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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, environmentalism, 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.
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.
- ^ Cynthia Kaufman (2003). Ideas For Action: Relevant Theory For Radical Change. South End Press. ISBN 9780896086937.
- Todd Gitlin, "The Left's Lost Universalism", in Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger and M. Richard Zinman, eds., Politics at the Turn of the Century, pp. 3–26 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001)
- Grant Farred (2000). "Endgame Identity? Mapping the New Left Roots of Identity Politics". New Literary History. 31 (4): 627–648. doi:10.1353/nlh.2000.0045. JSTOR 20057628. S2CID 144650061.