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Year-end fund appeal: Donate now to support the WSWS

I urge all readers of the World Socialist Web Site to donate as generously as possible to support the work of the WSWS. Your help is vital in enabling us to deepen the fight to bring a socialist analysis, perspective and program to the broadest possible international audience.

This year has seen a major intensification of the world crisis of capitalism and signs of a new period of revolutionary class struggle. In line with these developments, the WSWS has expanded its daily analysis of world events, its coverage of the social conditions and struggles of the working class, and its efforts to educate working people and youth and inform their struggles with an understanding of the lessons of history.

There is virtually no domain—from strike struggles to governmental crises, economic conflicts, films and literature (contemporary and classic), science and philosophy—that is outside the purview of Marxist analysis and politics and the work of the WSWS.

From the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti at the beginning of the year—a disaster immensely compounded by the ravages of more than a century of imperialist domination—to the military suppression of working class resistance to austerity measures in Spain, Greece, France and other countries, to the global manhunt against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 2010 has recorded the descent of capitalism toward barbarism and the disintegration of democratic forms of rule.

The basic tendencies of imperialism, which Lenin summed up as “reaction all down the line”—militarism and war, untold wealth at one pole of society and growing poverty and misery at the other, political repression—are on full display.

To strengthen its daily reporting and analysis, the WSWS expanded its on-the-spot coverage of major struggles and events. We sent reporters and photographers to cover the Gulf oil crisis, the Massey mine disaster in West Virginia and the rebellion by General Motors workers in Indianapolis against the United Auto Workers’ attempt to ram through wage cuts.

We provided on-the-spot coverage and extensive political analysis of the deepening economic, social and political crisis in Europe, and the ongoing eruptions of working-class resistance. The WSWS published comprehensive reportage and analysis of the growth of social struggles in China, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other parts of Asia, as well as Australia and Canada.

No other media source seriously articulates the interests and views of working people, and exposes the social conditions they face. The WSWS has focused on the death and suffering caused by utility shutoffs, including the Dexter Avenue Inquiry into house fires in Detroit and the ongoing work of the Committee Against Utility Shutoffs (CAUS), which arose from the inquiry.

The two-month strike by Detroit Symphony Orchestra musicians shows that no section of the working population is immune from the attacks of big business and the government. The WSWS has sought to defend the players and explore the incompatibility between the defense of culture and the capitalist profit system.

We have sought to expand our use of video and other media to make the WSWS more accessible and attractive to a growing audience.

As workers and young people enter into struggle, they will have to develop an understanding of the critical lessons of the 20th Century—above all the nature of the Russian Revolution. The WSWS has intensified its defense of Leon Trotsky against an escalating campaign of historical falsification.

We anticipate that the coming year will see a sharp intensification of the class struggle and place new challenges and demands on our web site. As the attack on WikiLeaks underscores, the mainstream media will function more and more openly as an arm of the ruling class and the state, seeking to deceive and disorient the people, rather than inform them.

The WSWS must expand its staff, its coverage and its contemporary and historical analysis. To do this, we need resources. We appeal to you, dear readers, to come forward and help provide these resources. We trust that you see the critical importance of the WSWS to your lives and the fate of the world’s people.

Please donate today

Fraternally,

 

Barry Grey

Member of the WSWS international editorial board and US national editor