Old Left

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The Old Left is an informal umbrella term used to describe the various left-wing political movements in the Western world prior to the 1960s. Many of these movements were Marxist movements that often took a more vanguardist approach to social justice; focused primarily on labor unionization and social class in the West.^[1] Generally, the Old Left, unlike the New, focused more on economic issues than cultural ones.

The Old Left often overlooked social matters such as abortion, drugs, feminism, gay rights, gender roles, and immigration. While some parties within the Old Left eventually embraced gay rights, influenced by movements like Eurocommunism, others remained focused on only advocating for the working class, like the Communist Party of Greece and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The Old Left frequently opposed immigration, viewing it as a strategy employed by employers to lower wages. Historical leaders such as Marx and Engels either disregarded or displayed hostility towards homosexuality. In fact, in the Soviet Union, male homosexuality was considered a crime, a law which would not be revoked until 1993 after the dissolution of the USSR.

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 like Herbert Marcuse emphasized instead the liberation of human sexuality.