Our current international work and internationalist tasks
International Department
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
May 02, 2005 Contribution to the 14th International Communist Seminar
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is leading the Filipino proletariat and people in two stages of the Philippine revolution. The current stage is that of the new democratic revolution through protracted people's war. The next stage, which is the socialist revolution, can commence upon the basic completion of the new-democratic revolution through the nationwide seizure of political power.
At the core of the people's democratic state system, based on the worker-peasant alliance, is the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has for its main component the people's army under the direction and control of the working class. The transition from capitalism to socialism can be achieved only through the dictatorship of the proletariat for a whole historical epoch.
In carrying out the Philippine revolution, the CPP, the proletariat and entire people perform simultaneously tasks that are distinguishably national revolutionary and internationalist in character. The performance and fulfilment of both tasks advance the world people's struggle against imperialism and the world proletarian revolution for socialism and communism.
The revolutionary struggle of Filipino communists, the proletarians and semiproletarians in the Philippines is part and parcel of the revolutionary struggle of the world proletariat and people and contributes to the advance of the global anti-imperialist movement and the world proletarian-socialist revolution. Our victories are the victories of the world proletariat and people. So are their victories our victories.
Before and after reestablishment of the CPP in 1968, the Filipino proletarian revolutionaries and the masses that they led have undertaken militant propaganda and mass actions in support of all and each one of the revolutionary struggles against imperialism and reaction.
In certain instances, the CPP has provided some limited number of cadres and technical assistance to help other parties. But the most significant support that the CPP and the Filipino have so far extended to other people's revolutionary movements is the advance of the Philippine revolution.
The CPP has received significant moral and material support from parties that uphold the principles of proletarian class struggle and revolution, class dictatorship of the proletariat and proletarian internationalism. The support includes cadre training and some material and technical assistance. But no amount of foreign assistance can ever be comparable to the sweat and blood of the Filipino revolutionaries and masses. Foreign assistance could even be harmful and counterproductive if it comes under wrong preconditions, if it is inappropriate or if it is indigestible.
In strategic terms, material support that we have received from abroad has hardly amounted to one per cent of the total resources that we have raised self-reliantly through fighting and mass work. In fact, our biggest foreign supplier of weapons unwittingly is the Pentagon. The US-supplied weapons are taken in the course of tactical offensives from the US puppet troops of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the police and paramilitary forces of the enemy.
We Filipino communists have an acute sense of history. We are always conscious of the need to draw principles, lessons and inspiration from revolutionary theory and practice as developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other revolutionary thinkers and leaders and by the great revolutionary masses of the proletariat and semiproletariat.
On the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Filipino people and the Philippine trade union movement, Crisanto Evangelista and other comrades founded the CPP for the first time in 1930. They were inspired by the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Third International. But they had no explicit directive from the Third International for the founding even as American and Chinese cadres of the Third International had since the 1920s encouraged and facilitated the participation of worker and peasant delegates in conferences in Moscow, Canton and Shanghai.
Under the guidance of the antifascist Popular Front policy of the Third International, cadres of the Communist Party of the USA made representations to the US-Commonwealth government of Quezon in 1936-37 for the release of communist leaders from prison and exile. They also advised the merger of the Communist and Socialist parties in 1938 that combined their respective worker and peasant mass followings.
The Right opportunist influence of Earl Browder penetrated the CPP not because of the Third International but because of the influence of the CPUSA on the CSMP general secretary Dr. Vicente Lava, who was a former CPUSA member. The Browderite line of "peace and democracy" undermined the revolutionary resolve of the Communist-Socialist Merger Party (CSMP) after the dissolution of the Third International in 1943.
The CSMP had a limited knowledge of the struggle against Titoite revisionism in the Communist Information Bureau from 1948 onwards. Then, it was preoccupied with domestic issues, the growing attacks on the revolutionary forces and people and eventually the outbreak of civil war. The second Lava brother to become general secretary, Jose Lava, sought to carry the "Left" opportunist line of quick military victory in two years' time, without painstaking mass work and solid mass organizing. Within the same two years, from 1950 to 1952, this line resulted in the destruction of the main units of the people's army based in camps in the unpopulated Sierra Madre.
