Political philosopher
Marius Ostrowski argues that, despite various differences among factions, the left is primarily concerned with who wields power in society and with fighting for "those without" against "those with" who harm "those without". Ostrowski argues that the central value of the left is
social equality, which is expressed in fighting for
empowerment and against
oppression, for parity and against
hierarchy, for
social recognition of marginalized groups and against
discrimination, and for
cooperation and against
competition. Related concepts include
justice,
solidarity,
cultural pluralism,
social progress, and
freedom from forceful control or coercion.
Economics demonstrating in
Alappuzha,
Kerala Left-leaning economic beliefs range from
Keynesian economics and the
welfare state through
industrial democracy and the
social market to the
nationalisation of the economy and
central planning, to the
anarcho-syndicalist advocacy of a council-based and self-managed
anarchist communism. Left-wing politics are typically associated with popular or state control of major political and economic institutions. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, supporters of left-wing politics "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated." During the
Industrial Revolution, leftists supported
trade unions. At the beginning of the 20th century, many leftists advocated strong government intervention in the economy. Leftists continue to criticise the perceived exploitative nature of
globalisation, the "
race to the bottom" and unjust lay-offs and exploitation of workers. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the belief that the government (ruling in accordance with the interests of the people) ought to be directly involved in the day-to-day workings of an economy declined in popularity amongst the
centre-left, especially
social democrats who adopted the
Third Way. The political relevance of farmers has divided the left. In , Marx scarcely mentioned the subject, though posthumous studies of his notebooks indicate that he was interested in studying the works of agricultural chemists to critique international agricultural trade and natural resource exploitation under capitalism. In other works, including
The Communist Manifesto, the
Critique of the Gotha Programme, and
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx asserts the revolutionary potential of the peasant class through a transfer into the proletariat.
Mikhail Bakunin thought the
lumpenproletariat was a revolutionary class, while
Mao Zedong believed that it would be rural peasants, not urban workers, who would bring about the
proletarian revolution.
Left-libertarians,
anarchists and
libertarian socialists believe in a
decentralised economy run by
trade unions,
workers' councils,
cooperatives,
municipalities and communes, opposing both
state and
private control of the economy, preferring
social ownership and local control in which a nation of decentralised regions is united in a
confederation. The
global justice movement, also known as the
anti-globalisation movement and the
alter-globalisation movement, protests against
corporate economic globalisation due to its negative consequences for the poor, workers, the environment, and small businesses.
Environment One of the foremost left-wing advocates was
Thomas Paine, one of the first individuals since
left and
right became political terms to describe the collective human ownership of the world, which he speaks of in
Agrarian Justice. This principle is reflected in much of the historical left-wing thought and literature that came afterwards, although there were disagreements about what this entailed. Karl Marx and the early socialist philosopher and scholar
William Morris had a concern for environmental matters. According to Marx, "[e]ven an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations". Following the Russian Revolution, environmental scientists such as revolutionary
Alexander Bogdanov and the
Proletkult organisation made efforts to incorporate environmentalism into Bolshevism and "integrate production with natural laws and limits" in the first decade of
Soviet rule, before
Joseph Stalin attacked ecologists and the science of ecology, purged environmentalists and promoted the
pseudoscience of
Trofim Lysenko during his rule up until his death in 1953. Similarly,
Mao Zedong rejected environmentalism and believed that based on the laws of historical materialism, all of nature must be put into the service of revolution. From the 1970s onwards, environmentalism became an increasing concern of the left, with social movements and several unions campaigning on environmental issues and causes. In Australia, the left-wing
Builders Labourers Federation, led by the communist Jack Mundy, united with environmentalists to place
green bans on environmentally destructive development projects. Several segments of the socialist and Marxist left consciously merged environmentalism and anti-capitalism into an
eco-socialist ideology.
Barry Commoner articulated a left-wing response to
The Limits to Growth model that predicted catastrophic
resource depletion and spurred environmentalism, postulating that capitalist technologies were the key cause responsible for environmental degradation, as opposed to human population pressures. Environmental degradation can be seen as a class or equity issue, as environmental destruction disproportionately affects poorer communities and countries. '' magazine. Several left-wing or socialist groupings have an overt environmental concern and several green parties contain a strong socialist presence. For example, the
Green Party of England and Wales includes an eco-socialist group, the
Green Left, founded in June 2005. In Europe, several
green left political parties such as the
European United Left–Nordic Green Left combine traditional social-democratic values such as a desire for greater economic equality and workers rights with demands for environmental protection. Democratic socialist
Bolivian president Evo Morales has traced
environmental degradation to capitalist
consumerism, stating that "[t]he Earth does not have enough for the North to live better and better, but it does have enough for all of us to live well".
