International Socialist Tendency
The International Socialist Tendency (IST) is an international grouping of unorthodox Trotskyist organisations based around the ideas of Tony Cliff, founder of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain (not to be confused with the unrelated Socialist Workers Party in the United States). It has sections across 27 countries; however, its strongest presence is in Europe, especially in Britain.
The politics of the IST are similar to the politics of many Trotskyist Internationals. Where it differs with many is on the question of the Soviet Union, the IST adopting the position that it was a "state capitalist" economy, rather than a "degenerated worker's state" along with their theories of the "permanent arms economy" and "deflected permanent revolution". The IST sees the often referred to "socialist" countries, such as the former Eastern Bloc states, China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba as an inverse of classical Marxism, arguing they are "Stalinist" in nature.
Unlike many international tendencies the IST has no formal organisational structures and has only ever made one publicly known decision, which was to expel the US International Socialist Organization (ISO) from its ranks. However, the antecedents of the IST go back to the 1950s when the founders of the British Socialist Review Group (SRG), around Cliff, were expelled from The Club and thus from the Fourth International.
Read more about International Socialist Tendency: Affiliate Organisations, Non-aligned IST Organisations Which Hold To Its Basic Positions, Organisations Which Originated in The IST But Have Significantly Changed Their Political Orientation
Famous quotes containing the words socialist and/or tendency:
“Men conceive themselves as morally superior to those with whom they differ in opinion. A Socialist who thinks that the opinions of Mr. Gladstone on Socialism are unsound and his own sound, is within his rights; but a Socialist who thinks that his opinions are virtuous and Mr. Gladstone’s vicious, violates the first rule of morals and manners in a Democratic country; namely, that you must not treat your political opponent as a moral delinquent.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Unfortunately, moral beauty in art—like physical beauty in a person—is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)