Alan Woods was 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 a wide experience of the international labour movement and 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 Spanish, French, German and Russian.

In the early 1990s Woods and his mentor, Ted Grant broke with the Militant Tendency and its parent organization, the Committee for a Workers International over the question of entryism in social democratic parties. Grant and Woods and their supporters formed the Workers International League and the Committee for a Marxist International in 1993.

Alan Woods is the author of many works covering a wide spectrum of issues:

• 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).
• The revolutionary dialectic of Republicanism - An Open Letter to Irish Republicans (2003).

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).