James Hansen,
Noam Chomsky,
Raj Patel,
Naomi Klein,
The Yes Men and
Dennis Kucinich hold similar views. In
climate change mitigation, the Left is also divided over how to effectively and equitably reduce
carbon emissions as the center-left often advocates a reliance on market measures such as
emissions trading and a
carbon tax while those further to the left support direct government regulation and intervention in the form of a
Green New Deal, either alongside or instead of market mechanisms.
Nationalism, anti-imperialism and anti-nationalism The question of
nationality,
imperialism and
nationalism has been a central feature of political debates on the Left. During the French Revolution, nationalism was a key policy of the Republican Left. The Republican Left advocated for
civic nationalism The Marxist
social class theory of
proletarian internationalism asserts that members of the
working class should act in solidarity with working people in other countries in pursuit of a common
class interest, rather than only focusing on their own countries. Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan: "
Workers of the world, unite!", the last line of
The Communist Manifesto. Union members had learned that more members meant more bargaining power. Taken to an international level, leftists argued that workers should act in solidarity with the international proletariat in order to further increase the power of the working class. Proletarian internationalism saw itself as a deterrent against war and international conflicts, because people with a common interest are less likely to take up arms against one another, instead focusing on fighting the
bourgeoisie as the
ruling class. According to Marxist theory, the
antonym of proletarian internationalism is
bourgeois nationalism. Some Marxists, together with others on the left, view
nationalism,
racism (including antisemitism) and
religion as
divide and conquer tactics used by the ruling classes to prevent the
working class from uniting against them in solidarity with one another. Anarchism has developed a critique of nationalism that focuses on nationalism's role in justifying and consolidating state power and domination. Through its unifying goal, nationalism strives for
centralisation (both in specific territories and in a ruling elite of individuals) while it prepares a population for capitalist exploitation. Within anarchism, this subject has been extensively discussed by
Rudolf Rocker in his book titled
Nationalism and Culture and by the works of
Fredy Perlman such as
Against His-Story, Against Leviathan and
The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism. The failure of revolutions in
Germany and
Hungary in the 1918–1920 years ended
Bolshevik hopes for an imminent
world revolution and led to the promotion of the doctrine of
socialism in one country by
Joseph Stalin. In the first edition of his book titled
Osnovy Leninizma (
Foundations of Leninism, 1924), Stalin argued that revolution in one country is insufficient. By the end of that year in the second edition of the book, he argued that the "
proletariat can and must build the socialist society in one country". In April 1925,
Nikolai Bukharin elaborated on the issue in his brochure titled
Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat?, whose position was adopted as state policy after Stalin's January 1926 article titled
On the Issues of Leninism (К вопросам ленинизма) was published. This idea was opposed by
Leon Trotsky and his supporters, who declared the need for an international "
permanent revolution" and condemned Stalin for betraying the goals and ideals of the socialist revolution. Various
Fourth Internationalist groups around the world who describe themselves as
Trotskyist see themselves as standing in this tradition while
Maoist China formally supported the theory of socialism in one country. European social democrats strongly support
Europeanism and
supranational integration within the
European Union, although there is a minority of nationalists and
Eurosceptics on the left. Several scholars have linked this form of left-wing nationalism to the pressure generated by economic integration with other countries, often encouraged by
neoliberal free trade agreements. This view is sometimes used to justify hostility towards supranational organisations. Left-wing movements have often taken up
anti-imperialist positions.
Left-wing nationalism also can refer to any form of nationalism which emphasises a leftist working-class
populist agenda that seeks to overcome exploitation or oppression by other nations. Many Third World
anti-colonialist movements have adopted leftist and socialist ideas.
Third-Worldism is a tendency within leftist thought that regards the division between
First World and
Second World developed countries and
Third World developing countries as being of high political importance. This tendency supports
decolonisation and
national liberation movements against imperialism by capitalists. Third-Worldism is closely connected with
African socialism,
Latin American socialism,
Maoism,
pan-Africanism and
pan-Arabism. Several left-wing groups in the developing world such as the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico, the
Abahlali baseMjondolo in
South Africa and the
Naxalites in India have argued that the First World and the Second World Left takes a racist and paternalistic attitude towards liberation movements in the Third World.
