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p Comrades,

p We wish to thank you for your kind invitation to attend and to participate in your deliberations. For us, this is like home-coming, like joining our ideological family.

p Not only theory, but practice has taught us that this is where we belong. Repeated attacks against us by the conservative Churchill, Macmillan and Home governments and by the liberal Kennedy Administration, and betrayal by the Social-Democratic Attlee and Wilson governments have established that only the international communist movement in alliance with the democratic and progressive forces in the capitalist states, and the liberation movements in the colonial and neo-colonial countries and not conservative, liberal or SocialDemocratic leadership can liberate the working people of Guyana and elsewhere from imperialist exploitation and oppression.

p Our presence here will be the excuse for further attacks. But this does not frighten us. We have long been faced with imperialism’s biggest weapon—- anticommunism. We were attacked more than two decades ago, when inspired by the heroic deeds of the Soviet people under the magnificent leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union we had formed in 1946 the Political Affairs Committee, and in 1950, the People’s Progressive Party with a programme of national independence and scientific socialism as our banner.

p We did not somersault as most Commonwealth Caribbean leaders did when the cold war was started in the late 1940s by US imperialism and backed by the British Labour Party’s Social Democrats. Thus, we became one of its early victims.

p In October 1953, at the height of the McCarthyite red witch-hunt in the USA, our Constitution was suspended, and the first Government formed by our Party was destroyed by force. Popularly elected with 18 out of 24 seats to govern for 4 years, it lasted only 4.5 months. British gunboats and bullets replaced ballots. Our people, armed with the right of adult suffrage for the first time and united under the banner of the People’s Progressive Party, soon learnt that Anglo-American democracy meant that the people had the right to vote provided they voted in accordance with the wishes of the imperialists.

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p Guyana is the graveyard of imperialism’s alleged good intentions. It is a case history of its hypocrisy and deceit, a laboratory for its tricks and stratagems practised at the international level.

p During the past 20 years, our people have learnt that despite the loud claims of the imperialists about their beliefs in freedom and democracy, Western democracy means naked force, bribery, gerrymandering, fomenting racial strife, manipulation of Constitutions, rigging of elections, denial of constitutional guarantees, and militarisation of our politics. No doubt, these methods were adopted from time to time because our Party, though dubbed Communist, had been able to win 3 consecutive elections, and to defeat the imperialists at their own game under their own rules. And we would still have been in the government today had it not been for the crudest practice of electoral manipulation, subversion, force and fraud.

p We support the Document. We agree with its structure and formulations. Its four parts give a true picture of the world situation, the forces supporting and opposing imperialism; and where, when and how action must be undertaken.

p We do not agree with some comrades who said that only some parts of the Document, mainly Section Three, should be adopted. A call for action alone is not enough. Experience teaches that in the face of demagogy, racial and religious emotionalism, it is not enough to state what we stand for, what our programme of action is. Nor is it enough to tell the people that they are oppressed, exploited and hungry. That they know. What they don’t know is precisely how and by whom they are exploited, and the role played by the frauds and hangers-on.

p The Document provides clarity. It speaks of the growing monopolisation and concentration of capital, the merging of the state and the capitalist monopolies, and the new forms of economic organisation and integration for the exploitation and subjugation of whole nations and peoples.

p In Guyana, the imperialists own and control the most profitable sectors of production, sugar and bauxite—sugar in the hands of two British monopolies; bauxite in the hands of one US monopoly and one Canadian company, itself tied to US capital. The least profitable and risky spheres of production have been relegated to the Guyanese people.

p Foreign-owned and controlled sugar and bauxite earn about 75 per cent of the export income of the country. The imperialists also dominate the services sector—foreign and wholesale trade, banking, insurance, shipping. Through low wages, high interest rates, high prices and state tax and other concessions, they make profits of about G$60 million annually, most of which is drained abroad. Through shady transactions and price manipulations between local subsidiaries and parent companies abroad, they hide their profits, underpay the workers and filch the national treasury. They drain our natural wasting assets, without adequate recompence, and maintain our country as a primary producer. A recent study of the University of the West Indies revealed that the Caribbean territories—Guyana, Surinam, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic—supply 86 per cent of the raw material, bauxite, for North American aluminium production, but earn only 4 per cent of the net income of the integrated bauxite-aluminium industry.

