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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 revolutionary socialist organization in the United States. The group identifies with the politics of International Socialism, a form of Trotskyism, and the Marxist political tradition that American Trotskyist writer and activist Hal Draper called "socialism from below".^[1]

Contents 1 Publications 2 History 3 Activities 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Publications

The organization publishes an online and print newspaper, Socialist Worker with a bi-monthly Spanish language supplement, Obrero Socialista, and a bi-monthly magazine, the International Socialist Review. For much of the ISO's history Socialist Worker was printed weekly, but in February 2008 the organization announced a change to a biweekly print schedule with more regular updates to the website. ^[2] The ISO also has a publishing house, Haymarket Books started in the year 2000, 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.^[3]

[edit] History

The ISO originated in 1976 when a number of groups emerged in the International Socialists (IS) which criticized that organization's leadership. Among them was the self-described Left Faction led by Cal and Barbara Winslow and supported by the IS's Canadian and British counterparts. The Left Faction and its international supporters criticized the IS leadership as having developed a top-down, "depoliticized" style of operating and for relying too heavily on sending student activists to work in blue-collar jobs ("industrialization"); this came on top of differences which had already emerged in relation to the 1974 revolution in Portugal. The Left Faction was expelled from the IS in 1977, and immediately constituted itself as a new organization.^[4]

The new group took the name "International Socialist Organization" and began publication of Socialist Worker as a focus for organizing.^[5] The ISO adopted the political theories developed by members of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP), including the theory of state capitalism. 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.^[6]

Having a small membership in the 1980s, the ISO found that its primary organizing efforts toward rank and file work in the unions was unsustainable. From the early 1980s, the group began organizing and recruiting on university campuses. The decision to focus primarily on students was regarded as a necessary retreat, given the conservative nature of the Reagan era.^[7]

In the 1990s the ISO expanded^{[citation needed]} and participated in a series of movements and campaigns, including the movement against the first Gulf War^{[citation needed]} and other US military interventions,^{[citation needed]} against racism,^[8] and for abortion rights.^[9] The group was involved in building a number of the major protests against corporate globalization in the early 2000s,^[10] and has been active in opposing what it refers to as "US imperialism" connected with the "war on terror" in the wake of September 11th, including the invasion of Afghanistan as well as the Iraq War.^[11] The group has also been active in opposing Israel's occupation of Palestine.^[12]

In 2001 the ISO was expelled from the International Socialist Tendency (IST) after a dispute between the British SWP 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.^[13] The ISO disputed this claim and criticized the SWP for maintaining what the ISO viewed as an exaggerated perspective for the 1990s, which the SWP termed 'the 1930s in slow motion.'^[14]

[edit] Activities

The ISO has involved itself in a number of local and national activist efforts. These include the antiwar movement,^[15] ending the death penalty,^[16] support for gay marriage^{[citation needed]} and abortion rights,^{[citation needed]} the struggle for immigration rights,^{[citation needed]} among others.^{[citation needed]} Today the ISO is involved in grassroots efforts across the country,^{[citation needed]} including opposition to the United States war on terror.

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 assisted Ralph Nader's presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004.^{[citation needed]} In 2006, one of the ISO's leading members in California, Todd Chretien, challenged Diane Feinstein for Senator on the Green Party ticket, receiving 139,425 votes (1.8 percent) of the vote.^[17]

[edit] See also

• Socialism
• Marxism
• Trotskyism
• List of Trotskyist internationals
• Workers' Councils
• International Socialists
• Democratic Socialists of America

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official Website of ISO
• Socialist Worker - Paper of the ISO
• International Socialist Review - Magazine of the ISO
• World Socialist Web Site critique of the politics of the ISO
• "ISO: The Joy of Sects", by John Lacny
• "ISO's Right Turn to Labor", from Proletarian Revolution No. 51, published by the Communist Organization for the Fourth International (COFI)]