Political Scribes
Mark Fisher was a highly influential cultural theorist, writer and blogger. He launched his K-punk blog in 2003 which influenced a generation and covered topics across politics, music, film, literature and football. His most important book Capitalist Realism – Is There No Alternative ? (2009) encouraged readers to imagine an alternative to the prevailing capitalist-driven […]
Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist and author. He is best know for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992) in which he argued that western liberal democracy and free market capitalism marked the highpoint and endpoint of socio-cultural development. In essence, free market liberal democratic capitalism had won the […]
Slvoj Zizek is a leading contemporary philosopher and intellectual who writes on a range of topics. He is acknowledged as a political radical who has railed against neoliberalism and capitalist orthodoxy. The publication of his first book in English The Sublime Object of Ideology catapulted him onto the international stage. A controversial character and thinker, […]
John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist who belongs to the realist school of thought. His book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics argues in favour of offensive neorealism, which emphasises the nature and prevalence of security competition among great powers.
Martha Nussbaum is a renowned philosopher, law professor and distinguished author. Her main interests are in Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, feminism and ethics among others. Professor Nussbaum is[...]
Sir Roger Scruton is a leading writer on Conservatism and political philosophy[...]
Onora O’ Neill is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University and a member of the House of Lords in England.[...]
David Harvey is a British born leading Marxist theorist and scholar. He has written extensively on social and environmental justice and has argues that there is no such thing as an ethical capitalism. As an expert on urban geography and urban poverty, his geographical analysis of capitalism has attracted much attention since the global financial […]
Jurgen Habermas follows a long line of influential German philosophers and social theorists. A leading thinker on deliberative politics, his work emphasises the potential for transforming the world and arriving at a more humane, just and egalitarian society through the realisation of the human potential for reason.
Noam Chomsky is best known for his work in the fields of linguistics and cognitive science. As a leading political and social activist, he is one of the most vocal critics of American imperialism and was at the forefront of critics of the Vietnam war. His anti-war essay, The Responsibility of Intellectuals, argued that “intellectuals […]
Samuel Phillips Huntington was a renowned American political scientist best known for his theory “The Clash of Civilizations” which he promoted in 1993 […]
Malcolm X was a leading human rights activist […]
Michel Foucault was a prominent French philosopher, literary critic and social theorist. From a political theory perspective, Foucault’s major contribution was his analysis of power structures and the role that power plays in society.
E P Thompson was a leading British historian, socialist and peace campaigner. He was one of the main architects and intellectuals behind the communist party in Britain and he was a major and influential supporter of the activist CND movement – Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. His most influential work by far is The Making of […]
John Rawls is recognised as one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century. His groundbreaking book, A Theory of Justice, 1971 promotes “justice as fairness” and recommends equal basic rights, equality of opportunity, and promoting the interests of the least advantaged members of society.
Louis Althusser was a leading French Marxist philosopher who also suffered from acute paranoid schizophrenia.
Eric Hobsbawm was one of the most influential British historians of the twentieth century. Ideologically he was a Marxist and a devout socialist and communist. Because his ideology influenced his writing, scholarly opinion on his work and overall contribution is divided.
Albert Camus was a leading French philosopher, author and journalist.
Rosa Parks has been called “the first lady of civil rights” by the United States Congress.
Milton Friedman was a leading American economist and key figure in the Chicago School who rejected Keynesian economics.
John Kenneth Galbraith was a Canadian-born economist who wrote extensively on political economy and was advisor to a number of American Presidents.
A J P Taylor was a British historian, academic, journalist and broadcaster. He was a nonconformist and dissenter who took public stands on important and controversial issues of the time.
Hannah Arendt is considered to be one of the leading political philosophers and theorists of the twentieth century.
Jean-Paul Sartre was a leading French philosopher and intellectual. He was a leading light of the existentialist movement and school of thought.
George Orwell is considered the most important British literary figure of the twentieth century.
Michael Oakeshott was a political theorist who wrote extensively on the subject of conservatism.
Friedrich Hayek was a very influential Austrian economist and a key sparring partner of John Maynard Keynes with whom he fundamentally disagreed.
Aldous Huxley was an English author [...]
Mao Zedong was a Chinese communist revolutionary and the founder of ‘Maoism’. He was the founding father of the People’s Republic of China.
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher. He is recognised today as a key figure and writer in the field of cultural hegemony.
Arnold Toynbee was a British historian [...]
Karl Polanyi is recognised as the founder of ‘Substantivism’ which focused on the ways that economies are embedded in society and culture.
John Maynard Keynes is widely recognised as the founding father of modern macroeconomics along with being the most influential economist of the twentieth century.
Oscar Spengler was a German Historian [...]
Richard Henry Tawney was an economic historian and social critic who was deeply impacted by his observations of poverty in England.
Leon Trotsky is the founding father of Trotskyism, a major school of Marxist thought.
Arthur Cecil Pigou was a very influential English economist who taught at Cambridge University.
Max Weber was a highly influential German philosopher, sociologist and political economist.
Roger Casement has been described as the father of 20th century human rights investigations.
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement.
Friedrich Nietzsche has exerted a huge influence on philosophical thinking in both the 20th and 21st centuries.
Friedrich Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx in 1848.
Karl Marx is considered to be one of the most influential thinkers in human history and his impact on society cannot be overestimated.
John Stuart Mill was a highly influential British political economist and philosopher.
Alexis de Tocqueville is considered to be a classical liberal who published some of the earliest works on political science.
Auguste Comte is recognised as being the father of sociology.
Friedrich Hegel was a hugely influential German philosopher who had a huge impact on the thinking of many subsequent philosophers.
Jeremy Bentham is widely regarded as the father of utilitarianism which is founded on the philosophical principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Edmund Burke was an Irishman who moved to London in 1750 and became an MP in 1766. As a political theorist...
Immanuel Kant was a highly influential German philosopher who believed that perpetual peace could be achieved via universal democracy and international cooperation.
Adam Smith is arguably the first and most influential political economist of all time.
David Hume was a hugely influential Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and economist.
Voltaire was arguably one of the earliest secularists who advocated the separation of church and state.
Montesquieu was a hugely influential French philosopher and judge who is best known for his contribution to our political understanding of the separation of powers.
John Locke is often referred to as the father of liberalism.
Thomas Hobbes is regarded as one of the founders of modern political philosophy.
Machiavelli is often referred to as the father of modern political science.
Cicero’s influence on later political thinkers and theorists is immense, especially those of the European Enlightenment.
Aristotle, together with Plato, is considered the father of Western Philosophy.
Plato was the founder of the Academy in Athens...
Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher…
Jurgen Habermas is recognised as the leading German…
Karl Marx’s contribution to both economic and political thought is immense and is being recognised today not just by writers on the left, but increasingly by right-leaning commentators.
“If old truths are to retain their hold on men’s minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations. What at one time are their most effective expressions gradually become so worn with use that they cease to carry a definite meaning. The underlying ideas may be as valid as ever, […]
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