Alex Callinicos - Biography

Biography

Callinicos is a descendant, through his mother, of the 19th century English historian Lord Acton. During World War II his Greek father was active in the Greek Resistance to Nazi occupation, whilst his mother, the Hon. Ædgyth Bertha Milburg Mary Antonia Frances Lyon-Dalberg-Acton, was the daughter of the 2nd Lord Acton. He was educated at St George's College, Harare.

Callinicos himself first became involved in revolutionary politics as a student at Balliol College, Oxford, from which he received his BA and where he was recruited by Christopher Hitchens into the International Socialists (forerunners of the SWP). His first writings for the IS were an analysis of the student movement of the period. In 1977, Callinicos married Joanna Seddon, a fellow Oxford doctoral student. He received his DPhil at Oxford.

His early writings focused on southern Africa and the French structuralist-Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. In the 1980s, Callinicos was elected to the central committee of the SWP, a position he still retains.

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 a number of 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 the late Chris Harman as editor of International Socialism in January 2010 and is a British correspondent for Actuel Marx. He has no children.