Alex Callinicos

• Region — Western philosophy • Era — Contemporary philosophy • Name — Alex Callinicos • Born — 24 July 1950 • Birthplace — Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia • Birth Name — Alexander Theodore Callinicos • Institutions — University of York King's College London • School Tradition — Marxism • Notable Ideas — Marxist anti-imperialist theory of the interaction between capitalist accumulation and interstate power politics • Relatives — John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (grandfather) • Political Party — SWP

He became involved in revolutionary politics as a student at Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied for a BA and came to know Christopher Hitchens, then himself active in the International Socialists (the SWP's forerunner). He also received his DPhil at Oxford. The earliest writing by Callinicos for the International Socialists was an analysis of the student movement of the period. His other early writings focused on southern Africa and the French structuralist-Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. In 1977, Callinicos married Joanna Seddon, a fellow Oxford doctoral student.

Callinicos participated in the Counter-Summit to the IMF/World Bank Meeting in Prague, September 2000 and the demonstration against the G8 in Genoa, June 2001. He has also been involved in organising the Social Forum movement in Europe. He was a contributor to Dictionnaire Marx Contemporain (2001), and has written articles in New Left Review. He was Professor of Politics at the University of York before being appointed Professor of European Studies at King's College London in September 2005. He succeeded Chris Harman as editor of International Socialism in January 2010 shortly after Harman died and is a British correspondent for Actuel Marx. Callinicos joined the central committee of the SWP in the late 1970s; he retained this position until December 2025. Callinicos was a critic of the humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, arguing that they were conducted solely to promote the global capitalist expansion. He has described Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "an ongoing battle between imperialist rivals, driving forward by capitalist competition". He has argued against Western efforts to provide arms for Ukraine. In January 2013, in the context of a serious crisis inside the UK Socialist Workers Party (SWP) associated with the party's response to an allegation of rape against a leading member of the party, Martin Smith, referred to internally as Comrade Delta, and with the demand for changes to the existing form of the system of democratic centralism within the SWP, he wrote a defence of Leninism and democratic centralism. Callinicos disagreed with those who argued for the need to change the existing system. He called the allegation of rape a "difficult disciplinary case", a comment for which socialist feminist Laurie Penny thought he "[mistook] a plea for some basic respect for women's sexual autonomy as an attempt to undermine the revolution from within." Callinicos took a prominent position on another issue which had divided the Socialist Workers Party (SWP): the use of the Internet in disagreements about confidential party issues. He complained about "the dark side of the Internet" in which individuals have "used blogs and social media to launch a campaign within the SWP". In order to disentangle a conference organised by the Historical Materialism journal in Delhi during 2013 from the SWP crisis, his invitation to the conference was withdrawn in March 2013.

• "Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution" (1982) • "The 'New Middle Class' and socialists" (1983) • "Bourgeois Revolutions and Historical Materialism" (1989) • "Marxism and Imperialism Today" (1991) • "Race and Class" (1992) • "Wonders Taken for Signs: Homi Bhabha's Postcolonialism". In Post-Ality: Marxism and Postmodernism. Edited by Mas'ud Zavarzadeh, Teresa Ebert, and Donald Morton. Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press (1995). • "The Anti-Capitalist Movement And The Revolutionary Left" (2001) • "Plumbing the depths: Marxism and the Holocaust" (2001) • "The grand strategy of the American Empire" (2002) • "Imperialism and Global Political Economy", International Socialism, 108, Autumn 2005. • "Interview with Alex Callinicos: The Imperial Assault on the Middle East" (2006) • "Does capitalism need the state system?", Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 20(4), (2007) pp. 533–549. • "Where is the radical left going?", International Socialism, 120, Autumn 2008. • "The Limits of Passive Revolution" Capital & Class, vol 34, no. 3, pp. 491–507. (2010). • "The internationalist case against the European Union", International Socialism, 148 (2015). • Brexit: a world-historic turn, International Socialism, 151 (2016). • The orphaned revolution: The meaning of October 1917, International Socialism, 156 (2017). • Chris Harman and the critique of political economy, International Socialism, 165 (2020). • Marx and Spinoza, International Socialism, 180 (2023).

The authorities additionally record the heading Alexander Theodore Callinicos. His recorded language was English. He was the child of John Alexander Callinicos and Ædgyth Bertha Milburg Mary Antonia Frances Lyon-Dalberg-Acton. He married Joanna Seddon.