International Socialists (US)
Encyclopedia
The International Socialists (1968 - 1986) was a Third Camp
Third camp
The third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of socialism which aims to oppose both capitalism and Stalinism, by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp"....

 Trotskyist group in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

The roots of the IS went back to the fall of 1964 when the Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

 locals of the SP-SDF and YPSL left with 16 members to found the Independent Socialist Club led by Hal Draper
Hal Draper
Hal Draper was an American socialist activist and author who played a significant role in the Berkeley, California, Free Speech Movement and is perhaps best known for his extensive scholarship on the history and meaning of the thought of Karl Marx.Draper was a lifelong advocate of what he called...

 and Joel Geier. At first it consisted mainly of ex-Independent Socialist League members who had disagreed with the decision to merge the ISL into the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation in 1958 and had become uncomfortable with the positions taken by Max Shachtman
Max Shachtman
Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He evolved from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL-CIO President George Meany.-Beginnings:...

 and the Realignment Caucus within the party, i.e. entry into the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

, and an orientation toward the established union leadership
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...

 and integrationist forces within the civil rights movement. The new group wished to revive the tendency represented by the ISL and the third camp
Third camp
The third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of socialism which aims to oppose both capitalism and Stalinism, by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp"....

. While still basing its ideas on the literature of the ISL, as the new organization grew through the 1960s, the proportion of former members of the ISL declined, until they were a small handful by 1970.

The following year a second ISC was founded in Berkeley (one on campus, one in town) and another in New York. In September 1967 a conference was held in New York and the clubs were federated under the umbrella Independent Socialist Clubs of America. A quarterly, Independent Socialist or I.S. had began in early 1967 and became the organ of the new group.

The group worked within the CORE, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and help initiate the California Peace and Freedom Party, which it saw as a form of "independent political action...leading eventually, or hoping to crystallize the development of a Workers party". The movement recruited many members from its work in the PFP and among Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...

. When the SDS imploded in 1969 many of its members joined the Independent Socialists, including the Revolutionary Socialist Caucus, and significant parts of the SDS chapters at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, University of Michigan, CCNY
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

, and Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

. The Revolutionary Workers Committee at Detroit also joined. With all of these additions it was decided that a national organization should be created, more centralized than the former federation of autonomous clubs. Thus "International Socialist" was formed at a convention in September 1969.

More changed than just the name. The national office was transferred from New York to Detroit. The groups periodical, which had moved from New York to Berkeley, was also moved to Detroit and rechristened Workers Power. National Secretary Joel Greir noted that while they had formerly been oriented toward the student, anti-war, and women's liberation movements, they would now focus on the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

. They developed a three pronged strategy that included building rank and file
Rank and file
In politics and labor unions the rank and file are the individual members of an organization, exclusive of its leadership. The phrase originated in the military, denoting the horizontal "ranks" and vertical "files" of individual foot-soldiers, exclusive of the noncommissioned officers....

 within the unions, caucuses for black and women workers, and urging independent political action of the workers organizations. This strategy de-emphasized the long term program of Trotskyism, instead focusing on day-to-day issues. As they put it "Rank and file groups usually arise around a specific event, incident or issue. It is the tasks of socialists and advanced militants to move the group in a broader programmatic direction. This is not done by putting forth a score of demands all at once. New demands and concepts should be introduced in a logical and relevant manner" A group of member who were uncomfortable with this distancing from Trotskyist ideology broke away in 1973 and formed the Revolutionary Socialist League in 1973, taking about a third of the membership."

Of all the Trotskyist groups that attempted a turn toward industry in the 1970s, the IS was the most successful. They became a force within opposition movements within several unions. These included the United Action Caucus within Local 1101 in the Communication Workers of America, the opposition to the leadership of the United Mine Workers
United Mine Workers
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners and coal technicians. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada...

 which eventually led to the election of Arnold Miller
Arnold Miller
Arnold Miller was a miner and labor activist who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America , AFL-CIO, from 1972 to 1979.-Early life and mining career:...

 as president, the opposition within the National Maritime Union
National Maritime Union
The National Maritime Union was an American labor union founded in May 1937. It affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in July 1937...

, and in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
International Longshore and Warehouse Union
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii and Alaska, and in British Columbia, Canada. It also represents hotel workers in Hawaii, cannery workers in Alaska, warehouse workers throughout...

 where they led a successful court fight against the expulsion of IS member Stanley Wier.

However they were most successful within the Teamsters
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors....

. Here they worked within the Teamsters Rank and File Caucus, which was organized around the issue of alleged misspending of pension funds by union officials. They also were an important element within the Teamsters for a decent Contract later in the decade. Through these activities the IS was able to recruit a number of important rank and file leaders, most of whom later left the group during its splits, such as that forming Workers Power
Workers Power (US)
Workers Power was a short lived Trotskyist faction in the late 1970s and early 1980s.In the 1970s the Third Camp group International Socialists carried out its most successful work within organized labor within the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, helping to organize rank-and-file opposition...

.

The IS organized regional conferences of the opposition movements within labor unions during the mid-1970s, and in the late 1970s formed the "Labor Education and Research Project". This "Project" began publication of Labor Notes, which carried news on the rank-and-file movements within the unions and began regular conferences and workshops on the labor movement.

Meanwhile, the group lost some of its original members. Hal Draper left the organization in 1971. He claimed that the IS was embracing dual unionism
Dual unionism
Dual unionism is the development of a union or political organization parallel to and within an existing labor union. In some cases, the term may refer to the situation where two unions claim the right to organize the same workers....