p The foreign monopolists thus play a decisive role in the economic, political 612 and cultural life of our country. US-dictated foreign and domestic policies and the imposed bankrupt Puerto-Rican model of economic development have led to grave social problems. Standard of living has fallen; unemployment is sharply increasing, amounting to 22 per cent of the labour force, and to 35 per cent among youths in the urban areas; crime rate is alarmingly high; emigration is record-breaking.

p In 1969, only an inadequate 40 per cent of the current budget was devoted to the welfare of the people; the rest, 60 per cent, was consumed by the growing bureaucracy, waste, corruption and the payment of debt charges.

p The position of the working people will soon rapidly deteriorate because of the militarisation of our economy and the sharp increase in debt charges. Debt payments increased from 12 per cent of the budget in 1960 to 19 per cent in 1968 and will be about 30 per cent in the early 1970s. Thus, a vicious circle will be created—more taxation; declining living standards; sharpening class struggle; bigger police and army; denial of civil rights and liberties; bigger loans and bigger debt payments; more taxation; more class clashes; more repression leading to a police state.

p This is the kind of perspective which the Document as a whole has presented in general. It needs to be said. It is an established fact that poverty alone does not lead to revolution. It is poverty, coupled with understanding and organisation, which leads to action.

p Hence, our call in Guyana for a new strategy of economic development in place of the US-imposed Puerto-Rican model and a revolutionary programme calling for the nationalisation of foreign and comprador capitalist-owned and -controlled mines, plantations, factories, insurance, banking and foreign trade; land reform; exchange, price and rent controls; foreign policy of trade with, and aid from, East and West; planned proportional development with emphasis simultaneously on industry and agriculture mainly in the public and co- operative sectors; free education at all levels; free medical care; full employment; security in old age; full democracy and workers’ participation at all levels. Around such a radical and revolutionary programme, we base our call for united and militant action.

p Perhaps, some of our comrades here have proposed deletions of certain sections out of deference to the views of those either present or absent who do not agree with the ideological line taken in the Document, hoping that this is the best possible way to create unity of action. This in pur view is a mistake.

p Today, more than ever, a clear-cut ideological line of the international communist and working-class movement is vitally needed. The imperialists have created a world-wide propaganda apparatus to mount a campaign of half-baked ideas, half-truths and plain lies embellished as everlasting truths.

p Besides, increasing contingents, particularly students, intellectuals and professionals, radicalised and revolutionised by their own proletarisation through the technological revolution and the deepening crisis of imperialism, are confused because of lack of ideological clarity and unfortunately spend a great deal of time, energy, and militancy fighting one another instead of concentrating their forces unitedly against the class enemy.

p We must face these realities and take the bull by the horns. Trying to 613 pretend that differences do not exist will not cause them to disappear. What is needed is more and more debate in depth.

p The Document, in our view, presents a correct Marxist-Leninist analysis of die international situation and has proposed a correct line of action. We see nothing wrong in warning against both Right and Left deviationism. Did not Lenin spend a great deal of his time combating these very harmful tendencies ?

p We came here with an open mind and regret that all the Communist and Workers’ Parties are not represented. We would have liked the Chinese leadership to be present here to convince us of the correctness of their ideological and political line. Unfortunately, they prefer to stay away, hurl invectives and precipitate border clashes with the Soviet Union, which with the other socialist states is the main bastion against world imperialism.

p Incidentally, we are amused by the Chinese charges against the USSR of revisionism when simultaneously the CPSU leadership is charged with orthodoxy and rigidity by the imperialists and their agents and dupes. We are reminded that Lenin himself was charged with revisionism for the New Economic Policy. But the economic and military miglat of the Soviet Union today in spite of the many obstacles and difficulties is a testimony to his genius. The correctness of theory is tested not by words but on the anvil of practice.

