International Socialists (U.S.)

The International Socialists were a Trotskyist group in the United States. They were founded as the Independent Socialist Club in 1964 in Berkeley, California by a group of former Independent Socialist League members around Hal Draper, who had opposed its dissolution into the Socialist Party of America in 1958.

The group worked within the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and grew slowly. Other Independent Socialist Clubs were founded in New York City by Kim Moody and Sy Landy, and in Chicago by former left Shachtmanites. At this time their audience was to be found in the radicalizing Students for a Democratic Society, although they were a minor force within it in comparison to the various Maoist groups. None the less they grew and soon formed a national Independent Socialist Committee, before becoming the Independent Socialists in 1969.

From its 1969 convention onwards IS adopted a policy of industrializing their members, sending them into industrial jobs, and an orientation towards the working class. Workers Power which had been a section of the monthly International Socialist became a full fledged bi-weekly paper. This led to IS developing work in a number of industries and their backing a series of rank and file caucuses in the unions.

Despite this small success and continued growth IS also had setbacks and lost a group of members around Hal Draper who left the group in January 1971. Nonetheless growth continued as did internal disagreements leading to the loss of a factional grouping named the Revolutionary Tendency around Sy Landy and Ron Taber in July 1973 to form the Revolutionary Socialist League around a series of disputed questions including the questions raised by the General Strike slogan and in regard to a Transitional Program.

IS members had long had informal links with the International Socialists in Britain led by Tony Cliff and by the early 1970s some were becoming influenced by that group and came to reject the theory of bureaucratic collectivism in favour of Cliff's state capitalism theory. These members were also disturbed by the abadnonment, as they saw it, of IS traditional policy on building rank and file caucuses in the unions as well as by the stance adopted by the leadership around Joel Geier on the then current upheaval in Portugal. By 1977 this group had formally constituted itself as the Left tendency only to be expelled following which they founded the International Socialist Organization.

Meanwhile another tendency came into opposition to the leadership and split to form a new group called Workers Power. By 1986 the IS had agreed that a more pluralist organization was required and merged with Workers Power and Socialist Unity to form Solidarity.

External links

* [http://marxists.org/archive/draper/index.htm Hal Draper Internet Archive]
* [http://www.marxists.de/trotism/fisk Socialism From Below: origins of the ISO] By Milton Fisk, 1977.
* [http://www.isreview.org International Socialist Review] Published by International Socialist Organization (ISO)