International Socialist Tendency
[5] 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.
[7] However, the antecedents of the IST go back to the 1950s when the founders of the British Socialist Review Group (SRG), supporters of Cliff, were expelled from The Club and thus from the Fourth International.
[8] Through the 1950s the SRG had a loose relationship with the US Independent Socialist League (ISL) led by Max Shachtman until it dissolved in 1958.
The theory of the permanent arms economy was developed by T. N. Vance in a series published throughout 1951 in the ISL journal New International and was later refined by Cliff in the late 1950s and over the years by key International Socialist (IS) theoreticians such as Mike Kidron, Nigel Harris and Chris Harman in later years.
Through the 1980s the IST grew internationally, in part, as other revolutionary socialist tendencies entered into crisis thus removing competitors.
New IS groups appeared in France, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and in Greece the Socialist Revolution Organisation (OSE) which had been loosely linked to the IS in the 1970s rejoined the tendency.
Groups were also founded in the former Eastern Bloc states as contact could be sustained in those countries for the first time after the collapse of the USSR.
Among the groups affected by such splits were those based in Germany, South Africa, Ireland, Zimbabwe, Australia,[10] Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada and France.
New groups were formed in a number of countries for the first time as in Pakistan, Botswana, Lebanon, Uruguay, Finland, Sweden and Ghana.
This led to the ISO being expelled from the IST[7] and a small faction (sympathetic to the SWP) leaving it to form Left Turn (LT).
Very small numbers of people sympathetic to the SWP operate in the US Keep Left and the US Solidarity, but with no official link to the IST.
[15] In 2011 members of the Zimbabwean affiliate – the International Socialist Organisation – face the potential death penalty for hosting a meeting discussing the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.
Canada founding member Abbie Bakan, former Socialist Worker editor Paul Kellogg, theorist John Riddell and other leading members released a public statement announcing their resignation from the group after a motion to write a public letter of concern to the British SWP over its handling of the scandal was voted down at their annual convention.