, and felt that the IS was becoming a "micro-sect" and it was best to participate in personal, rather than organized political activity.

IS had long had informal links with the International Socialists in Britain led by Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff , was a Trotskyist who was a founding member of the Socialist Review Group which went on to become the Socialist Workers Party...

. By the early 1970s some members were becoming influenced by that group and came to reject the labeling of Stalinist states as bureaucratic collectivist in favor of Cliff's state capitalism
State capitalism
The term State capitalism has various meanings, but is usually described as commercial economic activity undertaken by the state with management of the productive forces in a capitalist manner, even if the state is nominally socialist. State capitalism is usually characterized by the dominance or...

 theory. These members were also disturbed by the abandonment, as they saw it, of IS's traditional policy on building rank and file
Rank and file
In politics and labor unions the rank and file are the individual members of an organization, exclusive of its leadership. The phrase originated in the military, denoting the horizontal "ranks" and vertical "files" of individual foot-soldiers, exclusive of the noncommissioned officers....

 caucuses in the unions as well as by the stance adopted by the leadership around Joel Geier on the then-current upheaval in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

. By 1977 this group had formally constituted itself as the Left Tendency and were then expelled, after which it founded the International Socialist Organization
International Socialist Organization
The International Socialist Organization is a revolutionary socialist organization in the United States that identifies with the politics of International Socialism, a current of Trotskyism, and the Marxist political tradition that American socialist writer and activist Hal Draper called...

.

At around the same time another tendency came into opposition to IS's leadership and split to form a new group called Workers Power
Workers Power (US)
Workers Power was a short lived Trotskyist faction in the late 1970s and early 1980s.In the 1970s the Third Camp group International Socialists carried out its most successful work within organized labor within the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, helping to organize rank-and-file opposition...

. By 1986 the IS had decided that a more pluralist sort of socialist organization was required and merged with Workers Power and Socialist Unity
Socialist Unity (United States)
Socialist Unity was a Trotskyist group in the United States. It was founded by former members of the Socialist Workers Party in 1985, around Les Evans who wanted to maintain links with the United Secretariat of the Fourth International...

 to form Solidarity
Solidarity (US)
In left-wing politics in the United States, Solidarity is a socialist organization associated with the journal Against the Current. Solidarity is an organizational descendant of International Socialists, a Trotskyist organization based on the proposition that the Soviet Union was not a "degenerate...

.

Publications

  • Independent socialist New York, N.Y. New York Independent Socialist Club, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Jan./Feb.1967)-v. 1, no. 7 (Oct. 1968)
  • I.S.: independent socialist. Berkeley, Ca. : Independent Socialist Clubs of America, No. 8 (Mar. 1969)-no. 20 (June 1970)
  • Book burning and censorship at U.C. Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1964
  • The mind of Clark Kerr by Hal Draper Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1964
  • Independent socialism, a perspective for the left Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1964 (ISC pamphlet #1)
  • Third camp; the independent socialist view of war and peace policy by Hal Draper and Julius Jacobson
    Julius Jacobson
    Julius Jacobson was an American socialist writer and editor who edited Anvil, New International, and New Politics, all publications in the Third Camp tradition of socialism, a democratic Marxist tradition sometimes called "Shachtmanite" after its significant theorist, Max...

     Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1965 (ISC pamphlet #2)
  • MacBird! by Barbara Garson
    Barbara Garson
    Barbara Garson is an American playwright, author and social activist.Garson is best known for the play MacBird, a notorious 1966 counterculture drama/political parody of Macbeth that sold over half a million copies as a book and had over 90 productions world wide...

     Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1966
  • The Two Souls of Socialism by Hal Draper Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1966 (ISC pamphlet #3)
  • Toward the working class; a position paper for the New Left by Hal Draper, Kim Moody
    Kim Moody
    Kim Moody is an American-born writer on labor who advocates social movement unionism, a revitalized labor movement of mobilized and militant rank-and-file workers rather than business unionism structured from the top down and compromised by coziness with corporations.In the early 1960s Moody was a...

    , Fred Eppsteiner and Mike Flug Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1966 (ISC pamphlet #4)
  • Independent socialism and war; articles by Hal Draper Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1964 (Independent socialist clipping-books #2)
  • A new era of labor revolt: on the job vs. official unions by Stanley Weir Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1966
  • The case for a new politics by Michael ShuteBerkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1966
  • In defense of black power; a position paper by Sy Landy
    Sy Landy
    Sy Landy was an American Trotskyist politician.Born in Brooklyn, Landy studied at Brooklyn College, where he joined the third camp Trotskyist Independent Socialist League , led by Max Shachtman. The ISL moved away from revolutionary politics and merged with Norman Thomas' Socialist Party in 1958...

     and Charles Capper
    Charles Capper
    Charles Capper is an American historian.-Life:He graduated from Johns Hopkins University, and from University of California, Berkeley with an M.A. and Ph.D. in history and taught fifteen years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has taught at Boston University since 2001...

     Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1966
  • The fight for independence in Vietnam by Hal Draper Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1966
  • Defend the ghetto uprisings Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1967
  • The first Israel-Arab war, 1948-49 by Hal Draper and Al Findley Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1967 (Independent socialist clipping-books Xerocopy series #X-2)
  • Zionism, Israel, & the Arabs; the historical background of the Middle East tragedy by Hal Draper Berkeley, Calif. : Independent Socialist Club, 1967 (Independent socialist clipping-books #3)
  • Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: articles in the New American cyclopaedia Hal Draper Berkeley ed., Calif. : Independent Socialist Press, 1968 (Independent socialist clipping-books #5)

External links

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