The third Lava brother to become the general secretary, Dr. Jesus Lava, adopted a Right opportunist line under the weight of defeat and pessimism. Subsequently, he increasingly came under the influence of Khruschovite revisionism. The CSMP continuously weakened as a result of the 1955 policy seeking to liquidate the people's army and the 1957 single-file policy seeking to liquidate the CSMP. Before 1960, the CSMP was practically dead, with the general secretary merely hiding himself in Manila and with no party branch and revolutionary mass movement left.
Dr. Jesus Lava took interest in forming an "executive committee" to revive the CSMP in 1962 only after becoming encouraged by a student demonstration of 5000 students that literally broke up the 1961 anticommunist congressional hearings against "subversive" writings in university publications in 1961. He invited Comrade Amado Guerrero to represent the youth in the committee in 1962, after he came from a few months of open language study and clandestine revolutionary studies in Indonesia.
The young proletarian revolutionary cadres led by Comrade Amado Guerrero had studied Marxism-Leninism independently of the CSMP. They studied Philippine history and current circumstances and the secretly available writings of Filipino communists since Crisanto Evangelista.
They gained access to Marxist-Leninist literature and to the Soviet and Chinese literature through Indonesia. They studied the Moscow Declaration of 1957 and Moscow Statement of 1960 and the developing ideological debate and other contradictions between the CPSU and the Communist Party of China (CPC).
In 1967, the contradictions between the proletarian revolutionaries and the Lava revisionist clique came to a head principally over questions of Party history and strategy and tactics and secondarily over questions in the Sino-Soviet ideological debate. The proletarian revolutionaries had gained the majority of young and senior Party cadres and members.
They published their Marxist-Leninist position in Beijing Review on May 1, 1967. The Lava faction published their revisionist position in the Prague-based pro-Soviet Information Bulletin.
Comrade Amado Guerrero and other proletarian revolutionaries reestablished the CPP under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought in 1968. The congress of reestablishment was grounded on a thoroughgoing critique of the ideological, political and organizational errors of the Lava brothers from 1942 onwards and the phenomenon of modern revisionism centred in the CPSU. Our Party declared its adherence to the principle of proletarian internationalism and regarded its revolutionary struggle and victories as contribution to the world anti-imperialist struggle and the world proletarian revolution.
We criticized and repudiated the revisionist notion that the proletariat had already accomplished its historic mission in the Soviet Union. We denounced as bourgeois populism the Kruschovite ideas of "party of the whole people" and "state of the whole people" and as bourgeois pacifism and reformism the slogans of "peaceful transition", "peaceful economic competition" and "peaceful coexistence" (harped on as the general line as opposed to proletarian internationalism in international relations).
When Brezhnev was in power from 1964 to 1982, our Party exposed him for extending the work of Khrushchov in bourgeoisifying the politics, economy, culture, defense and international relations of the Soviet Union. From 1966 onwards, we upheld and supported Mao's theory and practice of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to combat revisionism, prevent capitalist restoration and consolidate socialism through the great proletarian cultural revolution.
Our Party holds the view that the revisionist line gained ascendance in the CPSUS under Khrushchov and Brezhnev and paved the way for Gorbachov to destroy every semblance of socialism under his regime. Likewise in China Right opportunism and revisionism gained ascendance as to allow the Right opportunists and revisionists to sabotage the cultural revolution and pave the way for the reversal of the proletarian revolutionary line of Mao and for the restoration of capitalism soon after his death.
More than any other factor, it is the ideological and political degeneration of the ruling party and state bureaucracy that has destroyed socialism. We must recognize this fact and study how for a number of decades socialism could be built against tremendous odds and how for another number of decades the gradual peaceful restoration of capitalism could occur through the ideological and political degeneration of the party and state bureaucracy. We need to use the Marxist-Leninist principles explicated by Lenin, Stalin and Mao to examine the growth of revisionism and the consequent destruction of socialism.
Current International Situation and Work
To understand fully how the world anti-imperialist and socialist movements have suffered serious setbacks and have come to a period of temporary defeat, we have to study how monopoly capitalism, modern revisionism and neocolonialism have coincided to unleash oppression and exploitation on the proletariat and people.
The US-led imperialist ideological, political, economic, military and cultural offensives against the proletariat and the people, the rapidly worsening crisis conditions of the world capitalist system and the rapacity of neoliberal globalization, the escalation of imperialist war production, the spread of state terrorism and wars of aggression drive us to fight US imperialism, its allies and puppets.
