TheOld Left is an informal umbrella term used to describe the variousleft-wing political movements in theWestern world prior to the 1960s. Many of these movements wereMarxist movements that often took a morevanguardist approach tosocial justice; focused primarily onlabor unionization andsocial class in the West.[1] Generally, the Old Left, unlike theNew, focused more oneconomic issues thancultural ones. However, seminal figures of the Old Left, such asLenin, opposedeconomism.
While some parties within the Old Left embraced gay rights, influenced by movements likeEurocommunism, others focused on advocating for the working class alone, like thePASOK and theCommunist Party of the Russian Federation.
The emergence of the New Left, which initially originated in the UK, witnessed a shift away from the focus on class struggle and Marxist views of labor. New Left theorists likeHerbert Marcuse emphasized instead the liberation of human sexuality.
The Old Left originated in the19th century during theIndustrial Revolution. At a time when few countries even had universal suffrage, the Old Left focused primarily onlabor unions andsocial class. Their stances were economically left-wing, but largely ignored issues commonly linked tocultural liberalism.[2]
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publishedThe Communist Manifesto in 1848, during theRevolutions of 1848. They proposed the following policies: the abolition ofprivate property in land andinheritance; introduction of aprogressive income tax; confiscation of rebels' property;nationalization ofcredit, communication, and transport; expansion and integration of industry and agriculture; enforcement of universal obligation of labour; and provision ofuniversal education and abolition ofchild labour. The text ends with three decisive sentences, reworked and popularized into the famous call for solidarity, the slogan "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains".
Communism was first implemented in theSoviet Union by theBolsheviks, led byVladimir Lenin.
Unlike theNew Left, the Old Left puts less emphasis on social issues such asidentity politics,intersectionality,abortion,drugs,feminism,LGBT rights,environmentalism,immigration and the abolition of thecapital punishment; some Old Leftists outright oppose the New Left positions on these issues. Since the mid-1970s with the advent ofrevisionist movements such asEurocommunism (and earlier in the Anglosphere, the New Left), some parties on thefar left in the West have begun to adopt homosexual rights from the New Left as part of their platform while parties in the East such as theCommunist Party of Greece (KKE) and theCommunist Party of the Russian Federation have rejected this move and continue to focus exclusively onworking class as the Old Left.[3][4][5] In 2015, KKE voted against the Civil Partnerships Bill proposed bySyriza, responding: "With the formation of a socialist-communist society, a new type of partnership will undoubtedly be formed—a relatively stable heterosexual relationship and reproduction".[6]
Militant was aTrotskyistentryist group in the BritishLabour Party, based around theMilitant newspaper launched in 1964. According toMichael Crick, its politics were influenced byKarl Marx,Friedrich Engels,Vladimir Lenin andLeon Trotsky and "virtually nobody else".[7] Militant has been cited as an example of left-wing opposition to feminism and gay rights initiatives within thelabour movement in the early 1980s, specifically within the context of reaction to the financial support given to gay rights groups by theGreater London Council under the leadership ofKen Livingstone.[8] While Militant was present in Labour Party women's sections, claiming forty delegates attended the Labour Party women's conference in 1981, it opposed feminism which declared that men were the enemy, or the cause of women's oppression.[9]
The Old Left sometimes took a stance hostile to immigration, promoting policies that would preserve the ethnic homogeneity of the country. Australian Prime MinisterJohn Curtin, who was part of theAustralian Labor Party, reinforced the White Australia Policy and said the following in his defense: "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race."[10]Arthur Calwell, another Old Leftist who led the Australian Labor Party in the 1960s, strongly defended theWhite Australia Policy and said the following: "I am proud of my white skin, just as a Chinese is proud of his yellow skin, a Japanese of his brown skin, and the Indians of their various hues from black to coffee-coloured. Anybody who is not proud of his race is not a man at all. And any man who tries to stigmatize the Australian community as racist because they want to preserve this country for the white race is doing our nation great harm ... I reject, in conscience, the idea that Australia should or ever can become a multi-racial society and survive."[11] Left-wing Labor members perceived unrestricted immigration as a ploy by owners to drive down wages, resulting in the leadership of labor unions often being skeptical of expanded immigration.
