Special Supplement, May 2016  Table of Contents Selected articles linked Click on image to left for pdf version of complete issue.

Communism Lives … Just Not in the SL/ICL SL/ICL: Haunted by Revolutionary Trotskyism Joint Statement of the Expelled Better-Late-Than-Never Faction and the Internationalist Group/League for the Fourth International On April 16, the Better-Late-Than-Never (BLTN) Faction of the International Communist League (ICL) put forward its Declaration of Faction calling to “Return to the Road of Genuine Spartacism” and to “Regroup with the IG/LFI on the Basis of Their Revolutionary Continuity!” The very next day they received a response from the Spartacist League’s Los Angeles local, falsely claiming that the declaration was written in collaboration with the IG and cynically saying it considered the declaration a statement of resignation. The BLTN responded that claims they couldn’t have written the document were not only untrue but an insult to the intelligence of the ICL membership. The Faction notably exposed how the party that had uniquely waged a principled struggle to defend the DDR (East Germany) and USSR responded to defeat by dumping Trotsky’s analysis of the dual nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy and whitewashing the role of the bourgeoisie and its social-democratic agents in the capitalist counterrevolution. It also independently investigated key political differences between the ICL and the LFI on Brazil and Mexico, as well as challenging the SL on key issues concerning the class line and black oppression in the U.S. The Better-Late-Than-Never Faction Declaration is a challenge to those in the SL/ICL who truly want to make a revolution. The report on the latest conference of the Spartacist League/U.S. makes clear, the SL is a dying party. It is crucial to understand that the decline of the SL/ICL is a direct result of its political/programmatic degeneration. An agreement between the BLTN and the IG/LFI calls for carrying out common work aiming at an early fusion. SL/ICL: Haunted by Revolutionary Trotskyism (13 May 2016)

Forward to Reforge the IV International, World Party of Socialist Revolution Back to Trotskyism! By Giulia and Carlo Two comrades who were the principal leaders of the Lega Trotskista d’Italia (LTd’I), Italian section of the International Communist League (ICL) from 1993-1999, with 21 and 27 years in the Spartacist tendency respectively, have declared their political solidarity with the League for the Fourth International. In 1999-2001 they were subjected to vicious political persecution involving grotesque accusations of faking illness, making false charges against the ICL leadership and hiding political differences. After a change of the leading cliques, the ICL concluded that the persecution was a “bureaucratic witchhunt” based on “gross exaggerations or outright falsifications,” but it never informed the comrades of this. They detail how the ICL’s abandonment of the revolutionary program in Italy reflected the broader political degeneration of the ICL, from dropping the call to defeat its own imperialist bourgeoisie after 9/11 (and supporting U.S. invasion of Haiti in 2010, later repudiating this social-imperialist betrayal) to trade-union issues in the U.S. to Greece and Syria today. Their document puts forward an internationalist program of class struggle, notably on women's oppression and for full rights for immigrants and refugees, a burning issue in Italy today in the fight for a socialist united states of Europe. They conclude: “The present ICL is no place for a communist. For those in the ICL who may still want to be communists, we urge you to read and study the literature of the League for the Fourth International, as we did and in doing so recognized the genuinely Trotskyist program we were won to years ago.” Back to Trotskyism! (11 May 2016)

Declaration of the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction Return to the Road of Genuine Spartacism! Regroup with the IG/LFI on the Basis of Their Revolutionary Continuity! The platform of the BLTN Faction takes the leadership of the International Communist League to task for its revisionism in four key areas: “The Russian Question,” “The Class Line,” “The State” and the struggle to “Reforge a Fourth International That Trotsky Would Call His Own.” It devastates the latter-day ICL’s claim that “the Stalinists led the counterrevolution,” underscoring that this effectively renounced its own intervention in the DDR/USSR in 1989-92, and is counterposed to revolutionary intervention against looming counterrevolution in China, Cuba and the other remaining deformed workers states today. Although many ICLers believe this anti-Trotskyist line was corrected in 2003, the Declaration exposes how it has remained the official policy of the ICL. The BLTN painstakingly examined the ICL’s lies and desertion from the struggle to oust the police from the unions in Brazil and its apologies for state-controlled corporatist pseudo-unions in Mexico, demonstrating the correctness of the LFI positions and struggle. It also raised the question of “walking bosses” in the West Coast ILWU dock union, foremen who although members of the union directly represent the shipping bosses, an issue the IG had not previously considered. In calling for regroupment with the IG/LFI on the basis of its revolutionary continuity, the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction noted that this continued the historic program of the Spartacist tendency that the SL/ICL has been abandoning step by step in every major crisis. Declaration of the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction (16 April 2016)  Attachments: Letter of Los Angeles SL “Resigning” the Better-Late-Than-Never Faction (17 April 2016) BLTN Faction Letter to All Members of the ICL (18 April 2016) Letter of Los Angeles SL Expelling the BLTN (23 April 2016)