But to bring about long lasting revolutionary confidence and steady and ever growing anti-imperialist and socialist movements, we need communist and workers' parties capable not only of waging the struggle against imperialism and reaction for democracy and socialism but also of addressing the question of combating modern revisionism and preempting it or preventing it from rising again to undermine and destroy socialism.
We as communist and workers' parties must first do well our homework in Marxist-Leninist study and revolutionary struggle for us to be able to contribute something significant to the international communist movement. At any rate, meetings with other parties are occasions for learning from other parties rather than teaching them what to think and what to do. Communist and workers' parties can go into bilateral and multilateral meetings in order to exchange experiences, views and ideas, engage in theoretical discussions and agree on various forms of cooperation.
Bilateral meetings have advantages over multilateral meetings amidst the current wide divergences in the ideological and political positions among communist and workers' parties. Bilateral meetings can be held more often or on a timely basis and can devote more time to in-depth discussions and study. It is easier to make inquiries, give opinions and suggestions and to arrive at a common understanding and common positions through bilateral meetings than through multilateral meetings where normally the parties are expected to present previously established and polished positions.
In bilateral meetings, it is easier not only to arrive at agreements on ideological and political position and on practical cooperation but also to define the specific responsibilities and tasks in various forms of cooperation. It takes more time and effort to organize multilateral meetings. When these are held, the parties are constrained by time and can only arrive at a general level of understanding and general lines of cooperation. There can only one or a few resolutions that can be thoroughly deliberated and subjected to consensus.
Multilateral meetings can be fruitful only when they are preceded by a series of bilateral meetings, they present occasions for bilateral meetings and they result in the establishment of bilateral relations to deepen common understanding and cooperation. Our revolutionary homework guided by Marxism-Leninism in our respective countries and our respective bilateral relations with other communist and workers parties are the building blocks of multilateral relations and the international communist movement.
Principles Governing the Relations of Parties
The established principles that govern the relations of communist and workers' parties are those of proletarian internationalism, equality and independence, mutual respect, non-interference, and mutual support and cooperation for mutual benefit. Even before its dissolution in 1943, the Third International had ruled that the Executive Committee should desist from interfering in the organizational details of any party and in local issues about which the party in a country knows better than any foreign party.
At its dissolution, the Third International declared the impossibility of coordinating the national sections under world war conditions and the political maturity and independent capabilities already achieved by the parties in dealing with the complexities of their respective national conditions. After World War II, upon the rise of several ruling communist and workers parties and many other parties, the principles of equality, independence and non-interference came to be ever more asserted, especially in the Moscow Declaration of 1957.
The independence that Tito of Yugoslavia asserted was unacceptable because it was based on bourgeois nationalism and was a mantle for a whole range of revisionist ideas and policies opposing land reform and centralized socialist planning. The vigorous efforts of the CPSU to maintain itself as the "leading centre" of the international communist movement through multilateral meetings stopped neither the revisionist degeneration of the CPSU nor the assertion of independence by the CPC and other Asian parties and their prevailing preference for bilateral rather than multilateral meetings. The CPC and other parties were concerned about the CPSU using multilateral meetings to impose its will on other parties and using the majority vote rather than consensus
We must learn from the past. If we wish to develop systematic, periodic or regularized multilateral meetings of communist and workers' parties, we must adhere to the aforementioned principles governing the relations of parties. In arriving at resolutions, the methods of democratic deliberation and consensus must be applied. Thus, due respect is accorded to the equality and independence of the parties. Party delegations are given ample opportunity to further consult their principals and sign the resolution with or without qualifications or reservations.
To enhance the life and effectiveness of any system of multilateral meetings, agreements must be made only on those issues or points where such agreements can be reached through consensus. Disagreements should be laid aside to maintain the level of unity, common understanding and practical cooperation possible. Such disagreements may be resolved in the future either by a rising level of common understanding or upon a change in the situation or both.
It would be impossible to maintain the system of multilateral meetings, if a single party or a few parties presume to be the leading centre or acquire by election or appointment the power to lead the other parties. The principle of democratic centralism does not apply among equal and independent parties. The methods of persuasive discussion and consensus are available to them for reaching agreement on issues and courses of action.
