The researcher missed the point, but he successfully exposed the essential fraud committed by SEP leaders against the general public and against membership. The WSWS is not a “for-profit” business. The WSWS regularly asks for donations from readers while collecting “dues” from its members. It does not sell advertisement space or subscriptions for profit! It functions as a non-profit. The WSWS acts under the authority of the SEP, which is a seperate Political Organization, not a different name for the same organization. The SEP has a national committee and the WSWS has an editorial board, making them seperate organizations. It claims, in words, to support Lenin´s Democratic Centralism and Trotsky’s Left Opposition Faction. In practice, they function as agents of the capitalist courts, having received millions of dollars for their lawyer, John Christopher Burton, from the courts.

As we explained before, the decision to list the organization as a for-profit is a fraud aimed directly at the membership of the SEP. Whatever democratic structures exist to keep the organization under the control of the membership now, it appears, must accept the final authority of the owners of the stock, which do not appear listed here. The leadership plans to give direct support to capitalist courts in exchange for the courts attacking any revolutionary opposition to their Nanobureaucracy. As with Nick Brana and the MPP, a single person or family can now eliminate board members at will and override the petitions of the majority, while putting a full stop on the legitimate functions of the party. This is a move towards liquidation of the party through the concentration of power in one unaccountable person’s hands.

Democratic Power demands a confession of this fraud and the relisting of the organizations as a non-profit news website and a political organization named the Socialist Equality Party. We also demand a constitution enumerating the rights of members as the real source of the power of the party leadership, with protections for the formation of factions. The exposure of this fraud will create real problems for the leadership of the SEP as they attempt to destroy democracy within the ICFI as part of their support for imperialism against the democratic rights of the working class.