Hillel H. Ticktin

Who is Hillel H. Ticktin?

Hillel H. Ticktin is a Marxist theorist and economist. He was born in South Africa in 1937 but had to leave to avoid arrest for political activism. He then lived and studied in the Soviet Union, where his PhD thesis, which was critical of official Communist Parties, was rejected. In 1965 he began teaching at Glasgow University, which later appointed him Professor of Marxist Studies. In 1973 he co-founded Critique, a Journal of Socialist Theory.

Summing up his work, Ticktin says: "My work on the political economy of the USSR showed … it to be inherently unviable, and nothing to do with socialism, while not being capitalist. My work on capitalism — or the West — has been to demonstrate the nature of the decline of capitalism, discussing finance capital and the importance of the Cold War."