Michael Löwy (born 6 May 1938) is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is emeritus research director in social sciences at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and lectures at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, France. The author of books on Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Liberation theology, György Lukács, Walter Benjamin, José Carlos Mariátegui, Lucien Goldmann and Franz Kafka, he received the CNRS Silver Medal in 1994.

A descendant of Jewish immigrants from Vienna, Löwy grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, becoming a committed socialist at 16 (1954), when he discovered the writings of Rosa Luxemburg. He attended the University of São Paulo, where he studied under Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Florestan Fernandes and Antônio Cândido. He got his license in Social Sciences in 1960 and lectured in sociology for a year at the university of São José do Rio Preto (State of São Paulo).

In 1961 he received a scholarship for a doctorate in Paris, France, which he did under the guidance of the well-known Marxist philosopher and sociologist of culture Lucien Goldmann, who had a lasting influence on his views. He received his PhD from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in 1964, with a thesis on Communist Revolution and Self-Emancipation of the Proletariat in the Work of the Young Marx. The dissertation was published in 1970 as The Young Marx's Theory of Revolution (La Théorie de la Révolution chez le jeune Marx).

Soon afterwards, Löwy went to Israel where his family had migrated. He learned Hebrew and became a lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv, but his political views led to problems, and the university refused to renew his contract in 1968. In an act of solidarity, he was invited to lecture at the University of Manchester, where he became assistant to the sociologist and founder of the New Left, Peter Worsley (1968–1969).

In 1969, Löwy returned to Paris to work with Nicos Poulantzas at Paris 8 University, and from that moment on established himself definitively in France. In the 1970s he worked, under the direction of Louis-Vincent Thomas, on his Habilitation on György Lukács, presented in 1975 at the Paris Descartes University, and graduated with honours. Löwy lectured in sociology at the University of Paris 8 until 1978 when he was admitted as a researcher at the CNRS.

In 1981, Löwy began also to lecture at the EHESS in Paris; he has also been invited to lecture at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Columbia University and Harvard University, as well as other US Universities. In 1994 he received the CNRS Silver Medal.

He is emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and teaches at the EHESS. He is member of the editorial board of the journals Archives de sciences sociales des religions, Actuel Marx, ContreTemps and Écologie et politique, as well as a fellow and regular lecturer at the International Institute for Research and Education in Amsterdam.

Until 1985 most of Löwy's works concerned the sociological and historical study of Marxist thought. This applies not only to his doctorate on the young Marx and his Habilitation on Lukács, but to most of the essays which he published, some of which were collected in books, as well as for two anthologies, on the National Question (with Georges Haupt and Claudie Weill) and on Marxism in Latin America. Marxist epistemology also takes a central place in his work on sociology of knowledge from 1985.