Religion The original
French Left was firmly
anti-clerical, strongly opposing the influence of the
Roman Catholic Church and supporting
atheism and the
separation of church and state, ushering in a policy known as
laïcité. In Soviet Russia, the
Bolsheviks under
Vladimir Lenin originally embraced an ideological principle which professed that all religion would eventually atrophy and resolved to eradicate organised
Christianity and other religious institutions. In 1918, 10
Russian Orthodox hierarchs were summarily executed by a firing squad, and children were deprived of any religious education outside of the home. Today in the
Western world, those on the Left generally support
secularisation and the separation of church and state. However, religious beliefs have also been associated with many left-wing movements such as the
progressive movement, the
Social Gospel movement, the
civil rights movement, the
anti-war movement, the anti-
capital punishment movement and
Liberation Theology. Early
utopian socialist thinkers such as
Robert Owen,
Charles Fourier and the
Comte de Saint-Simon based their theories of socialism upon Christian principles. Other common leftist concerns such as
pacifism,
social justice,
racial equality,
human rights and the rejection of capitalism and excessive
wealth can be found in the
Bible. In the late 19th century, the
Protestant Social Gospel movement arose in the United States which integrated
progressive and
socialist thought with
Christianity through faith-based social activism. Other left-wing religious movements include Buddhist socialism, Jewish socialism and Islamic socialism. There have been alliances between the left and anti-war
Muslims, such as the
Respect Party and the
Stop the War Coalition in Britain. In France, the left has been divided over moves to ban the
hijab from schools, with some leftists supporting a ban based on the separation of church and state in accordance with the principle of
laïcité and other leftists opposing the prohibition based on personal and religious freedom.
Social progressivism and counterculture , New York City, express solidarity with the
Selma to Montgomery marches against
racial segregation in the United States, 1965
Social progressivism is another common feature of modern leftism, particularly in the United States, where social progressives played an important role in the
abolition of slavery, the enshrinement of
women's suffrage in the
United States Constitution, and the protection of
civil rights,
LGBTQ rights,
women's rights and
multiculturalism. Progressives have both advocated for
alcohol prohibition legislation and worked towards its repeal in the mid to late 1920s and early 1930s. Current positions associated with social progressivism in the
Western world include strong opposition to the
death penalty,
torture,
mass surveillance, and the
war on drugs, and support for
abortion rights,
cognitive liberty, LGBTQ rights including legal recognition of
same-sex marriage,
same-sex adoption of children, the
right to change one's legal gender, distribution of
contraceptives, and public funding of embryonic
stem-cell research. The desire for an expansion of social and civil liberties often overlaps that of the
libertarian movement. Public education was a subject of great interest to groundbreaking social progressives such as
Lester Frank Ward and
John Dewey, who believed that a democratic society and system of government was practically impossible without a universal and comprehensive nationwide system of education. Various counterculture and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s were associated with the New Left. Unlike the earlier leftist focus on
labour union activism and a proletarian revolution, the New Left instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called
social activism. The New Left in the United States is associated with the
hippie movement, mass protest movements on school campuses and a broadening of focus from protesting
class-based oppression to include issues such as
gender,
race and
sexual orientation. The British New Left was an intellectually driven movement which attempted to correct the perceived errors of the
Old Left. The New Left opposed prevailing authoritarian structures in society which it designated as "
The Establishment" and became known as the "Anti-Establishment". The New Left did not seek to recruit industrial workers en masse, but instead concentrated on a social activist approach to organization, convinced that they could be the source for a better kind of
social revolution. This view has been criticised by several
Marxists, especially
Trotskyists, who characterised this approach as "substitutionism" which they described as a misguided and non-Marxist belief that other groups in society could "substitute" for and "replace" the revolutionary agency of the working class. Many early
feminists and advocates of women's rights were considered a part of the Left by their contemporaries. Feminist pioneer
Mary Wollstonecraft was influenced by
Thomas Paine. Many notable leftists have been strong supporters of gender equality such as
Marxist philosophers and activists
Rosa Luxemburg,
Clara Zetkin and
Alexandra Kollontai,
anarchist philosophers and activists such as
Virginia Bolten,
Emma Goldman and
Lucía Sánchez Saornil and
democratic socialist philosophers and activists such as
Helen Keller and
Annie Besant. However, Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and Alexandra Kollontai, who are supporters of radical social equality for women and have rejected and opposed
liberal feminism because they considered it to be a capitalist
bourgeois ideology. Marxists were responsible for organising the first
International Working Women's Day events. The
women's liberation movement is closely connected to the New Left and other
new social movements which openly challenged the orthodoxies of the Old Left. Socialist feminism as exemplified by the
Freedom Socialist Party and
Radical Women and
Marxist feminism, spearheaded by
Selma James, saw themselves as a part of the Left that challenges male-dominated and
sexist structures within the Left. The connection between left-wing ideologies and the struggle for LGBTQ rights also has an important history. Prominent socialists who were involved in early struggles for LGBTQ rights include
Edward Carpenter,
Oscar Wilde,
Harry Hay,
Bayard Rustin and
Daniel Guérin, among others. The New Left is also strongly supportive of LGBTQ rights and liberation, having been instrumental in the founding of the
LGBTQ rights movement in the aftermath of the
Stonewall Riots of 1969. Contemporary leftist activists and socialist countries such as Cuba are actively supportive of LGBTQ+ people and are involved in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and equality. == History ==