International Socialist Organization
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- This article is about the International Socialist Organization in the United States. There is also the International Socialist Organisation (Australia), the International Socialist Organization (New Zealand), and the International Socialist Organization (Zimbabwe).
The International Socialist Organization (ISO) is a socialist organization in the United States. The group identifies with the politics of International Socialism and the Marxist political tradition that American socialist writer and activist Hal Draper called "socialism from below".
The organization publishes a weekly online and print newspaper, Socialist Worker with a bi-monthly Spanish language supplement, Obrero Socialista, and a bi-monthly magazine, the International Socialist Review. The ISO also has a publishing house, Haymarket Books, which publishes both new titles and classics from the socialist tradition. Haymarket Books collaborates with many other independent publishers on common publishing projects and events.
The ISO has branches across the United States, which hold regular public meetings. The group regularly sponsors activist conferences, including an annual national weekend conference called Socialism. ISO members are involved in building a range of local and national political struggles.
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[edit] History
The ISO has its roots in the Independent Socialists (IS), which was founded in 1964 during the Free Speech movement in Berkeley, California. Its founding members were among the leaders of this struggle, and had participated in previous struggles for civil rights. The ISO originated in 1977 when members of the IS criticized the leadership of that group for abandoning its strategy of rank and file work in the trade unions. At the same time, the dissidents developed criticisms of the positions adopted by the IS leadership regarding the 1974 revolution in Portugal and its aftermath. These criticisms coincided with the views held by a group of the same name in Britain, loosely linked to the IS in the United States, which at that point was renaming itself the Socialist Workers Party. The dissidents sought to deepen those links. After forming themselves into the Left Faction, the minority found themselves expelled from the IS and compelled to build a new organization.
The new group took the name International Socialist Organization and began publication of Socialist Worker as a focus for organizing. The ISO based itself on the political theories developed by members of the British SWP, most significantly, the theory of state capitalism.
Found originally in the writings of Max Shactman and James Burnham, then later in the writings of Tony Cliff, Michael Kidron, and others, state capitalist theory identifies the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc as exploitative class societies driven by military competition with private Western capitalism rather than as deformed workers' states, as Trotsky describes in his The Revolution Betrayed and in his writings against the state capitalists in In Defense of Marxism. The essence of the IS theory was summed up in the slogan: "Neither Washington nor Moscow, but International Socialism." In practice, this meant remaining neutral when imperialist powers threatened the Soviet Union and when the Soviet bureaucracy reinstitued capitalism.
Having a small membership in the 1980's, the ISO found that its primary orientation toward rank and file work in the unions was unsustainable. From the early 1980s, the group was to be oriented towards work on university campuses. The decision to focus primarily on students was regarded as a necessary retreat given the conservative nature of the Reagan era. Recently, the ISO has developed more work in the trade unions, including teachers' unions, the Teamsters, and others.
The ISO grew steadily through the 1990s with its participation in a series of movements and campaigns, including the movement against the first Gulf War and other US military interventions, opposition to the death penalty, and campus-based struggles. The group was involved in building a number of the major protests against corporate globalization in the late 1990s, and has been active in opposing US imperialism connected with the "war on terror" in the wake of September 11th.
In 2001 the ISO was expelled from the International Socialist Tendency (IST) after a dispute between the majority of the IST and the leadership of the ISO. This dispute was framed by the SWP as a critique of the ISO's conservative approach to the anti-corporate/anti-capitalist movement. The ISO disputed this claim and criticized the SWP for maintaining an exagerated perspective for the 1990's, which the latter organization termed 'the 1930's in slow motion.'
That same year, a small number of ISO members that remained loyal to the IST left the organization and formed the magazine Left Turn. However, in 2003 Left Turn severed its connections with the International Socialist Tendency and stopped calling itself socialist.
[edit] Activities
The ISO has involved itself in building a number of local and national activist efforts. These include the antiwar movement, the struggle to end the death penalty, support for gay marriage and abortion rights; the struggle for immigration rights; and others. Today the ISO is involved in grassroots efforts across the country, including confronting the anti-immigrant Minutemen and opposing the US 'war on terror'. The group focuses on building chapters and activist campaigns on college campuses and urban neighborhoods.
The ISO does not support either the Republican or Democratic party, which it views as representatives of corporate power and empire. The group has however, actively campaigned for the Green Party in various races and enthusiastically helped to build Ralph Nader's presidential campaign in 2000 and 2004. In 2006, one of the ISO's leading members in California, Todd Chretien, challenged Diane Feinstein for Senator on the Green Party ticket. Chretien based his campaign on the anti-war slogan "A million votes for peace." In the election Chretien received 139,425 votes, or 1.8 percent of the vote.
National coalitions with which the ISO is presently involved include the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Campus Antiwar Network, and the National Alliance for Immigrants' Rights. The ISO is formally a member group of United for Peace and Justice but its involvement is limited and the ISO has been critical of UFPJ's election-oriented focus.
Members of the ISO have been involved in several incidents of confronting speakers who it considers racist as well as confronting military recruiters on college campuses. Some of these incidents have resulted in arrests and have received nationwide media attention. In one incident in March 2005, three students at City College of New York, some of whom were ISO members, were arrested during their protest of military recruiters at a campus career fair. On October 4, 2006, ISO members and other activists rushed the stage at a College Republicans event at Columbia University that featured Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist.
[edit] International connections
After their split with the International Socialist Tendency, the ISO maintained or re-established relationships with Socialist Alternative (Australia), International Workers' Left of Greece, the International Socialist Organization (New Zealand) and small groups in France Socialisme International and Italy, all of which had also broken with the IST.
In participating in the first World Social Forum in 2001, the ISO came in contact with the International Workers' League; the two groups collaborated on events in the 2002 World Social Forum and exchanged articles in their respective publications. Subsequently the ISO has developed an ongoing collaboration with the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the Socialism and Freedom Party of Brazil, the Party of Socialist Revolution of Venezuela, and the Movement for Socialism of Switzerland. These groups have sent speakers to each others' events, published each others' materials, and collaborated on more specific efforts.
[edit] Events
ISO branch meetings are usually scheduled weekly. Some are publicly advertised as a discussion on a relevant current event or historical topic. Members often poster neighborhoods or college campuses encouraging new people to attend. The group also sponsors panels and events featuring other left-wing speakers.
Each year, the ISO co-sponsors a weekend conference entitled "Socialism," for the purpose of projecting its ideas and organization, and cohering discussion and debates on the radical left. Socialism 2006 was held this past summer in New York City. Its theme was 'Build the Left, Fight the Right.' Approximately 1,500 people attended over the course of the four day conference.
In addition to the national conference, the ISO hosts a series of regional conferences each year, such as the Northeast Socialist Conference, which is held at the City College of New York every fall.
The ISO holds study groups as well as organizational meetings where the organization's activities are debated and voted on. Some degree of formal parliamentary procedure is usually followed for debate and voting. Public and activist meetings can either alternate weeks or be separate sections of a single meeting.
[edit] External links
- International Socialist: ISO website.
- Socialist Worker: The newspaper of the ISO.
- International Socialist Review: The theoretical magazine of the ISO.
- Haymarket Books: The publishing house of the ISO.
- Haymarket Forum: An bimonthly event in New York hosted by Haymarket Books.
- Socialism From Below: origins of the ISO by Milton Fisk, published in 1977.
- Socialism 2006 Conference website.