In the last more than fifteen years, our Party has participated in a number of multilateral meetings of communist and workers parties, which include the Brussels International Communist Seminar, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations, Calcutta International Seminar on the Continuing Validity of Marxism, the International Seminar on People's War and the Kathmandu International Seminar on Socialism. It has also contributed papers to other multilateral meetings in Moscow, Quito and elsewhere, which it could not attend because of lack of funds.
The CPP is willing to participate in any multilateral meeting in which the aforementioned governing principles on the relations of parties are followed and resolutions are processed sufficiently through democratic deliberation and consensus. The multilateral meetings may vary according to the ideological range or focus of the participants, such as Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, Mao Zedong Thought or Maoist or scientific socialist, according to the topics, such as people's war, defense of socialism or neoliberal globalization or whatever aspect of imperialism or according to territorial scope, such as international, Asia or Southeast Asia.
Our Party recognizes that the variety of multilateral meetings of communist and workers parties is due to differences in ideology, politics, topical interest or territorial scope. We are optimistic that from such variety and differences of multilateral meetings, from rising levels of common understanding and practical cooperation against the common enemy and, most importantly, from the forthcoming revolutionary victories shall arise parties that would have the capability of convening all or most of the communist and workers' parties of the world because of the respect, experience and authority that they have gained.
Communist and workers' parties must create and lead through party fractions or groups mass organizations of various types (unions and cooperatives for workers, associations of peasants, women, youth, journalists, lawyers, health professionals, scientists, engineers, cultural workers, peace activists and so on). They can link themselves effectively to the millions of people only through such mass organizations and their sectoral and multisectoral alliances.
Since the disappearance or diminution of mass organizations based in the Soviet bloc countries, like the World Federation of Trade Unions, World Federation of Democratic Youth, International Union of Students, Women's International Democratic Federation, International Organization of Journalists, World Peace Council and the like, the so-called nongovernmental organizations funded by imperialist governments, UN agencies and private foundations or charities of the monopoly capitalists, bourgeois parties and religious institutions have increasingly taken the initiative in holding international multilateral meetings in order to push the reformist slogan of "civil society" among mass organizations.
The communist and workers parties should encourage the mass organizations to form their respective national and international organizations, and hold meetings to carry forward the line of anti-imperialist solidarity, prevail over reformism and build the international united front. While progressive or revolutionary forces of the people take the lead and initiative, they should avoid the pitfalls of sectarianism and try to build and broaden the united front at every turn.
Our Party holds the view that the communist and workers' parties should not be among the participants in international organizations of mass organizations or people's organizations for several reasons. The participation of parties is likely to arouse ideological debates on top of the democratic dialogue over social and political issues and to turn off mass organizations that belong or do not belong to other parties. Parties that are legal would also have an advantage over parties that are necessarily clandestine and illegal.
At any rate, it is a long-established tradition and correct practice for communist and workers' parties to allow mass organizations on their own to join national and international formations. It is fine enough that mass organizations created and led by parties have the freedom to attract and mingle with the mass organizations that may or may not belong to other parties. Against imperialism and reaction, a united front of various forces and tendencies is practicable within and among patriotic and progressive classes or sectors.
The CPP in Relation to Foreign Countries and Governments
In the process of waging the new democratic revolution through people's war, our Party builds the people's democratic government (organs of democratic power) and looks forward to seizing political power nationwide. We accumulate points under international law and the laws of war for the international diplomatic recognition of the status of belligerency of the people's democratic government through the victories of the people's war and the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.
International recognition of the status of belligerency is important for enabling friendly governments to have relations with the people's democratic government, without being effectively held liable for interfering in Philippine affairs. In this connection, the CPP aims to develop relations with the ruling parties in governments that are anti-imperialist, socialist or both.
The people's democratic government has been established through the local organs of political power in the Philippines and recognized implicitly by the reactionary big comprador-landlord government. It can sign various kinds of contracts with other governments, without the latter becoming liable for interference or "exporting revolution" to the Philippines.
However, there is yet to be a government willing to establish diplomatic relations with the people's democratic government led by our Party. We are still far from that situation where a foreign government could have diplomatic and trade relations with the revolutionary government exclusively or with both the revolutionary government and the reactionary government, as in the case of the opposing Confederate and Union governments in the American Civil War or in the case of the Chinese civil wars before and after World War II.
