The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) (formerly the International Spartacist Tendency) is a Trotskyist international organisation. It consists of the various Trotskyist groups, many named the Spartacist League.

The most prominent section of the international is in the United States, and there are smaller sections in Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Australia and Greece. They named themselves after the original Spartacist League of Germany.

The group originated at the Revolutionary Tendency in the American Socialist Workers Party, formed in 1961, seeing themselves as loyal to the International Committee of the Fourth International while the SWP was keen to reunify with the International Secretariat of the Fourth International which the RT characterized as Pabloite . After explusion from the SWP, they renamed themselves in 1964, but were expelled from the ICFI in 1966.

The group was founded by James Robertson. It characterizes itself as a revolutionary fighting propaganda group. In organizing and participating in demonstrations and labor support and co-ordinating exemplary actions against fascists and elsewise, it devotes much attention to polemicizing against other groups that consider themselves to be socialist and refused to join most left wing political coalitions and campaigns characterising them as popular fronts aimed at providing platforms for bourgeois politicians (from the Democratic Party and the Green Party). Their polemics and political criticism are often mischaracterized as simple disruption of these other group's activities and the Democratic Socialists of America and the International Socialist Organization (ISO) falsely claimed that they have once or twice gotten violent at meetings. They in turn have demonstrated that various groups have acted in a violent fashion towards them (and others), and have documented this at various points. They are also highly critical of groups associated with the United Secretariat of the Fourth International which they characterize as Pabloite.

The International Bolshevik Tendency, which formed in 1985 out of members who had variously quit and been expelled, claims that since they left the group it has engaged in very little trade union activity. The IBT also claims that the Spartacists have degenerated into an "obedience cult" centered around Robertson, but leading anti-cult organizations such as the American Family Foundation have never adopted a position on whether or not the Spartacists are a political cult.

Another split occurred in 1996 when the founders of the League for the Fourth International were expelled, allegedly for maneuvering with a group from Brazil involved in bringing court suit against a trade union.

The ICL(FI) denounces all support to capitalist parties, not least through popular front formation, in favor of an independent workers party aiming for state power. They regard what they term the struggle for black liberation as central to revolution in the U.S. and promote "revolutionary integrationism".

It was one of the few groups to hail the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the Soviet occupation which followed. They believed it provided an opportunity to extend the gains of the October Revolution to the Afghan people (especially women), in a struggle against Islamic fundamentalism. Although they were widely criticized for this position, the U.S. government itself ended up relying (in part) on remnants of the pro-Soviet Afghan army to overthrow the Taliban rule (the type of regime the Spartacists had warned against) in northern Afghanistan during the post-9/11 invasion. However, the Spartacists opposed the U.S. invasion.

The Spartacists gave no support to Ayatollah Khomeini during the Islamic Revolution, which the majority of the left supported as "anti-imperialist."

The group also maintains a position of defending what they see as the remaining Communist states, which it calls deformed workers states. This famously extends to them calling for defense of North Korea's right to nuclear arms. The ICL(FI) also fought hard in mobilizing to defend the Soviet Union and East Germany from what it saw as capitalist restoration, though it was unsuccessful. Their group in Germany waged an election campaign in 1989 uniquely calling for opposition to the capitalist reunification.

Since the early 1980s, the group and affiliates have organized mobilizations against Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, and in the late-1980s were early campaigners to save Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Less popularly, they have defended groups like the North American Man Boy Love Association on civil libertarian grounds and have called for an end to age-of-consent laws. Their publications frequently criticize the Christian Right's opposition to abortion and homosexuality as examples of an attempt to establish a "sex police."

The US group publishes the newspaper Workers Vanguard, which is known for its often critical commentary on the activities of other leftist groups and for its sarcastic wit. The UK group publishes Workers Hammer. The "Sparts" (as they are commonly called on the left) publish the theoretical journal Spartacist in four languages.

External link

• International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) (http://www.icl-fi.org/)
• Sect appeal (http://www.salon.com/feb97/media/media970206.html) Scott McLemee of Salon on the entertainment value of the 1996 split in the ICL.

See also: List of Trotskyist internationals