Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was born in Bordeaux. He studied law (earning his doctorate in 1936) and taught in Montpellier, Strasbourg, and Clermont-Ferrand. From 1940 to 1944, he participated in the resistance against the German occupiers. After the liberation of France, he began teaching at the Institute of Political Studies in Bordeaux (from 1947). He authored more than sixty books and hundreds of articles on topics ranging from sociology, art, and politics to law, theology, and technology. Among his many works, which significantly influenced social thought in France and the United States, are the following: "The Technological Society," "The Transformation of the Bourgeois," "Propaganda," "The Betrayal of the West," "Anarchy and Christianity," and "The Political Illusion." For thirty years, Jacques Ellul delivered a series of lectures to his students on the successors of Marx. These lectures are compiled in the volume "The Successors of Marx."