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King’s People

Biography

Alex Callinicos studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, and Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics before writing a DPhil on Marx's Capital, also at Balliol.

He was a Junior Research Fellow in Contemporary Social Thought at St Peter's College, Oxford, in 1979-81, after which he taught social and political theory at the Department of Politics at the University of York till 2005, when he moved to King's. He retired in October 2020.

Research

  • International political economy
  • Marx
  • Social and political theory
  • Contemporary political philosophy and critical theory
  • Historiography

Alex Callinicos has published extensively on Marxism, social theory, political philosophy, political economy, and race and racism. Among his best known books are Althusser's Marxism (1976), The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx (1983), Making History (1987), Against Postmodernism (1990), Social Theory (1999), An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto (2003), and The New Mandarins of American Power (2003). His book, The Resources of Critique (2006), is an assessment of contemporary critical theory - notably the philosophy of Alain Badiou and Toni Negri - from a Marxist perspective. He also works in international political economy: Imperialism and Global Political Economy was published by Polity in 2009. Deciphering Capital: Marx’s Capital and its Destiny (2014) combines his interests in social theory and political economy. With two other colleagues at King’s, Stathis Kouvelakis and Lucia Pradella, he edited The Routledge Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism (2021). He is currently completing a book for Polity called The New Age of Catastrophe.

Expertise and public engagement

Alex Callinicos was an active contributor to the development of the movement for another globalization, participating in the World Social Forum and an animator of the European Social Forum. He co-convened the Contemporary Marxism Research Group and was editor of International Socialism 2009-20.