Our Party is acutely aware of the radically changed character of the CPC since the second half of the 1970s and the radically changed situation in the world since the years 1989 to 1991, when the bipolar world of the Cold War came to an end, with the implosion of the Soviet Union and the US becoming the sole superpower amidst imperialist depredations, the all-round degradation and retrogression of countries formerly ruled by revisionist regimes and the further impoverishment and oppression of the people in the overwhelming majority of countries under neocolonial rule.
Our Party's current situation differs sharply from that which obtained when our Party had close relations with the CPC during the cultural revolution and with the Vietnamese party during its war of national liberation against US aggression and when subsequently it maintained a permanent Central Committee delegation in Beijing, China. Our permanent delegation had close relations with similar permanent delegations of Southeast Asian parties and met delegations from other countries and continents. The Dengists liquidated the delegations and aimed to liquidate all the revolutionary armed struggles in Southeast Asia in exchange for China's accommodation by the US into the world capitalist system.
Our Party stands resolutely and militantly against US imperialism and other imperialist powers and such multilateral agencies as the IMF, World Bank and the WTO in the evil scheme of neocolonialism (subverting national independence through economic and financial leverage).
In contrast, the CPC has pushed for the integration of China into the world capitalist system, changed the class character of the Chinese state, economy and culture and welcomed the neocolonial scheme. The Chinese long-running line of peace, stability and economic development for Asia has somehow caused the liquidation of revolutionary movements in some Southeast Asia countries.
Our revolutionary forces and people resolutely oppose the US-led campaign for "neoliberal" globalization, while China and the CPC have welcomed it and relished membership in the WTO. We are watching closely how far China supports the US in trying under the pretext of the "war on terror" to suppress the Philippine revolution. So far, the Chinese authorities have kept silent on the US labelling the Filipino revolutionary forces as "terrorist."
The US dual policy of engagement and containment vis a vis China continues to put principal stress on engagement. In history, the US has repeatedly reconsidered its friends as its enemies and taken actions against them, including brazen bullying, subversion, intervention and aggression, depending on what bigger advantages the US wishes to obtain. The US has never concealed its long-term objective of removing the CPC from power and wiping out any semblance of socialism. It also wants to prevail over the issues of Taiwan, arms procurements, finance, trade and so on.
Our Party keeps itself informed of developments in the worsening crisis of the US and world capitalist system. We consider the resurgence of anti-imperialist and socialist movements among the proletariat and the people to be important and necessary for the Philippine and world revolution. Thus, we have contributed our efforts to building the broadest possible anti-imperialist front based on the organized strength of the revolutionary masses, with the objective of taking advantage the conflicts among the imperialist powers.
In our Party's experience, the communist and workers' parties that had been most warm and eager to have comradely relations are those truly motivated by the principles of proletarian revolution, proletarian class dictatorship and proletarian internationalism. These are the parties that have given moral and material support to people's revolutionary struggles.
Our Party has always put stress on self-reliance. The foreign assistance that it has received since 1971 is hardly one per cent of total resources raised locally through fighting, taxation and production. Of course, such accounting does not include the priceless sacrifices of our revolutionary martyrs and heroes. We seek unconditional foreign assistance but we do not depend on it. Without it, we can still wage the revolutionary struggle. When we have it, we must be able to handle and absorb it properly.
Relations between the communist party of an avowed socialist country, no matter how powerful, do not necessarily make its Philippine counterpart revolutionary or help the Philippine revolution in any way. Take for example, the relations of the CPSU and the Lavaite revisionist group since the late 1960s. Both collaborated with the Marcos fascist dictatorship against our Party and the Filipino people. The Soviet Union even went to the extent of awarding Marcos with the medal of anti-fascist hero right on the eve of his overthrow by the people.
We oppose Philistinism and do not cozy up to any foreign party just because it is big, powerful or rich. The Lava revisionist group and the CPSU deserved each other, when the latter regarded the former as the sole vanguard party in the Philippines and the former regarded the latter as the vanguard party of the world revolution.
On anti-imperialist grounds, our Party pursues relations of anti-imperialist political solidarity with communist and noncommunist parties and organizations. For such purpose, we do not require relations on the ideological basis of Marxism-Leninism. Political relations of anti-imperialist solidarity are aimed at promoting the mass movement or preparing the diplomatic relations of the people's democratic government. Our experience in conducting united front relations with noncommunist parties in the Philippines is significant. We have such experience too, on the international plane.
