The WSWS is beginning to publish the speeches delivered by leading members of the ICFI and contributors to the WSWS at the online rally held October 25 to welcome the relaunching of the WSWS that began with the postings of October 2, 2020. The remarks below were given by Wije Dias, general secretary of the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lanka.
The relaunch of the World Socialist Web Site is a tremendous step forward taken by the International Committee of the Fourth International in building the world party of socialist revolution.
Emphasizing the historic significance of WSWS, the chairman of the international editorial board, comrade David North, made the following point in the statement issued to welcome the re-launch. He said: “The new technology made possible a far better alignment of the daily practice of the International Committee with its international strategy and program. With the founding of the World Socialist Web Site, the International Committee of the Fourth International could respond to daily events, wherever they occurred, with a single political voice as the World Party of Socialist Revolution.”
The conditions of COVID-19 pandemic have glaringly revealed all the historic problems, bound up with the unstoppable decay of world capitalism, which today threatens world humanity with nothing less than a return to barbarism through a nuclear war. At the same time this has intensified the class struggles of the working class and the oppressed masses raising the burning need of the socialist revolution on a global scale. Only the theory of Permanent Revolution, advocated by Trotsky, provides the guidance to the world working class to lead the oppressed masses, irrespective of their language or nationality to come out of the social catastrophe created under capitalism.
The relaunched WSWS readily presents ICFI’s analysis of the world events to the readers in a more attractive and powerful way. What inspires those who come in contact with the WSWS is not just the layout of the front page that covers the current world developments, but its depth and direction to the wealth of essential historical Marxist information it communicates through archival material.
The pandemic left no room for any doubt that the region where we live, South Asia, as many other regions in Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Central Asia as well as Southeast Asia, cannot find solutions even to such basic social problems as health, without the aid of the resources of advanced countries. This is the historical legacy of all such regions, which were subjugated to imperialist exploitation for many centuries. The masses of these countries are confronted, more than anywhere else in the globe, with the burning need to participate in the world socialist revolution.
The relaunched WSWS facilitates the theoretical and political training of a collective leadership for this revolution, making them aware of the need for close collaboration in this task, not only on a daily basis, but even on an hourly basis, as the postings are now done on the site, around the clock. Such preparation of the cadres of the world party is unavoidable in countering the imperialist strategy of social counter revolution and world war led under US imperialism.
While South Asian capitalist governments, in particular, are made pawns in the strategic designs of US aggression against China, all of these regimes within their own countries are implementing rapid dictatorial measures to brutally deal with any political dissent. All factions of “alternative” bourgeois parties and their Stalinist and pseudo left hangers-on stand vehemently against mobilizing the masses to counter these measures. Following the footsteps of the fascistic rule of Donald Trump, hasty constitutional changes are adopted in bourgeois parliaments of every country in the region, including India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, to give legal cover for their militaristic policies.
This clears the ground for the working class to assume the leadership of the rural poor of all communities, in the struggle to achieve the belated democratic tasks and lead them on the path of socialist transformation. ICFI has already proved through the work of WSWS, during the past 22 years, that its ability is unquestionable in providing the perspective and leadership needed to assure victory of the world working class in this historic struggle.
The relaunched world organ will facilitate the ICFI and its sections to be established as mass socialist revolutionary parties, in every country, in the coming period. We, as the members of the SEP Sri Lanka rededicate ourselves to build the revolutionary parties in the Indian sub-continent and South Asia, as part of the development of the ICFI as the world party of socialist revolution.