• Solicits money from donors in other nations and funnels it to American leftist organizations
• Accuses the U.S. of military agression, economic injustice, environmental degradation, and torture

The International Endowment for Democracy (IED) defines itself as "a new foundation of progressive American scholars, lawyers and activists dedicated to promoting real democracy in the country that needs it most, the U.S.A."

IED was established in 2006 as an opposing force to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which IED dubs the “National Endowment for Hypocrisy Democracy.”

IED was first funded by a handful of leftwing professors, lawyers, journalists, and authors located chiefly in Canada, India, and Europe. To this day, its funding derives almost entirely from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals outside the United States. In its “Urgent Appeal to the People of the World,” IED asks for “donations, no matter how small, from all those victimized by our [American] government's actions.”

IED uses some of the money it raises to finance the activities of U.S.-based “groups and institutions working to defend democracy in America today.” Its funding priorities include: “progressive workers' groups”; “progressive media”; “progressive education”; and “investigations into the undemocratic practices of our so-called ‘democracy’ … while the current Government is hypocritically engaged in promoting ‘democratic nation building’ in other lands.”

Viewing the American political system as corrupt to its core, IED does not directly fund any political party.

IED’s Statement of Purpose complains that in America, "too many people have been denied the vote either by law or through discrimination," and "politics was always dominated by the rich who also controlled the main means by which people acquire their political information and ideas."

IED characterizes George W. Bush as “a usurper” who “stole” two presidential elections and subsequently presided over an “illegitimate government” that exhibited “arrogant disregard for democratic values and procedures” in both its domestic and foreign affairs.

According to IED, “the tragic events of 9/11 were used as a pretext to make an unprecedented assault on American civil liberties in the so-called ‘Patriot Act’ and to carry out an economic program that favors corporations and the rich as never before.”

IED contends that the U.S. government “has become the major danger to world peace, having started two unnecessary wars (at least one of which was based on lies) and threatened several others.” The organization derides the America for “bullying and bribing weaker nations to adopt free market economies” while allegedly remaining blind to its own “rapidly growing gap between ... rich and poor,” and to the “erosion of decent paying, full-time jobs and social benefits” in the U.S.

According to IED, “the American government's unwillingness to even admit global warming, let alone act upon it (other than to make it worse), has raised the stakes to the point where the very future of our species is in jeopardy.”

IED defines capitalism as a system that benefits only a small minority while subjecting most people to “a worsening economic plight as well as a fall in the quality of life and in personal security.”

The President of IED is Bertell Ollman, a Marxist political science professor at New York University and the author of Alienation: Marx's Conception Of Man In Capitalist Society.

IED’s honorary Chairpersons, Board Members, Executive Committee Members include the following individuals:

• Mumia Abu-Jamal: convicted cop-killer, former Black Panther, and leftist icon
• Ramsey Clark: founder of International Action Center, which is staffed by members of the Workers World Party, a Marxist-Leninist vanguard
• Harry Magdoff: former co-editor of Monthly Review, co-author of six books on the capitalist economy with Paul Sweezy
• Annette Rubinstein: lecturer at the New York Marxist School
• Gore Vidal: America-hating author and essaying
• Ellen Meiksins Wood: former co-editor of Monthly Review and editorial board member of New Left Review
• Howard Zinn: Marxist professor
• Michael Brown: co-founder and former co-editor of Socialism and Democracy; author of The Production of Society: a Marxian Social Foundation for Social Theory
• Barbara Foley: English professor at Rutgers University; Chair of the "Left Alliance" (composed of leftwing academic caucuses); author of Radical Representation: Politics And Form In U.S. Proletarian Fiction
• John Manley: former Stanford University political science professor; author of "Marx and America: the New Deal"
• Michael Smith - radical lawyer; co-host of Law and Disorder radio program in New York City; author of Notebook of a 60's Lawyer
• Amrita Basu: Amherst College professor of Government and Women's and Gender Studies
• Carl Boggs: author of The Two Revolutions: Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism (1984); author of Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War (2005)
• Eduardo Capulong: law professor; member of the International Socialist Organization
• James Cockcroft: Internet professor at the State University of New York
• Bernardine Dohrn: law professor; former leader of the domestic terrorist group Weatherman
• John Ehrenberg: political science professor at Long Island University
• Francis Feeley: author of America's Concentration Camps During World War II: Social Science and the Japanese American Internment
• John Gerassi: political science professor; author of "Why America Is So Hated: Who Do We Cry For?”
• Martha Gimenez: founding editor of The Progressive Sociologists Network; winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association
• Christine Harrington: political science professor; author of Popular Justice, Populist Politics: Law in Community Organizing, and other works
• David Harvey: author of The New Imperialism, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism
• Michael Hudson: author of Super Imperialism: the Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Domination
• Abdeen Jabara: civil rights lawyer; former President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
• Mark Kesselman: author of "The State and Class Struggle: the Trends in Marxist Political Science"
• Joel Kovel: Marxist professor; environmental activist
• Peter Kwong - Professor of Asian American Studies at Hunter College; labor activist
• Sandra Levinson: founder and longtime Director of the Center for Cuban Studies / Cuban Art Space in New York City
• Michael Parenti: Marxist writer, lecturer, political science professor
• Michael Ratner: president of the Center for Constitutional Rights; former president of the National Lawyers Guild
• Ellen Ray: co-author of Guantanamo: What the World Should Know
• Lynne Stewart: radical attorney who represented World Trade Center bombing mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman
• Immanuel Wallerstein: former President of the International Sociological Association
• Leonard Weinglass: trial lawyer; civil rights activist
• Suzi Weissman: political science professor at St. Mary's College of California
• Richard Wolff: economics professor; co-founder and co-editor of Rethinking Marxism

IED’s Legal Counsel is William Schaap, a radical attorney who is co-editor of Covert Action Quarterly and Bio-Terror: Manufacturing Wars the American Way.