International Socialist League

International Socialist League
Abbreviation	ISL
Founder	David Ivon Jones
Founded	September 1915 (1915-09)
Dissolved	February 12, 1921 (1921-02-12)
Merged into	CPSA
Ideology	Libertarian socialism[1] Marxism De Leonism Syndicalism[2]
Political position	Far-left
Politics of South Africa Political parties Elections

The International Socialist League of South Africa was the earliest major Marxist party in South Africa, and a predecessor of the South African Communist Party. The ISL was founded around the syndicalist politics of the Industrial Workers of the World and Daniel De Leon.^[3][4]

History

Formed in September 1915, it established branches across much of South Africa (excluding the Western Cape). While early attempts to recruit white workers failed, the ISL soon came to the attention of the young African National Congress, (then called the "South African Native National Congress") and several prominent early ANC members attended ISL meetings.^[3] By September 1917 the ISL had helped to form the first black African trade union in the country, the Industrial Workers of Africa. While its founders were mainly drawn from the radical wing of the white working class, the movement would develop a substantial black African, Coloured and Indian membership.

David Ivon Jones was a founder and influential member of the ISL

Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, the ISL became enthusiastic supporters of the Bolsheviks. David Ivon Jones, co-founder of the ISL and editor of the league's organ The International welcomed the revolution with an article titled "Dawn of the World." The article calls the revolution "an unfolding of the world-wide Commonwealth of Labour, which if the oppressed of all lands only knew...would sweep them into transports of gladness."^[5] This enthusiasm for the Bolsheviks would ultimately lead the ISL to merge with several other socialist organizations to form the Communist Party of South Africa in 1921.^[6]

The ISL became defunct following its merge into the Communist Party of South Africa (SACP) in 1921 but, provided many notable early figures to the Communist Party. The centrality of the ISL in the formation of the SACP left a political mark on the party for years to come, and was responsible for a strong syndicalist influence on the early politics of the SACP.^[7]

In his address to the 2015 Biennial National Conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, South African President Jacob Zuma credited South African Jews for being "among the first to organise the South African working class" as some Jewish activists "were among the founders of the International Socialist League."^[8]

See also

• Socialist Labor Party
• South African Communist Party
• Industrial Workers of the World

References

Footnotes

1. Van der Walt, Lucien. "'The Industrial Union is the Embryo of the Socialist Commonwealth': The International Socialist League and Revolutionary Syndicalism in South Africa, 1915–1920." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 19, no. 1 (1999): 5-28. "Whereas the Communist Party of South Africa was unambiguously Leninist and Marxist, the International Socialist League was, despite minor Marxist influences, a revolutionary syndicalist organization situated in the broad libertarian socialist tradition".
2. Hirson 2005, p. 7.
3. Hirson 2005, pp. 7–19.
4. van der Walt 2004, pp. 67–89.
5. Simelane 1981, pp. 32–35.
6. Hirson 2005, pp. 45–47.
7. Lerumo 1987, pp. 42–.
8. Zuma, Jacob (22 November 2015). "President Jacob Zuma: Biennial National Conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies". South African Government. Retrieved 27 March 2023.

Bibliography

• Hirson, Baruch (2005). A History of the Left in South Africa: Writings of Baruch Hirson. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1282751042.
• Lerumo, A. (1987). Fifty Fighting Years: The Communist Party of South Africa, 1921–1971. London: Inkululeko. ISBN 0950422517.
• Simelane, David (1981). "The International Socialist League". Umkhonto we Sizwe. South African History Online. pp. 32–35. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
• van der Walt, Lucien (2004). "Bakunin's Heirs in South Africa: race, class and revolutionary Syndicalism from the IWW to the International Socialist League". Politikon. 30 (1). Pretoria: University of Pretoria: 67–89. doi:10.1080/02589340410001690819. ISSN 0258-9346. S2CID 219731903. Retrieved 9 October 2021.

Further reading

Articles

• Johns, Sheridan (1976). "The Birth of the Communist Party of South Africa". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 9 (3): 371–400. doi:10.2307/216844. ISSN 0361-7882. JSTOR 216844.
• "The International Socialist League (ISL)". South African History Online. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
• van der Walt, Lucien (2007). "The First Globalisation and Transnational Labour Activism in Southern Africa : white labourism, the IWW and the ICU, 1904-1934" (PDF). African Studies. 66 (2/3). London: University of the Witwatersrand: 223–251. doi:10.1080/00020180701482719. ISSN 1469-2872. S2CID 218645592. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 9 October 2021.

Books

• Bradford, Helen (1987). A Taste of Freedom: the ICU in rural South Africa, 1924-1930. Johannesburg: Raven Press. ISBN 0869753339.
• Drew, Allison (2002). Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press. ISBN 1868882055.
• Johns, Sheridan Waite (1965). Marxism-Leninism in a multi-racial environment: the origins and early history of the Communist Party of South Africa, 1914-1932 (doctoral thesis). Harvard University. OCLC 221178684.
• van der Walt, Lucien; Schmidt, Michael (2009). Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism (Counter-Power vol. 1). Edinburgh: AK Press. ISBN 978-1-904859-16-1.