International Socialists (Canada)
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International Socialists (IS)
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| Leader | Collective leadership (Steering Committee) |
| Founded | Independent Socialists (1975) International Socialists (1976) |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Newspaper | Socialist Worker |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Far-left |
| International affiliation | International Socialist Tendency |
| Colours | Red, White, Black |
| Website | |
| http://www.socialist.ca | |
The International Socialists is a Canadian socialist organization which is part of the International Socialist Tendency. The IS in Canada publishes Socialist Worker, an English-language monthly paper, published online as socialist.ca, and holds an annual Marxism conference every spring in Toronto.
The initial members consisted of activists involved in the Movement for an Independent Socialist Canada (better known as the Waffle), which had been forced to leave the social democratic New Democratic Party in 1972. A group of students at York University in Toronto formed a Marxist study group, and came into contact with left-Shachtmanites in the International Socialists (USA), an American group founded by Hal Draper.
After the collapse of the Waffle in late 1974, the group organized itself as the Independent Socialists in February 1975. This reflected the roots of the IS in the Waffle, which had a "left-nationalist" analysis of Canada's place in the world economy. But the name was in contradiction to the internationalist approach of the IS, and by 1976, the group voted to rename itself the International Socialists. From 1975, the IS published a monthly paper called Workers Action. In 1985, the paper was renamed Socialist Worker.
The IS is often identified as the "state-capitalist" group—reflecting the position of the IS that, from 1928 on, Soviet Union was no longer a workers' state, but state capitalist. This is in contrast to Leon Trotsky's position that the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers state. The state capitalist position was not actually central to the group's founding in 1975. Several prominent members adhered to the "bureaucratic collectivist" position associated with Max Shachtman, but by the late 1970s, the majority position in the group was clearly "state capitalist", outlined most clearly in Abbie Bakan's pamphlet, The Great Lie.
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