p While we respect the right of the Chinese Communist Party leadership to determine the course of their own internal policies, we cannot condone their dogmatic approach for all of us. Nor do we respect their behaviour in giving support to those who attack our Party, the main bastion against neo-colonialism, and thus give aid and comfort to our enemy—the imperialists and their puppets. Fortunately, their numbers do not amount to more than a few dozens.

p The Chinese leadership by their non-Marxist methods of criticism and unprincipled attacks against the Soviet Union and the other socialist states have precipitated disunity in the world revolutionary camp. Disunity in the face of the enemy, as the great leader of the Cuban people and revolution, Comrade Fidel Castro, once said, is not only dangerous but also suicidal.

p Who can deny that this disunity was largely responsible for the heightened aggressiveness of the USA in the past six years in Vietnam and the setbacks in other parts of the developing world ? One has only to compare this period with the mid-and late-1950s. In the 1953 Korean war, US imperialism was forced to retreat and General MacArthur was sacked by President Truman, the cold-warrior. In Indochina, French colonialism was humiliatingly defeated in 1954. In the 1956 Middle East crisis, the united voice of 62 nations at the United Nations and the Soviet declaration of possible military action on the side of Egypt caused the Anglo-French-Israeli imperialists to stop their aggression and the United States of America to renege on promises of help to Britain, France and Israel. In 1958, Batista was crushed in Cuba with no US intervention. The Algerians forced France to grant their country independence. The united, revolutionary tide brought many African, Asian and Caribbean colonies their independence.

p We raise these criticisms about Chinese leadership not in the spirit of an attack, but in the hope that they will see their way soon to rejoin the world communist movement and restore it to it., united strength of the 1950s.

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p And while we warn about “Left” dogmatism, sectarianism and infantilism which can provide the excuse for unnecessary attacks and casualties and the denial of democratic rights, we wish also at the same time to warn about lapsing into passivity and inaction. Arm-chair generalship, conferences, meetings, releases and communiques must not be the substitute for action. We need to affirm more resoluteness of purpose and niore firmness of action.

p Equally, as the draft Document warns, we must guard against Right opportunism. At the national level We know what this means. In 1953, when we were united, we crushed the forces of colonialist reaction and racism. Today US im-^! perialism, local reaction and racism once again hold sway principally because of the betrayal of L.F.S. Burnham and his small clique who split our Party in 1955, joined with the reactionary and racist elements in 1958 and made a deal with US imperialism in 1962. His puppet government now pursues an ariticommuriist, pro-imperialist and racist policy.

p The danger of Right opportunism is equally present at the international level. We cannot say that we share some of the Right deviationist sentiments expressed here.

p A few comrades would have us believe that there is no immediate danger from imperialist aggression, that the whole trouble in the world revolutionary movement started with the August 1968 entry of the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia, that this was a violation of sovereignty and denial of democratic development which "harmed our cause". It seems that these comrades are putting the cart before the horse.

p No, comrades. This is no time to equivocate. We must face the real world and not be led into illusory paths. Imperialism has not given up its aggressive intentions. It has changed its methods, not its aims. It has become more cunning. Comrade Brezhnev has Warned us of its many disguises. It practises new tricks, and pursues different tactics for different regions, indeed, sometimes, different tactics for the same region at the same time as its "iron hand" and "kid glove" reformist approaches in Latin America. It is necessary not only to know that the enemy of the working class is ruthless but also to recognise him in his true form and disguises.

p Have we forgotten that the Truman doctrine of 1947 enunciated the principle of "containment of communism" and the “liberation” of the "captive states", the designation given to the East European socialist states ? Have we forgotten that US state-monopoly capitalism once toyed with the- idea of a massive first strike against the Soviet Union? Have we forgotten that urider the Johnson doctrine, the US government has assumed the right to intervene with all its military might in any Latin American state which it considers to be "threatened by communism"? Have we not recognised that the Pentagon, having failed in its “limited” war in Vietnam is now with its ABM-programme going back to the "massive retaliation” strategy?

