Alan Woods is a British activist born in Swansea, South Wales in 1944 into a working-class family with a strong Communist tradition. At the age of 16 he joined the Young Socialists and became a Marxist joining the Militant Tendency. He studied Russian in the Sussex University and later in Sofia (Bulgaria) and the Moscow State University (MGU). He has been involved in the Marxist movement in Spain, where he participated in the struggle against the Francisco Franco dictatorship. He speaks several languages, including Italian, English, Spanish, French, German and Russian.

In 1983, Woods and five other members of the Militant Tendency's editorial board were expelled from the Labour Party by the party's National Executive Committee. Wood's appeal was rejected by conference in October of that year.

In the early 1990s Woods and his mentor, Ted Grant were expelled from the Militant Tendency and its parent organization, the Committee for a Workers International over what they considered to be the ultraleft turn of this organisation. Grant and Woods and their supporters internationally formed the Committee for a Marxist International in 1992, which is also known as the International Marxist Tendency.

Publications by Alan Woods:

• Marxism in Our Time (1992)
• China in Crisis (1994)
• The Socialist Alternative to the European Union (1997)
• Revolution in Albania (1997)
• A New Stage in the Capitalist Crisis (1998)
• Indonesia: the Asian Revolution has Begun (1998)
• The Kosovo pogrom and the Balkan Powder-keg (1998)
• Crisis in Russia, the free market failure,
• History of Philosophy,
• Two books co-authored with Ted Grant
  • Lenin and Trotsky: what they really stood for (1969)
  • Reason in Revolt: Marxist philosophy and modern science (1995)
• Bolshevism: the Road to Revolution (1999).
• Marxism and the National Question (2000)
• British Poets and the French Revolution (2003)
• The revolutionary dialectic of Republicanism - An Open Letter to Irish Republicans (2003).
• In Defence of Marxism - Reply to Israel Shamir (2004)
• The Celia Hart Controversy - Stalinism or Leninism? (2004)
• Ireland: Republicanism and Revolution (2005)
• The Venezuelan Revolution - a Marxist perspective (2005)
• "Marxism and the USA" (Wellred USA, 2005).
• The Reawakening of the World Working Class and the Tasks Faced by Marxists (2006)

He is currently the editor of the Marxist journal Socialist Appeal, published in London and the editor of the web site In Defence of Marxism (Marxist.com).

1944 births | Living people | British Trotskyists | British non-fiction writers

Alan Woods

Alan Woods should not be confused with Allen W. Wood, who also writes on Karl Marx, and is a Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University ^*