The Socialist Movement

For this semester I will be in charge of blogging about the Socialist Movement. Prior to recieving this as my movement, I had very little or no knowledge about this movement. So first off I will give you guys a little bit of background information.

The International Socialist Organization, also known as ISO, strives to build a future socialist society. They have branches all over the country that focus on different areas of their agenda. Some of the different areas of their struggle include: the movement to stop war and occupation, fights on racism and anti-immigrant scapegoating, the struggle for women's rights and the right to choose, opposing anti-gay bigotry, and worker's rights.

The ISO believes that the root of the problems in our society lies in capitalism. In a capitalist society like ours it is set up so that the few who rule profit from the labor of the vast majority of the population. In our society it is set up so that we have rich people and poor people and that's how it functions. In the U.S. a small part of the population enjoys immense wealth while millions live in poverty, even though we have enough resources for all.

The ISO is fighting for a world free of exploitation which they think lies in socialism. They base their beliefs on revolutionary socialists like Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky in that they think the only people that can inact this social change are the workers themselves. Socialism can only come from below.

In terms of recognition and redistribution I think that the ISO is mostly concerned with redistribution. They aren't asking for society to recognize any particular group and try to understand and accept them, they are simply asking for the redistribution of wealth so that all citizens of the world can be closer to equal and not have a select group of individuals enjoying extreme wealth at the expense of others. And not for a small group to have that wealth while a huge part of the population has so little.

Overall I think that this is a very interesting movement and I look forward to pursuing it this semester and learning more about their ideas and actions.

Here is their website if anyone wants some more information on them.
http://www.internationalsocialist.org/