p And what about impefialisni’s vast subversive apparatus, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ? Two Americans in their book, The Invisible Government, told of the meticulous, secret preparations made by the Central Intelligence Agency to launch the Bay of Pigs invasion against Cuba. In 1967, in the expose of the CIA, it was shown hoW with hundreds of millions of dollars spent each 615 year both in the United States and abroad, numerous organisations embracing a wide spectrum from Right to Left—trade Union, political^ cultural, religious, journalist, press, radio, youth, student—were infiltrated, bribed and corrupted.

p True, the CIA did not succeed in Cuba, thanks to the heroism of the Cuban people. But did it not succeed in Iran in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, in Guyana, in Greece and elsewhere? Must the international communist movement wait until imperialism works from within tod without,- and wins, and Communists and other progressives are slaughtered in hundreds and thousands before it acts ? Observe what happened in Guyana. In a story, "How the CIA Got Rid of Jagan" in the London Sunday Times of April 16, 1967, the Insight Team wrote:

p “As coups go, it was not expensive: over five years the CIA paid out something over £250,000. For the colony, British Guiana, the result was about 170 dead, untold huridreds wounded^ roughly £10 million-worth of damage to the economy, and a legacy of racial bitterness”.

p Referring to the August events, our Australian comrades say that "the intervention harmed our cause, the struggle for a socialist world", that " internationalism cannot be separated from a regard for the rights of all nations, great and small”.

p Since when do we argue only legalistically, and not also dialectically ? Do we make no distinction between imperialist wars and interventions oil the one hatid, and people’s Wars arid international solidarity on the Other? Ha"ve we fbrgotten that the US imperialists have proclaimed and ptit Jrito practice that trie concept of national sovereignty and Self-determination are obsolete^ that "ideological frontiers" must replace "geographical frontiers" ?

p Comrade Husak rightly drew our attention to the concept of the "class content of sovereignty". This is important. US intervention with 65,000 troops in the Dominican Republic was a violation iiot only of territorial integrity But also of real sovereignty. It was done to maintain the neo-coloniallst status c(uo and to prevent a social revolution. If the entry of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries Was similarly a violation of Czechoslovakia’s borders, its objective was different. It was done to prevent a socialist state from reverting to capitalism, and to preserve the fundamental sovereign right of the Chechoslovakian people, the right to be free from capitalist exploitation and all the other ills of capitalist Society. Therefore,- far from being a violation of internationalism^^1^^, it was a duty. As Comrade Husa’k correctly put itj the rights, obligations and duties of the socialist states are inextricably Interlinked.

p What do our Australian comrades mean when they say in connection with the August events that "internationalism cannot be identified with the national interests of any socialist country" ? If this is a veiled reference to the Soviet Urriori, tve cannot conceive that there is or can be any interest Of the Soviet state which is in contradiction with the interests of the various contingents of the wbfld revolutionary movement. Since when do genuine natiofaal intere’Sts and proletarian internationalism conflict? Does not the Soviet people, who suffered loss of millions’ of Iivv£ and billions Of roubles c^f property at the hands of Gerrnari fascism, have a right to protect their national interests and at trie same time to maintain J^eir strength to discharge their international duty? 616 Have we forgotten that when certain events occurred in the late 1930s and early 1940s, what a tremendous howl went out about Soviet intervention and the denial of freedom and democracy? Let us remember that had the Soviet Union not acted in the way she did then it is quite possible that we would not have been sitting here, and the whole world would have been hailing Hitler, or saluting II Duce!

p No comrades, this is no time to act like the proverbial dog which not content with the bone in its mouth grasped at the shadow and lost the bone.

p We must not give grist to the imperialist mill as our Australian comrades did when they used such phraseology as "an expansion of democracy in the socialist countries would have a significant impact on the development of the democratic and revolutionary movement in the Western countries”.

