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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 were keen to leave. After explusion from the SWP, they renamed themselves in 1964, but were expelled from the ICFI in 1966.
The group characterizes itself as a revolutionary propaganda group. In organizing and participating in demonstrations and labor support, it devotes much attention to polemicizing against other groups that consider themselves socialist. This conforms with a regroupment strategy, recently supplemented with efforts to convert and recruit young anarchists.
The ICL(FI) denounces all support to capitalist parties, not least through popular front formation, in favor of independent workers party aiming for state power; regards the black question as central to the U.S. revolution and promotes "revolutionary integrationism"; maintains a position of defending the remaining "Communist" states, which it calls deformed workers states, including advocacy of North Korea's right to nuclear arms; and vigorously supports equality for women and gays around the world while opposing liberal lifestyle sectoralism.
Since the early 1980s, the group and affiliates have organized mobilizations against Nazis and the Klan in numerous cities, and in the mid-'90s played a critical role in sustaining and internationalizing the campaign to save Mumia Abu-Jamal, before it became a cause celebre and when other liberals and radicals ignored it.
The US group publishes the newspaper Workers Vanguard and the theoretical journal Spartacist, while the UK group publishes Workers Hammer.