A decade of socialist commentary and analysis
February 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of the website of the Committee for a Workers’ International (cwi). Over the last decade, it has provided thousands of articles, in several languages, to readers across the world, giving a daily socialist analysis of current news events and the world situation. The internet allows socialist ideas represented by socialistworld.net to be read by workers, youth and activists from Ireland to India, from Chile to China; in the Americas, East and West Europe, Russia, Africa and across Asia. We are always striving to expand access to socialistworld.net and an important step forward was made in 2007, with the launch of mundosocialista.net, the cwi Spanish language site (sitio web del comite por una internacional de los trabajadores). To mark our tenth anniversary, socialistworld.net was revamped earlier this week, making it easier to add to favourites/bookmark pages and to send links.
The existence of cwi supporters in over 40 countries, allows us to provide news from a socialist perspective, including eyewitness reports of worker, student, youth, community and other social struggles. We not only commentate on events, but, as regular reports on socialistworld.net show, cwi supporters play an active role, and very often a key leading role, in the struggles of unions and in community, youth, student and social mass struggles.
socialistworld.net is an enormous addition to the pamphlets, books, newspapers, journals, brochures, leaflets and other literature of the cwi sections. The cwi site is linked with many cwi sections websites, as well as to important sites like marxist.net, our sister site, which specialises on theoretical and historical issues, and with chinaworker.org.
As well as this, socialistworld.net provides readers with historical and socialist theoretical analysis, including online books and publications. Crucially, socialistworld.net charts a way forward for the workers’ movement internationally, discussing the strategy and tactics needed to develop and to build the forces of socialism across the globe and to create new mass parties of the working class.
Defending socialist ideas
Since the cwi started publishing online, in 1998, we have covered all major international events, including the anti-globalisation protests, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We defend the ideas of genuine socialism and rejected the false notion of the so-called ‘triumph’ of capitalism, following the collapse of Stalinism. We consistently argued that capitalism is unable to meet the basic needs of the majority of the world’s population. It is a blind system of crisis; of boom and slumps, of waste and destruction. It is a system of class exploitation and oppression that spawns poverty, joblessness, starvation, racism, discrimination, injustice, environmental destruction, conflicts and wars. Socialistworld.net indicts the madness and inequalities of the market system, while also advocating a mass socialist alternative.
One of our first published articles on the site was entitled, ‘World Economy: A crisis of global capitalism’, which looked at the financial crisis in Asia and its global effects (posted 9 February 1998). This crisis threw millions of workers into poverty and sparked mass movements, including the revolutionary movement that overthrew the former dictator Suharto in Indonesia. Ten years later, we published, ‘World economy: A global shock to the system’ (28 January 2008), which examines the current world-wide credit crunch, financial turmoil and economic recession, and the explosive political and social consequences.
Our alternative
The Committee for a Workers’ International is a campaigning, international socialist organization, which is part of the struggle to overthrow the rule of big business and global capitalism. We fight for a democratic socialist society internationally. Our website has energetically contributed to the main debates of the left internationally, including on the way forward for the revolution in Venezuela and on how new mass working class parties can be built internationally (see ‘about us’ for more information on what the cwi stands for).
To enable us to continue publishing and to expand the site, socialistworld.net requires resources, both financial and human. Unlike pro-capitalist political parties or big business-run websites, we do not have rich backers. Instead, we rely on the donations from working class people and youth internationally. If you agree with what you read on this site, why not send us a donation today? We always need more translators, to allow socialist ideas to get to as large an audience as possible. If you would like to help with translation, please contact us.
Moreover, if you agree with our ideas and the need to fight for a socialist alternative, join us today!
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