p Surely, we must be more careful in the use of words. Are we talking about form or substance ? We in one of the most aggravated areas of struggle, Latin America, are not afraid to say that at any stage of its transition from socialism to communism, socialist democracy is far more free in the broader humanistic sense than liberal-bourgeois democracy.

p We must not use language helpful to our enemies, who never tire in charging that there is no democracy in socialist states. Instead, our language must be unambiguous and our answer forthright and resolute. That was how Comrade Fidel Castro replied to the charges of past president L. B. Johnson that there was no democracy and freedom in Cuba. He invited Johnson to give a gun to every Negro and every worker in the USA as he had done in Cuba, and then the world would have been able to see which country was more democratic and free!

p It is one thing to criticise as Comrade Fidel Castro did by posing the question of why the August events after 20 years of socialist power, and by pointing out to what he regarded as aberrations and deformations of Marxism-Leninism and as violations of the norms of socialist behaviour. It is quite another thing to condemn and to talk about harming "our cause". Socialist Cuba, which is also our cause, is on the firing line; Comrade Fidel knows perhaps more than many of us here what struggling for "our cause and a socialist world" means, yet he has said that the entry of the Warsaw pact troops was politically justifiable.

p Rather than attacking the socialist states and slandering the present Czechoslovakian leadership, as some have done inside the communist movement, we should sympathise with them in their difficulties and congratulate them for their firmness.

p On our part, we are satisfied with the explanation given by Comrade Husak. We know from our own experience how the imperialists and their paid lackeys bribed and corrupted even from within our own ranks; how through their owned or supported press, radio, pulpit and platform they deluded and incited sections of the working class and lumpen proletariat to demonstrate, strike and riot against their own interests.

p We can understand the 1956 events in Hungary and the necessity for the serious warnings by Comrade Kadar about the role of reaction in the history of the Hungarian peoples struggle for socialism.

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p Comrades, we must guard against seeing the world mainly from the limited horizon of the developed capitalist states. And in the quest for unity to achieve power through the ballot box, we must also guard against arguing from the premises and positions of the liberals and Social Democrats. Comrades must take a world view and not be lulled into a false sense of security because they are working in an atmosphere of bourgeois-liberal freedoms. Reaction has demonstrated that it can and will strike as in Greece, the cradle of Western democracy.

p In this respect, the People’s Progressive Party has a rich experience. During the course of its 19-year attempt to gain power through the ballot box, it has learnt the ways of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Red witch-hunting, force, bribery, terror, victimisation and gerrymandering were resorted to by imperialism. Yet the Party won consecutively in 1953,1957,1961. On the eve of independence, US pressure and CIA-financed and fomented riots and strife, forced the British government to change the electoral system, which resulted in the removal of the PPP from the government in 1964. Had the system not been changed, we would have won the same 20 out of 35 seats which we had won in 1961. At the December 1968 election, even the changed electoral system could not have helped to maintain the puppets in office. Because the PPP could have increased its votes from 46 per cent in the previous election to an over-all majority, fraud was extensively" practised through ballot-box tampering, massive proxy voting and fabricated local and foreign voters’ lists with names of dead and non-existent persons reminiscent of Gogol’s "Dead Souls”.

p We have also learnt that by and large the liberals and Social Democrats will betray the working class in times of crisis.

p Take the late liberal, John F. Kennedy. As President of the United States, he said in an interview to Izvestia in early 1962 that even though I was a Marxist, his administration recognised the PPP government because we had come to office by a democratic election. But at the same time, the CIA was working under US consular and trade union cover to subvert our government. And soon after, Kennedy himself applied pressure on the Macmillan Government to change our electoral system and to block independence. The London Sunday Times of April 23,1967, in a story headlined, "Macmillan, Sandys Backed CIA’s Anti-Jagan Plot" exposed the treachery of the British government in the AngloAmerican plot to overthrow our government.

