I started reading the WSWS regularly in 2003. More than anything else, I was attracted by its internationalist perspective which was openly declared as a matter of principle. I was born in Greece a few years after the Second World War and as I was growing up I gradually realised how nationalism was only the other side of the coin to religious obscurantism, backwardness and the impoverishment of large sections of the working class (not to mention its disorientation by the Stalinist left!).

All this was, of course, consolidated and formed the basis of my political education during the seven years of rule of the colonels’ junta (1967-1974). As the junta ended I became a supporter of the Workers Internationalist League (the Greek section of the International Committee of the Fourth International at the time). It might seem a bit ridiculous now, but the main reason for my support for the WIL was that it was the only left party that did not have the word “Greece” in its title.

However, during the 1985-86 split the WIL walked away from the ICFI confirming that it had a nationalist outlook like any other Greek political party. In the years that followed I tried several times to understand the significance of these events.

In 1989, I relocated with my family to the UK. Even though I stopped being actively involved in politics, I tried to educate myself by reading the Marxist classics. I particularly enjoyed re-reading Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution and the way he uses the materialist approach to effortlessly transform seemingly chaotic events into a majestic panorama of the masses rushing onto the stage of history.

The WSWS is using the same method to analyse and make sense of the events in politics, art, science and much more from the standpoint of the defence of the historical interests of the working class. In recent years the coverage of workers’ struggles has been expanded with on-site reporting, videos, interviews etc. which prompts many readers and supporters to write back with their own comments and views. I find this of great interest and I hope that eventually all workers’ struggles across all continents will get the same detailed coverage. This would then be the first time that the great theoretical discovery of Marx and Engels about the independent role of the working class as an international class in the transition to socialism would be documented on a worldwide scale.

As we enter the new epoch of struggles of the working class it is increasingly clear that this is truly a vast project. There is every reason to be confident that the WSWS and the ICFI have everything that it takes to carry forward this task. Their long history in defence of revolutionary Marxism against all kinds of revisionism, opportunism and nationalism has made possible the current WSWS project which will make abundantly clear to all and sundry the immense power of the working class, the bedrock upon which its world party is being built.