I came across the World Socialist Web Site after having spent the 2008 and 2010 election cycles working for the Democratic Party—the latter cycle as a full-time staff member for a statewide candidate.

After the election of Obama, for whom I voted in my first election as an eligible voter, I noted with consternation the administration’s enthusiastic continuation of the policies of the Bush administration. Candidate Obama reneged on his cynical promises to end the wars and dismantle the anti-democratic national security apparatus, and furthermore, his administration oversaw a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the banks and corporations. This permanently shook my faith in the Democrats, in the Democratic campaign for which I was working at the time, and in the politics of the capitalist class.

I began reading the WSWS in late 2010 after seeing a flyer for the Socialist Equality Party on my college campus. Immediately, I recognized the principled, historical focus which the website takes to current events and the arts. Conditioned by the corporate media that I was used to reading, I was initially shocked by the honest approach that the WSWS takes to political and other issues. Though credit for the content and management of the website belongs with the editorial board and with the dozens of talented contributors to the WSWS, the true strength of the website lies in its class foundation—it stands as the only major news source which puts the world around us in a working class perspective.

And how important is that perspective, as imperialism spreads its tentacles around Western Africa and as the events in South Africa, Egypt, Greece, Spain, and elsewhere have vindicated Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution?

The events of the past years have made clear that the only way forward for the working class is to develop socialist consciousness and unite under the banner of international socialist revolution.

That is why the work of the World Socialist Web Site is so important in developing the world socialist revolution. The website is more than a discussion group of the most important issues of the day, it is the political organ of the world proletariat.

In a similar pre-revolutionary period, Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party, posed the following question to those who doubted the historical importance of the party organ:

“[W]hen bricklayers lay bricks in various parts of an enormous unprecedentedly large structure, is it ‘paper’ work to use a line to help them find the correct place for the bricklaying; to indicate to them the ultimate goal of the common work; to enable them to use, not only every brick, but even every piece of brick which, cemented to the bricks laid before and after it, forms a finished, continuous line? And are we not now passing through precisely such a period in our Party life when we have bricks and bricklayers, but lack the guideline for all to see and follow?”