p The Social Democrat Harold Wilson was a Leftist who did not join in the attacks on our movement and government by the Attlee-led Labour Party in 1953. In 1963, as leader of the party, he described the Macmillan government’s manipulation of our electoral system as a "fiddled constitutional arrangement". He shattered some illusions when he betrayed us after taking office in October 1964.

p The betrayal by the Social Democrat, L. F. S. Burnham, is the seat of most of the present-day troubles of the Guyanese people. By his opportunism, he precipitated the racial divisions and the disunity of the working class. Had we not hastened to bring him into our movement in 1950, we would have made perhaps more slow, but certainly more durable and lasting progress.

p It must not be understood that we are against united fronts or coalitions. We 618 merely wish to warn of the dangers of reaching for governmental office or serving nationalistic ends by compromise, by sacrifice of principles and by action which might lead to the undermining of the socialist base. Office can have a corrupting influence in many ways. Above all, it can help to create an atmosphere of unreality and an attitude of over-confidence. Superficial unity without principled struggle and deep ideological commitment will prove illusory and empty.

p Yes, comrades, we must take not a narrow nationalistic, but a world view. We must stop hair-splitting and fence-straddling. The US imperialists have made the middle position untenable; they have fought against and subverted the concept of non-alignment, while pretending to uphold it. We exposed their hypocrisy when in answer to their charge that our PPP government would have made an independent Guyana into ’^$a gateway for international communism to penetrate Latin America", we offered to make Guyana into a completely non-aligned state with a treaty like Austria. That did not stop the hypocrites from attacking us.

p So far as we are concerned, the defence of the Cuban Revolution is a matter of principle. Our Party hailed it from the beginning. The PPP government established friendly and trade relations with Revolutionary Cuba, but was obstructed by Anglo-American imperialism from establishing diplomatic representation at the consular level. We will continue to defend this beacon of light in the Western Hemisphere,

p Vietnam is al§P for us a matter of principle. The people of the whole world owe a debt of gratitude to the heroic Vietnamese people for stalling the imperialist juggernaut. By dealing crushing blows, Vietnam has transformed the US political scene, and forced even hawks like McGeorge Bundy to become doves. Today_s it is sounding imperialism’s deathknell, Tomorrow, more battles in other areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the most aggravated front pf imperialism, will create its graveyard. It is these battles which will accelerate the crisis of imperialism in the capitalist states and revolutionise their masses for separate and joint action in the developed and undeveloped countries of the world.

p In this context of accentuated imperialist aggression, the unity and strength of the socialist states are a prime necessity. Hence, the defence of the socialist states is also for us a matter of principle. Their economic and military might must not be undermined. These states, more particularly the Soviet Union, stand guard over the fate of mankind in all distant frontiers of the world, Those who doubt this must ask the Cubans, the Vietnamese and the liberation fighters in Africa and elsewhere. Did not the Cuban delegation admit, the heroism of the Cuban people apart, that aid from the Soviet Union was vital in the preservation of the first socialist state in the Western Hemisphere? The heroism of the Vietnamese people apart, did not the rochets, tanks, and other weapons, etc., from the socialist states help in the Tet offensive in 1968, which humiliated the US aggressors and forced them to the conference table? Imperialism did not hesitate to use atomic weapons against Japan in 1945. Only the military might of the socialist states has stopped them from using these weapons in Vietnam, and perhaps igainst Cuba. Let us not forget this.

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p In Guyana, the situation will get worse before it turns finally for the better. With growing displacement of British economic, political and cultural domination, our country is rapidly moving into the US sphere of influence and into the mainstream of the Latin American revolution. US imperialism has yoked Guyana with the other Commonwealth Caribbean states and colonies in the Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA), the better to strangle their real development and to strengthen US neo-colonial domination. Through the Organisation of American States, the US "ministry of colonies", the United States of America is increasing its influence. Unfortunately, many Caribbean leaders who during the period of the last war fought against colonialism and imperialism have now somersaulted.

p However, there is a general upsurge in the area. The Caribbean peoples, like their Latin American brothers, are fighting back to free themselves like the Cuban people.