But in our experience in the period of 1986 to 1988, when we tried to establish political relations of anti-imperialist solidarity with parties that called themselves communist, the CPSU and some other parties demanded that we reverse our Marxist-Leninist position against modern revisionism, that we end the armed struggle and that we merge with the revisionist clique that had collaborated with the Marcos fascist regime. Our Party does not compromise any of its principles in seeking party-to-party relations. It always makes sure that its international policy does not confuse its rank and file and that it maintains its independence from other parties.
For purposes of promoting and developing anti-imperialist solidarity, the CPP does not have to be up front all the time. The National Democratic Front can relate with any party or organization abroad. It is also authorized by all revolutionary forces in the Philippines and the people's democratic government to develop friendly relations with foreign governments, governmental agencies and ruling parties. The various patriotic and progressive organizations in the Philippines are also encouraged to seek partners abroad in people-to-people projects of cooperation.
In due time, the people's democratic government in the Philippines will gain diplomatic recognition as a result of the arduous revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people and such revolutionary forces as the CPP, the NPA and the NDFP. We strive to raise higher the level of the people's war, raise higher the flag of Red political power before the eyes of the world and contribute to the rise of the anti-imperialist and socialist movements and governments.
At present, US imperialism looks so powerful and acts so arrogantly. But it has overreached and overextended itself. It is increasingly strained between trying to control the oil sources and supply routes in the Middle East and Central Asia on the one hand and paying direct attention to East Asia on the other hand. As the US sinks deeper and longer in a quagmire in Iraq or in the whole of Middle East, the proletariat and people of China, North Korea, Philippines and other Asian countries will have better opportunities for advancing the struggle for national independence against the US imperialists and their puppets.
US strategic planners calculate that the US can use a broad spectrum of economic, financial, military, diplomatic instruments to isolate, weaken and eliminate any potential rival or recalcitrant state and dominate the whole world in the 21st century. They also calculate that they can decide the time and circumstances to use their high-tech weaponry for pre-emptive strikes or full-scale aggression. But US imperialism has also exposed its weaknesses in an all-round way to the people of the world as well as to countries that are wary of its extremely rapacious and aggressive character.
The ever worsening crisis of the US and world capitalist system has led to the escalation of imperialist plunder, state terrorism and wars of aggression that inflict terrible sufferings on the proletariat and the people of the people. But the same crisis generates the people's resistance and the clamor for national liberation, democracy and socialism in the various countries and continents of the world.
Conclusion: Evaluation
It will take time to build the ideological, political and organizational unity at a level comparable to that in the 1930s or that in 1950s. Let us remember that the 1960 Moscow meeting of 81 communist and workers parties was precisely the prelude to great divisions in the international communist movement. There is no golden era to hold up as an ideal and to which we can return so easily by simply holding multilateral meetings.
Certainly, unity of the international communist movement on the ground of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism is always a desirable and necessary goal. But to proceed with the project, we need to recognize how much destruction modern revisionism and reformism have wrought in stages over a long period on the great cause and achievements of socialism. These involved the undermining and breaching of socialism, misrepresentation of revisionists as communists and capitalist restoration as socialist reforms and finally the uncamouflaged full-scale capitalist restoration in the years of 1989 to 1991.
In the present period, bilateral and multilateral meetings among communist and workers' parties are feasible and must be held to raise the level of common understanding about the history and current circumstances of the international communist movement, analyze the current situation and agree on what the communist and workers parties can do individually and collectively for the resurgence of the revolutionary mass movement of the proletariat and the people against imperialism and for socialism.
Through such meetings, we can raise the level of common ideological and political understanding and through successes in the revolutionary struggles against imperialism and for socialism we can build the basis for overriding the current differences among the communist and workers' parties. The important thing now is for all of us to follow the principles of proletarian internationalism, equality, independence, noninterference, mutual support and cooperation in the relations of communist and workers' parties.
We must integrate Marxism-Leninism with the concrete conditions of our respective countries, lead the proletariat and people in revolutionary struggles against imperialism and reaction and thwart revisionism and reformism.
With experience, strength and ideas drawn from revolutionary struggles in our respective countries, we as communist and workers' parties have much to share when we meet among ourselves, such as we do now in this seminar. We can exchange experiences and analyses, raise the level of common understanding in ideology and strategy and agree on the coordination of struggles and on the various forms of cooperation. With successes in doing so, we move steadily towards a unity of unprecedented significance, effectiveness and proportions.
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