The classical Marxists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries developed a theoretical framework tying the fight for women’s liberation to the struggle for socialism—yet their enormous contributions are too often dismissed or ignored. Likewise, the history of U.S. socialists who further developed a theory and practice for women’s liberation—integrating an analysis of gender, race and class—during the mid-twentieth century has frequently been rendered invisible. This talk uncovers this history and shows how women of the so-called “old left” contributed to the rise of the women’s liberation movement before it emerged in the 1960s.