p In Guyana during the past four years, there has been, increasing militancy as evidenced by a record-breaking number of strikes—146 in 1965; 172 in 1966; 170 in 1967 and 149 to the end of November 1968. The puppet regime’s answer is intimidation, harassment and repression.

p . Incidentally, the late President Kennedy justified his attacks against the PPP government on the ground of fear that we would not have respected constitutional guarantees and parliamentary democracy. But since the US imperialists and their puppets seized power by force and fraud in 1964, they have not only slashed living standards, but also deliberately set upon a course to divide our people and deny them their basic human rights. In 1966, a National Security Act, far more vicious than the US National Security Act of 1950, gave the puppet regime the right to detain and restrict without trial. The right to peaceful demonstration has been denied. Powers have been assumed by the government to restrict movement in and out of the country. The right to strike is threatened by a bill now before the National Assembly. Neutral army and police officers have been dismissed. Border claims and incursions by the imperialist-backed puppets in Surinam and Venezuela provide the Burnham regime with the excuse to militarise our economy and politics, and to recognise and welcome the Brazilian dictatorship as a friend and protector,

p That the puppet regime is increasingly resorting to brute force is an indication of its own weakness. The use of police dogs, the armed police riot squad and soldiers is a common occurrence against workers in the capital, the government stronghold. Last Novemebr, troops and armoured vehicles were sent in the sugar belt against sugar workers fighting unitedly. Four years before, through CIA intervention and subversion, these same workers were involved in serious racial clashes. This is an indication of the growing consciousness and unity of the working class.

p On the political front, too, the balance of forces has changed, and will continue to change for the better. The notorious governmental coalition of the past four years, representing the two pro-imperialist, anti-communist parties— the People’s National Congress (PNC) and the United Force, has been ruptured,

p A contradiction is also developing between the elitist leadership and the rankarid-file of the ruling PNC. It will deepen as living conditions continue to 620 deteriorate from taxation which has been increasing by geometric progression during the past four years.

p In this context, the PPP is in the process of transforming itself from a loose mass party to a disciplined Marxist-Leninist type of party. It is accelerating its work on the ideological front to combat racial emotionalism, religious obscurantism, “economism”, and other false ideas. It is increasing its effectiveness on the mass fronts, particularly in the labour movement and among youths and students. At the same time, it is combating Rightist reformist illusions and Leftist anarchist impatience.

p In Guyana, it is we Marxists who are demonstrating who really stands for unity, freedom and democracy.

p In conclusion, we wish to declare our support for the appeal on peace, the address on the Lenin centenary, and the appeal for independence, freedom and peace in Vietnam. These are all inter-related and inter-connected in a dialectical unity. The struggle for peace is the means of creating ever- increasing unity in the fight against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism. The ideas of the great Lenin are today more than ever necessary to shed light because of the confusion and divisions in the international arena caused by differences in the socialist camp and by distortions spread by the camp of imperialism. We can say in retrospect, in the spirit of criticism and self-criticism, that many of the recent setbacks in the developing countries including Guyana were due not only to imperialist machinations but also’ to the failure to master Marxist-Leninist theory and practice.

p Vietnam has demonstrated that a people guided by a Party rooted in Marxism-Leninism and united for the broadest possible action is an indestructible force. Vietnam has proved that with the correct application of MarxismLeninism and international proletarian solidarity, that with internal unity, international solidarity and the closest links with the socialist states, imperialism can be defeated. The heroic Vietnamese people are fighting not only their battles, but also our battles; they are also providing the necessary encouragement and stimulus to those in our ranks who are in the front lines of fire, who sometimes tend to despair and succumb to imperialist psychological warfare that they and their puppets are invincible and cannot be defeated.

Comrades, like the valiant Vietnamese people, let us stand up unitedly and confront imperialism. Let us sink our minor differences. It is our hope that all comrades present here will sign the Document. Humanity demands it. We must not shirk our international duty. We must leave this historic conference with unity in ideology and action.