Ultra Left Origins
The name means Old Mole and comes from a communist conception of the maturation of social forces beneath the surface of society which eventually erupt in revolutionary movements. The bookshop was founded in 1965 at 1, rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques, Paris 5eme. It was the major source for texts by the Situationist International, Amadeo Bordiga and other ultra-left groups. The works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were available, but only in a waste bin. Marx's Theses on Feuerbach were available as a poster thanks to Guy Debord. The situationists did much of the fly postering and along with Pouvoir Ouvrier who turned up for the opening party.
In 1966 the Situationists fell out with La Vieille Taupe and withdrew their publications. The bookshop continued as a focus of ultraleft activity until its closure in 1972. In 1973 La Vieille Taupe published La gauche allemande: Textes du KAPD, de L'AAUD, de L'AAUE et de la KAI (1920-1922) with La Vecchia Talpa (Naples) and Invariance.
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