Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished. Left-wing politics are also associated with popular or state control of major political and economic institutions. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, left-wing supporters "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."
Nicos Poulantzas was a Greek-French Marxist political sociologist and philosopher. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading structural Marxist; while at first a Leninist, he eventually became a proponent of democratic socialism. He is best known for his theoretical work on the state, but he also offered Marxist contributions to the analysis of fascism, social class in the contemporary world, and the collapse of dictatorships in Southern Europe in the 1970s.
Ernest Wamba dia Wamba was a prominent Congolese academic and political theorist who became a commander of the Kisangani faction of the rebel Rally for Congolese Democracy during the Second Congo War.
Saskia Sassen is a Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in New York City, and Centennial visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. The term global city was coined and popularized by Sassen in her 1991 work, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.
University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, also known as Paris 1 or Panthéon-Sorbonne University, is a public research university located in Paris, France. It was created in 1971 from two faculties of the historic University of Paris – colloquially referred to as the Sorbonne – after the May 1968 protests, which resulted in the division of one of the world's oldest universities. Most of the law professors of the Faculty of Law and Economics of Paris preferred to perpetuate the faculty as a university, now called Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas University, but most of its professors in Economics, considered as a secondary discipline within the historical faculty of law, preferred to found the multidisciplinary Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University with professors of the faculty of humanities of Paris and a few professors of law.
Jolyon Michael Howorth is a British scholar of French history, European politics and defense policy. He is currently Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics and Professor Emeritus of European Studies at the University of Bath; and a Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. He served as Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (2018–2019). He was Visiting Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University (2002–2018). He served as Professor of French Civilization at the University of Bath from 1985 to 2004.
Catherine Samary was until her retirement a lecturer at the Dauphine University, Paris. She is a member of the reunified Fourth International and of its broad international leadership body, the International Committee. She was a co-founder of what was for many years its largest section, the Revolutionary Communist League.
Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese socialist academic and writer. He is a Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London.
Gérard Chaliand is a French expert in geopolitics who has published widely on irregular warfare and military strategy. Chaliand analyses of insurgencies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, mostly based on his field experience with insurgent forces, have appeared in more than 20 books and in numerous newspaper articles. He has worked autonomously throughout his career, unconstrained by the perspectives of national governments and policy institutes. As a result, his work provides an independent perspective on many of the major conflicts characterized the 20th and 21st centuries. He is also a published poet.
John Loughlin is a British-based academic and educator from Northern Ireland, and a noted specialist in European territorial politics. After being educated in St. Malachy's College, he spent several years as a Cistercian monk at Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey, Portglenone, Northern Ireland, where he carried out the usual studies for the priesthood in philosophy, theology and biblical studies. He is currently a Fellow at Blackfriars, Oxford. He is an Emeritus Fellow and former Tutor at St Edmund's College, where he was Director of the Von Hügel Institute, and a Senior Fellow and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies, both at the University of Cambridge.
Boris Yulyevich Kagarlitsky is a Russian Marxist theoretician and sociologist who has been a political dissident in the Soviet Union. He is coordinator of the Transnational Institute Global Crisis project and Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO) in Moscow. Kagarlisky hosts a YouTube channel Rabkor, associated with his online newspaper of the same name and with IGSO.
The University of Tours, formerly François Rabelais University of Tours, is a public university in Tours, France. Founded in 1969, the university was formerly named after the French writer François Rabelais. It is the largest university in the Centre-Val de Loire region. As of July 2015, it is a member of the regional university association Leonardo da Vinci consolidated University.
Nader El-Bizri is the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Sharjah. He served before as a tenured longstanding full Professor of philosophy and civilization studies at the American University of Beirut, where he also acted as an Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and as the Director of the General Education program. El-Bizri specializes in phenomenology, Islamic science and philosophy, and architectural theory. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Phenomenological Quest between Avicenna and Heidegger (2000).
The Global Labour University (GLU) is an international network of universities, trade unions, NGOs and the International Labour Organisation. It was initiated in 2002 and offers master's programs, academic certificate programs and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on sustainable development, social justice, international labour standards and trade/labour unions, economic policies and global institutions.
Jean Berlie is a French socio-anthropologist specialising in Asia and China.
Siniša Malešević, MRIA, MAE is an Irish scholar who is Full Professor/Chair of Sociology at the University College, Dublin, Ireland. He is also a Senior Fellow and Associate Researcher at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM), Paris, France.
Christophe Jaffrelot is a French political scientist and Indologist specialising in South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan. He is a professor of South Asian politics and history the Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po (Paris), a professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute (London), and a Research Director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).
The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat and the International Committee, reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International. In 2003, the United Secretariat was replaced by an Executive Bureau and an International Committee, although some other Trotskyists still refer to the organisation as the USFI or USec.
Ernest Ezra Mandel (Dutch: [manˈdɛl]; also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter, was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He fought in the underground resistance against the Nazis during the occupation of Belgium.
Bonnie Kathleen Campbell, is professor emeritus of political economy at the Department of Political Science at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She has written extensively on issues related to international development, development assistance, governance, and mining.
