Murray E.G. Smith obtained his BA and MA from the University of Manitoba and his PhD from the University of British Columbia. His principal research and teaching interests are in the areas of theoretical and international political economy, classical sociological theory, Marxist theory, social movements, and the sociology of health and illness. He has published articles in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, Studies in Political Economy, Canadian Journal of Sociology, Science & Society, Review of Radical Political Economics, Brock Review, Rethinking Marxism, Historical Materialism, and Labour/Le Travail, and contributed chapters or entries to several edited book collections and social-science encyclopedias.  Recent books include Global Capitalism in Crisis:  Karl Marx and the Decay of the Profit System (Fernwood Publishing, 2010) and Marxist Phoenix:  Studies in Historical Materialism and Marxist Socialism (Canadian Scholars Press International, 2014). He is also the author of Invisible Leviathan: The Marxist Critique of Market Despotism beyond Postmodernism (University of Toronto Press, 1994) and the editor of Early Modern Social Theory: Selected Interpretive Readings (Canadian Scholars Press, 1998). An expanded and updated edition of Invisible Leviathan was published by Brill Academic Publishers (Leiden, the Netherlands) in November, 2018 in their Historical Materialism book series, with the new subtitle: Marx’s Law of Value in the Twilight of Capitalism. Smith is also the co-author (with Judith Blackwell and John Sorenson) of Culture of Prejudice (Broadview Press, 2003 and University of Toronto Press, 2008). In April 2021, Fernwood Publishing released Twilight Capitalism: Karl Marx and the Decay of the Capitalist System, co-authored by Murray Smith, Jonah Butovsky and Josh Watterton – a companion volume to Invisible Leviathan.

Professor Smith has been an activist in a variety of progressive social movements since the 1970s — with a view, consistently, to linking the ‘partial’ struggles of such movements to the more comprehensive, transformative project of revolutionary socialism. In the 1970s, in particular, he played a key role in two major regroupments within ostensibly Trotskyist circles in Canada.  Over the past twenty years, he has been an organizer, faculty liaison and leading participant in the Brock Socialist Club, whose mission statement is available through the ‘Important Links’ tab at the top of this page.

In his academic role, he is interested in working with scholars and graduate students pursuing research in the following areas: Marxist political economy, comparative social theory, dialectical methodology, theories of capitalist crisis, revolutionary social movements (past and present), and Marxist class analysis and political strategies. As an activist and a socialist public intellectual, he welcomes dialogue and possible collaboration with all those whose sincere aim is to hasten the victory of world socialism.