The ISO originated in 1976 among groups in the American
International Socialists (IS) that were growing increasingly critical of the organization's leadership. Among them was the self-identified Left Faction, led by Cal and Barbara Winslow and supported by the IS's
Canadian and
British members. The Left Faction and its international supporters maintained that the IS's leadership had acquired a top-down style of operating that depoliticized the organization and placed too much emphasis on sending student activists into working-class employment (a tactic called "industrialization"). These disputes followed the disagreements over the
1974 revolution in Portugal. Additionally, the main part of IS thought that there should be attention to rank and file or reform caucuses in unions, whereas the Left Faction contended that in addition to rank and file work, agitation at the workplace for socialism should continue. On March 12, 1977, the Left Faction was expelled from the IS and immediately formed the International Socialist Organization. The ISO began publication of its paper,
Socialist Worker, shortly after its formation and produced a monthly print version and, later, a daily updated website until 2019. The ISO was initially the U.S. section of the
International Socialist Tendency (IST), and followed closely the positions of the British
Socialist Workers Party (SWP). By 1991, ISO had about 150 members. In 1995, the organization launched a
Campaign to End the Death Penalty in San Francisco. ISO also took part in the
United Parcel Service strike of 1997. In 2001, the ISO was expelled from the IST after a dispute with the British SWP. The SWP framed the dispute as a critique of the ISO's conservative approach to the
anti-globalization movement. The ISO criticized the SWP for maintaining what the ISO saw as an exaggerated perspective for the 1990s, which the SWP called "the 1930s in slow motion". Still, the organization continued to grow. Juan Cruz Ferre writes, "The ISO famously managed to thrive during the worst years of
neoliberalism and working-class retreat." in Washington, D.C. in 2002 The organization organized and took part in
protests against the Iraq War, became involved in the
Campus Antiwar Network, and cooperated with
Iraq Veterans Against the War. By 2009, members argued that it was "by far the largest socialist organisation in the United States today, attracting to revolutionary ideas a much larger number of young activists than any of the others." Even after the split with the IST, ISO continued to receive informal guidance from leaders of the UK SWP, such as
Chris Harman. But the relationship deteriorated further after Harman's death and the 2013
crisis in the UK SWP. The ISO sharply rebuked
Alex Callinicos for his "bureaucratic tendencies" in maintaining control in the fallout of a rape allegation. Ironically, a similar situation led to the dissolution of the ISO six years later. At this time, the organization also became somewhat more open to ideas outside the tradition inaugurated by Cliff. In 2013,
Richard Seymour observed a "lack of a set of 'lines'". He wrote, "I know ISO members who are straightforwardly 'state cap', others who are '
bureaucratic collectivist'. I know members who are '
Political Marxists', others who are more
orthodox ... This is a far more diverse ecology inside one organisation than I have been used to." This period of openness led to controversy. While some commentators viewed this favorably, others said the organization remained sectarian. For example,
Jeffrey St. Clair wrote in
CounterPunch that ISO had become less socialist in membership and identification, and that they were more concerned with "lash[ing] out at nearly every popular uprising of the last 50 years for being doctrinally impure, from the
Cuban Revolution to the
Zapatistas, from the
protests at the WTO to the
Bolivarian Revolution". In November 2013, nine members of the ISO, mostly in
Providence and
Boston, announced the formation of the ISO Renewal Faction, resulting in the organization's first national-level faction fight since the dispute with the British SWP. The faction claimed that the ISO was going through an organizational and political crisis and that members critical of the leadership had been "bureaucratically excluded". The ISO leadership denied these claims, saying, "the ISO is more experienced and more engaged than ever". In February 2014, the ISO expelled the Renewal Faction. In March, the organization's student branch at
Brown University resigned, citing the faction's expulsion as an indication that the organization had "shown itself to be undemocratic." Beginning in 2017, many of ISO's cadre began to resign in order to join
Democratic Socialists of America. In 2017, ISO members strongly supported the
Me Too movement. The organization began to embrace theoretical influences from
intersectional feminism at this time. Soon after, an allegation of rape that occurred in 2013 surfaced against a newly elected leader. It was soon revealed that the leadership at the time forced the national appeals committee of the ISO to overturn an earlier finding of rape in order to clear the accused. The ISO was thrown into crisis, with up to a third of the membership resigning and several local branches disaffiliating. After several weeks of debate, the ISO membership voted on March 28, 2019, to dissolve itself. == Publications ==