism as regards an easy victory over imperialism.

p In the view of the Communist Party of Honduras it is of especial significance that the Main Document places the socialist camp, and above all the Soviet Union, in the forefront of the forces fighting imperialism. We have no doubts at all that the existence and continuous consolidation of the socialist camp is the ultimate guarantee of successful revolution in the world and imperialism’s defeat. Our Party holds, therefore, that if the socialist camp has an internationalist duty to perform to all the other fronts of the struggle, these fronts, too—the working-class movement in the developed capitalist countries and the national liberation movement—shoulder the same responsibility in relation to the countries building socialism and communism. This, we hold, is all the more obvious because the imperialist circles are mounting aggressive actions all over the world and conducting an ideological struggle against the socialist camp in the hope of undermining its foundations and driving a wedge between the socialist countries.

p We Communists cannot look on dispassionately while the enemy acts to subvert the prestige of the socialist camp and weaken the world forces supporting it. It could not be more obvious that the purpose of this activity is to obscure the historical perspectives emerging for our peoples. That is why broad solidarity with the socialist camp, solidarity with the Soviet Union, is a question of principle that lost none of its importance either at the time when only one socialist country existed or today, when the number of socialist countries has increased. At present, proletarian internationalism carries the broadest and deepest significance, because by defending the socialist camp against all attacks aimed at impairing its strength, each contingent of the working class defends its own rockbottom interests. We see a direct connection there, and point to it without hesitation: the opportunity to develop revolutionary movements in any part of the world depends largely on the consolidation and invigoration of the countries building socialism and communism.

p By reason of the above, we Honduran Communists hold that the greatest harm a political leadership can inflict on its working class is to join the enemy in attacking the socialist camp. A genuinely Marxist-Leninist attitude consistent with the principles of proletarian internationalism, is incompatible with attacks on the socialist camp and its main bastion, the Soviet Union. Any other policy impinges on the basic interests of the international working class and, in effect, grinds the axe of the enemy.

p That, in our view, is the kind of policy followed by the present leadership of. the Chinese People’s Republic. In our view, the policy and actions pursued by the Mao group against the world communist movement cannot be reduced 608 to merely ideological differences. It is absolutely clear to us that this attitude is entirely alien to Marxism-Leninism and must be exposed.

p For a long time, the world communist movement kept silent on this score, while seeking to prevail on the Chinese leadership to reverse its dangerous course. However, while the world communist movement displayed restraint, while it called for unity time and again, the Peking leadership persisted in its aim: it destroyed the glorious Communist Party of China, trampled upon the basic principles of scientific socialism and in its international relations, particularly with the Soviet Union, ended up by committing a direct aggression. For this reason, we hold, it would be intolerable for us to keep silent any longer or treat these facts in a spirit of reconciliation. The interests of the world communist movement and, in particular, the interests of the great Chinese nation require Communists who are proletarian internationalists to expose with all energy and clarity the concepts of Maoism, turned into something close to a religion.

p Comrades, it is extremely important for the Communist Party of Honduras that, as indicated in the Main Document, joint action against imperialism should hinge upon struggle against all ideological deviations and confusions occurring in our movement today. All of us know perfectly well that these deviations, be they Left or Right, are the product of the enemy’s ideological penetration into the ranks of the proletariat and that in a way they act as a brake on the revolutionary process in each country. The intensification of the struggle against imperialism—the goal set by our Meeting—must be accompanied on all accounts by a deepening of the ideological struggle not only against conceptions formulated by the class enemy, but also against all revisionist trends surfacing in our ranks.

p It is quite obvious that the frontiers of socialism are expanding as a result of the growth of the revolutionary movement throughout the world. This does not mean, however, that socialism can dissolve, as some modern theories contend, in the diversity of national conditions. There is only one socialism— the scientific socialism, the socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin—and it is the duty of Communists to apply the universal principles of proletarian socialism creatively to the concrete conditions of each country, to reality, drawing a strict line of distinction between socialism and the revisionist distortions of it.

p On the other hand, the Communist Party of Honduras extends unqualified support to the thesis of the Main Document concerning the conditions of the revolutionary struggle in Latin America. On that continent, as some paragraphs of the Document say, "US imperialism continues to step up its economic penetration, as well as its political, ideological and cultural intervention", and "suppresses any step leading to economic and genuine political independence". However, this imperialist policy, as we see from the content of the Document,’ is nothing but a desperate attempt by Yankee imperialism to halt the popular struggle mounting in different forms, from parliamentary activity where this is possible to armed action where the objective and subjective preconditions make resort to arms acceptable as a form of struggle.

p Against the general background of Latin American reality, the glorious Cuban revolution is an event of extraordinary importance for the irresistible 609 growth of the democratic process of liberation leading on as a historical necessity to socialism. The historical turn that,resulted from the victory of the Cuban revolution implies broader tasks, to accomplish which -representatives of the proletariat, peasants, students, progressive intellectuals and other Latin American social strata are fighting and making sacrifices. The Cuban exploit has caused deep-going changes on our continent. These changes and their influence will expand as Cuba’s socialist construction makes headway and as Cuba solves her basic problems created by imperialist aggressiveness. The solidarity of the world communist movement, and primarily of the Soviet Union, is a firm and dependable guarantee for the creative work pursued in the revolutionary Cuba of our day.

p Comrades, for the reasons enumerated above, the delegation of the Communist Party of Honduras declares its readiness to sign the Main Document submitted to this Meeting by the last session of the Preparatory Committee. Our Party will enthusiastically sign the documents "Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin", "Independence, Freedom and Peace for Vetnam!" and the "Appeal in Defence of Peace". All these documents are vitally important for the anti-imperialist struggle in the world and we see no reason, either procedural or of principle, for not signing all these documents on behalf of our Party.

p We Honduran Communists are convinced that all the materials of the Meeting, and above all the Main Document, will play an important part in promoting our own struggle against the military dictatorship oppressing our country. It is the policy of our Party today to accumulate and consolidate its forces in the process of the mass struggle for the democratisation of the political and social life of our country.

In conclusion, we wish all the comrades present here every success in fulfilling the big and urgent tasks that now confront us in the struggle against imperialism, for peace, democracy and socialism.