Socialist Organizer

For the British newspaper, see Socialist Organiser.

Socialist Organizer is a Trotskyist political organization in the United States. It originated in a 1991 split from Socialist Action (SA) led by Alan Benjamin—then editor of the Socialist Action newspaper—who had developed sympathies with the "Fourth International (ICR)" current of Trotskyism. Failing to win SA as a whole to their politics, about a dozen activists were expelled from Socialist Action after attending the founding conference of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International (ILC) in Barcelona, Spain, which SA had prohibited them from attending. These activists then went on to form Socialist Organizer.

Socialist Organizer is the U.S. fraternal section of the Fourth International (ICR)—reproclaimed in Paris in June 1993. It claims direct programmatic continuity with the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. Additionally, it claims political continuity with the best traditions of the Socialist Workers Party (US) of James P. Cannon and the militant leadership of the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 on the basis of its acceptance of the original Fourth International's founding text: Leon Trotsky's Transitional Program of 1938.

Socialist Organizer believes, with the Fourth International, that the emancipation of the working class from the chains of capitalism will come only at the hands of the working class itself. Thus it seeks to build the Labor Party in the U.S. and a Workers' International. To this end, it has participated in campaigns of the ILC—a multi-tendency international regroupment of trade unionists and political activists in 92 countries—since its formation at Barcelona, Spain, in January 1991.

Since 2006 Socialist Organizer has been intensely involved in the building of the US immigrant rights movement and the movement against budget cuts in the State of California.

Socialist Organizer is composed overwhelmingly of Latino working class youth, the result of being one of the more consistent left wing organizations involved in immigrant rights in since the famous 2006 General Strike by immigrant workers.

In 2009, Socialist Organizer and a number of Latino and immigrant working class organizations launched El Organizador, a forum for those in the Latino community who seek to develop a class struggle left wing among immigrant rights activists and other Spanish-speaking worker activists.

Since Socialist Organizer began publication of its newspaper The Organizer in February 1991, it has focused on helping to advance the struggle for independent political action by the working class and all the oppressed, both at home and abroad. In order to further this aim, it claims that The Organizer is an open forum for all individuals and currents in the workers' movement that seek to build the Labor Party and a Workers' International.

See also

• List of Trotskyist internationals

External links

• Socialist Organizer Official Website
• International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International
• Open World Conference of Workers in Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
• Labor Party
• U.S. Labor Against the War
• Million Worker March Movement
• The Marxists Internet Archive
• Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line