Spartacist League (US)

The Spartacist League is the American section of the International Communist League.

The roots of the Spartacist League are a tendency within the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) which was called the Revolutionary Tendency. The Revolutionary Tendency had a more critical view of the Cuban Revolution than the SWP majority did, among other issues. In 1963, the SWP's International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) united with the International Secretariat of the Fourth International to form the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. The Revolutionary Tendency opposed this reunification, as did the British section of the ICFI, which was known as "The Club" (a Trotskyist faction of the Labour Party which would later become the Socialist Labour League). A faction of the Revolutionary Tendency, which would in the future become the American Committee of the Fourth International opposed the reunification in conjunction with the British section. The faction of the Revolutionary Tendency which would eventually become the Spartacist League did not oppose the reunification in conjunction with the ICFI's British section. At the 1963 SWP convention, the Revolutionary Tendency was denounced, and after the convention a plenum was called and several Revoltionary Tendency leaders from the "Spartacist" faction of the Revolutionary Tendency were expelled.

The Spartacist League had a founding conference in 1966, which adopted the Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League. In 1974 the Declaration for the Organization of an International Trotskyist Tendency was adopted, formally constituting the international Spartacist tendency (iSt). The first delegated international conference of the iSt was held in 1979 and elected an international executive committee. The Spartacist League did not support the Iranian Revolution, but did support the USSR's intervention in Afghanistan.

In 1982, an external tendency in the Spartacist League was declared. Within a few years, it would split with the Spartacist League and become the Bolshevik Tendency. In 1986 the Spartacist League's youth group, the Spartacus Youth League, was dissolved. In 1989 the iSt became the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). In 1996 the Internationalist Group split from the Spartacist League.