Spartacist League of the U.S.

American Trotskyist political organization.

Biography Note

The Spartacist League of the U.S. is a self-proclaimed revolutionary communist organization in the Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist tradition. Its antecedents date to the early 1960s and stem from the Revolutionary Tendency within the Socialist Workers Party, American sympathizing section of the Fourth International (International Committee) at that time. The Revolutionary Tendency espoused a number of criticisms of the majority leadership of the Socialist Workers Party, notably its decision to participate in the reunified Fourth International (United Secretariat) and its uncritically favorable assessment of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. These differences eventuated in expulsion of leaders of the Revolutionary Tendency at the end of 1963 and their formation of a group around the publication Spartacist early in 1964. Following failure to achieve agreement with remaining elements of the Fourth International (International Committee), the group formally founded the Spartacist League of the U.S. in 1966.

International activities of the Spartacist League resulted in formation of an international Spartacist tendency following a European conference in 1974. This international tendency, including sections in Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and several European countries, transformed itself into the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) in 1989.

Domestically, a youth affiliate of the Spartacist League appeared initially as the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus within Students for a Democratic Society in 1969. This was succeeded in turn by Revolutionary Communist Youth (1971-1974), the Spartacus Youth League (1974-1986), and, after a hiatus, reconstituted Spartacus Youth Clubs.

Two other domestic affiliates are the Partisan Defense Committee, established to provide aid to leftist and labor prisoners, and the Prometheus Research Library, a facility for documentation of the history of the Trotskyist movement.

In addition to its theoretical journal Spartacist, the principal publications of the Spartacist League press have been its newspaper Workers Vanguard, its youth newspaper Young Spartacus, and its Women's Commission journal Women and Revolution .