From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor: A Collective History of the International Socialists

by Andrew Stone Higgins

458 pages, Paperback

Published March 31, 2026

Reviews

[Michael Sasson]

Important and impressive contribution. So pleased the editor let the authors disagree with each other about how to assess shared experiences.

[Brendan Campisi]

An excellent addition to the growing number of accounts of the post-'68 revolutionary Left in the US and elsewhere. The editors' introduction places the IS in historical context both in its deeper roots in the US left going back to the '30s, and in relation to '60s signposts that would be familiar to a broad audience like SDS and the Panthers. The twenty-six contributions by former IS members cover two decades of political activity from the late 1950s to the early '80s.

IS members were in the thick of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement that kickstarted the campus revolt, built the Peace and Freedom Party in alliance with the Panthers, and then in the 1970s made the most concerted 'turn to the working class' of any US left group of its time. They also connected with a younger cohort of activists in the mid-'70s to build a youth organization that played a leading role in antiracist struggles. The contributors give a strong sense of how all of this worked, usually without offering any pat 'lessons.' They also deal with the more subjective dimension: the intellectual excitement of discovering Marxism, the pleasures of comradeship and the optimism of a revolutionary era, the tensions of trying to live up to a stringent ideal of the 'professional revolutionary,' the depressing splits, etc. At times reminiscent of 'The Romance of American Communism, with less pathos.

[Shaun Richman]

The accounts of the better-known veterans (Nelson Lichtenstein, Kim Moody, Weinstein) are interesting, and the Draperites are historically under-documented (they remain so, even in this book). However, I am struck by how many contributors simply call the IS "democratic" and then proceed to tell stories about inner cliques, cultishness, strategic cul-de-sacs, splits and purges of enemies that really make you question what they think democracy is or should be.