Since the mid-1970s with the advent of
revisionist movements such as
Eurocommunism (and earlier in the Anglosphere, the New Left), some parties on the far 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 the
Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the
Communist Party of the Russian Federation have rejected this move and continue to focus exclusively on working class as the Old Left. In 2015, KKE voted against the Civil Partnerships Bill proposed by
Syriza, 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".
Militant was a
Trotskyist entryist group in the
British Labour Party, based around the
Militant newspaper launched in 1964. According to
Michael Crick, its politics were influenced by
Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels,
Vladimir Lenin and
Leon Trotsky and "virtually nobody else". Militant has been cited as an example of left-wing opposition to feminism and gay rights initiatives within the
labour movement in the early 1980s, specifically within the context of reaction to the financial support given to gay rights groups by the
Greater London Council under the leadership of
Ken Livingstone. 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.
Immigration The Old Left sometimes took a stance hostile to immigration, promoting policies that would preserve the ethnic homogeneity of the country. Australian Prime Minister
John Curtin, who was part of the
Australian 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."
Arthur Calwell, another Old Leftist who led the Australian Labor Party in the 1960s, strongly defended the
White 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." 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. This is because in private Engels criticized male homosexuality and related it to
ancient Greek pederasty, saying that "[the ancient Greeks] fell into the abominable practice of sodomy [, meaning 'boy love" or
pederasty] and degraded alike their gods and themselves with the myth of
Ganymede". Engels also said that the pro-pederast movement "cannot fail to triumph. [war on the cunts, peace to the arse-holes] will now be the slogan". Engels also referred to Dr. Karl Boruttau as a ("gay prick") in private. In fact, in the
Soviet 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 the
dissolution of the USSR. The
Encyclopedia 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 personally
homo-phobic, as shown by an acerbic 1869 exchange of letter on
Jean-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". 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 with
pedophilia and was tied up with a belief that homosexuality was only practiced among
fascists or the
aristocracy. The law remained intact until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was repealed in 1993. Gay men were sometimes denied membership or expelled from
Communist parties across the globe during the 20th century as most Communist parties followed the social precedents set by the Soviet Union. The
Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) is a party which strongly opposes
LGBT 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"; the
Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) holds similar positions. The
Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) supported an
anti-gay law in 2013. The
Communist Party of Greece (KKE) voted against the introduction of
same-sex civil unions in 2015, but has also criticized homophobia and discrimination in general. == Emergence of the New Left ==