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WSWS supporter ClosedBounded replies to Ben -- November 9:
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The article reflects a fundamental disagreement about who the WSWS is written for: we do not intend to talk to self-proclaimed anti-capitalists, but to raise the political consciousness of the working class. This includes making clear the role of those who claim to oppose capitalism but subordinate workers to a struggle inside the capitalist system - a description which encompasses just about every so-called anti-capitalist group today. Your proposal to have the WSWS commit to publishing material from any and every anti-capitalist trend makes sense if and only if one accepts that we are oriented not to the millions of workers who react instinctively against the attacks of capitalism on their conditions, but instead to the mere thousands of mainly middle-class activists who have spotted a niche for themselves spouting radical phrases.At the moment, a worker who comes across the WSWS will see only clear, powerful, consistent analysis of the issues they confront. I don't mean that as a boast -- if that isn't what I'd seen when I first saw the site, I would never have joined; if I had gone from reading one interesting article on the WSWS to seeing yet another promoting the "left" faction of my union, I would have rolled my eyes and stopped reading.

Another issue with transforming the WSWS into your democratic forum is that the group of "all anti-capitalist trends" includes a number of outright liars. It is entirely unacceptable for something playing the same role as Facebook, Twitter etc. to presume to determine what is truth. But the WSWS has the duty to make clear what is true and what is a lie, and will not blur the line by including any such material on our site. Are we, for example, to post the historical and contemporary slanders of Maoists against genuine revolutionaries? Are we to include the snide insinuations of Counterpunch that the historians who spoke out against the 1619 Project did so only because they're white? What worker would take a site seriously if these lies appeared on it? Let such a forum be built and we will have no fears about engaging in it, but it is not the task of the revolutionary party.

Ultimately, the article attacks the WSWS for maintaining a Trotskyist programme, and it is telling that the only reason given for our not immediately adopting the programme put forward is the fact that we are a "cargo cult" - no analysis whatsoever of our political line is made. If the author truly believes that capitalism will be brought to an end through building a "proletarian social media platform", then let him try to convince the reader. Every revolutionary is faced with the problem of their perspective being hard to take at face value; the vital task is to link the ultimate task with workers' struggles in the real world. The article's objectivist perspective (that the work to overthrow capitalism will only become possible "towards the middle of the century") abandons this responsibility.

When the WSWS describes groups as "pseudo-left", we do not expect to convince the masses of workers who are curious about socialism with the argument "they don't agree with us Trotskyists, so aren't properly left," - we expose how their false perspectives lead them to betray the working class. We do not say "the DSA aren't real socialists because they don't accept Trotsky's Transitional Program" - we show in detail how their reformist perspective leads to such betrayals as Jacobin magazine's promotion of herd immunity and the DSA leadership's betrayal of their own members' vote not to campaign for Biden.

To finish, I don't believe constructing your democratic platform would be an efficient use of the ICFI's resources, nor do I think it would be worth sacrificing the WSWS's homogeneity in turning it into such a platform, but if you built it we would welcome it as a social step forward over Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The ICFI has fought on single issues alongside people and groups it does not entirely agree with before, especially in our campaign against internet censorship, but denunciations on the unrefutable basis of being a "cargo cult", and your frankly shameful response to the moderators of r/socialism, make such collaboration impossible. From someone who became politically active at the time you did, and from someone who claims to be building a democratic platform, I would expect better than to reply to the classical methods of preventing a democratic discussion (sex scandals and baseless smears) with "I am not surprised to hear from you about the rape apologist past of the wsws". The principled response would have been to condemn the smear and blacklisting, not to plead that your specific post should be an exception because it's critical of us and you may drop dead tomorrow.

I would suggest that anyone reading this carefully study the WSWS's record of defending groups it criticises from such provocations, and ask themselves whether such a basic prerequisite of principled politics is followed by the other groups calling themselves left.