As late as 2015,Bernie Sanders criticized open borders a "Koch brothers proposal", although he later switched to the more New Left position welcoming to immigration.[12]
Communist leaders and intellectuals took many different positions on LGBT rights issues. Marx and Engels wrote little on the subject; Marx in particular rarely commented onsexuality in general. Writing for Political Affairs, Norman Markowitz writes: "Here, to be frank, one finds from Marx a refusal to entertain the subject, and from Engels open hostility to the individuals involved".[13] This is because in private Engels criticized male homosexuality and related it toancient Greek pederasty,[14] saying that "[the ancient Greeks] fell into the abominable practice of sodomy [Knabenliebe, meaning 'boy love" orpederasty] and degraded alike their gods and themselves with the myth ofGanymede".[15] Engels also said that the pro-pederast movement "cannot fail to triumph.Guerre aux cons, paix aus trous-de-cul [war on the cunts, peace to the arse-holes] will now be the slogan".[16] Engels also referred to Dr. Karl Boruttau as aSchwanzschwule ("gay prick") in private.[17]
In fact, in theSoviet Union, male homosexuality was considered a crime after its re-criminalization during the Stalinist era (it had previously been decriminalised by the early soviet government), a law which would not be revoked until 1993 after thedissolution of the USSR.
TheEncyclopedia of Homosexuality is unequivocal on Marx and Engels view of homosexuality, stating in volume 2: "There can be little doubt that, as far as they thought of the matter at all, Marx and Engels were personallyhomo-phobic, as shown by an acerbic 1869 exchange of letter onJean-Baptiste von Schweitzer, a German socialist rival. Schweitzer had been arrested in a park on a morals charge and not only did Marx and Engels refuse to join a committee defending him, they resorted to the cheapest form of bathroom humor in their private comments about the affair".[18]
In 1933,Joseph Stalin added Article 121 to the entire Soviet Union criminal code, which made male homosexuality a crime punishable by up to five years in prison with hard labor. The precise reason for Article 121 is in some dispute among historians. The few official government statements made about the law tended to confuse homosexuality withpedophilia and was tied up with a belief that homosexuality was only practiced amongfascists or thearistocracy. The law remained intact until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was repealed in 1993.[19][20] Gay men were sometimes denied membership or expelled fromCommunist parties across the globe during the 20th century as most Communist parties followed the social precedents set by the Soviet Union.[21]
TheParty of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) is a party which strongly opposesLGBT rights in Moldova and works with nationalist, right-wing and religious movements to counter the "promotion of vice spread with the help of the US in Moldova"; theParty of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) holds similar positions.[22][23] TheCommunist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) supported ananti-gay law in 2013.[24] TheCommunist Party of Greece (KKE) voted against the introduction ofsame-sex civil unions in 2015, but has also criticized homophobia and discrimination in general.[25][26]
TheNew Left arose first among dissenting intellectuals and campus groups in the United Kingdom and later alongside campuses in the United States and in theWestern bloc.
The German critical theoristHerbert Marcuse is referred to as the "Father of the New Left". Marcuse rejected the theory of class struggle and theMarxist concern withlabor. According toLeszek Kołakowski, Marcuse argued that since "all questions of material existence have been solved, moral commands and prohibitions are no longer relevant". He regarded the realization of man's erotic nature as the true liberation of humanity, which inspired the utopias ofJerry Rubin and others.[27]
Between 1943 and 1950, Marcuse worked in U.S. government service for theOffice of Strategic Services (predecessor of theCentral Intelligence Agency) and criticized theideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the bookSoviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958). After his studies, in the 1960s and the 1970s he became known as the pre-eminent theorist of the New Left and the student movements of West Germany, France and the United States.
