267. The greatest achievement of the International Committee in the period of transition from leagues to parties was the launching in 1998 of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). Seizing advantage of the revolutionary developments in computer technology, the Trotskyist movement was able, for the first time, to establish a medium through which it could speak with one voice to a world audience. The WSWS allows the International Committee to bring to bear the accumulated theoretical capital of the party, embodied in its cadre, to provide a Marxist appraisal of contemporary world events. It provides the necessary locus for the party’s work to unify the working class internationally.

268. The WSWS is grounded in a historically derived understanding of the pre-requisites for the development of a revolutionary movement. These were elaborated by David North in a report to the 18th plenum of the ICFI in July 1998:

“(1) The insistence of the ICFI on the primacy of internationalism as the basis of the political strategy and tactical organisation of the working class. (2) The uncompromising character of the struggle waged by the ICFI against the domination of the working class by the reactionary labour bureaucracies. (3) The emphasis placed upon the revival of a genuine socialist political culture within the working class as an essential intellectual and, one might add, ‘spiritual’ premise of a new international revolutionary movement. This is the essential intellectual substance and precondition of socialist revolution. (4) The struggle against spontaneism and political fatalism in relation to the development of the crisis of capitalism, the class struggle, and the socialist revolution”.^[1]