Your Theorist Was a Revolutionary (Book)

Subtitle: Marxism and Socialism in the 21st Century (Erkin Özalp, 2025; first published in Turkish in 2012)

Back cover text:

This book was originally written in Turkish in 2011, when world capitalism was once again experiencing a period of crisis with devastating social consequences, and the voices of those protesting social injustice were growing louder. In the same year, rallies attended by hundreds of thousands of people took place in many countries, and even in the US, the center of the imperialist world, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement emerged, whose slogans included “world revolution.”

Erkin Özalp discusses how movements that question capitalism should view Marxism and what Marxism can learn from these movements.

According to the author, it should first be reminded in these discussions that Marx was, above all, a “working-class revolutionary.”

Özalp examines Marx’s initial model of revolution and the changes he made to this model, presents some of the main theses of Das Kapital, which is “a critique of capitalism by a revolutionary,” and considers how those waging revolutionary struggles in the 21st century should view the experience of the Soviet Union. He then focuses on the new possibilities of the recent era that will enable us to surpass this experience.

In the final chapter, the author discusses the current political tasks of the left, particularly in Turkey. He summarizes the aim of the book in a single sentence: “To contribute to the debate on how to pave the way for revolutions in the 21st century that will be the work of the masses and enable people to govern themselves, as Marx envisioned.”

CONTENTS

A Few Notes About the Translation

Introduction

A Few Notes About the Second Edition

1. How Did Marx Become a Revolutionary?

2. Is the Working Class (Always) Revolutionary?

3. Marx’s Initial Model of Revolution

4. Lessons Drawn from the French Revolutions

5. What Does Das Kapital Tell?
— Commodity production and the exploitation of wage labor
— The degree of exploitation and technological development
— How does capital grow?
— The tendency of the rate of profit to fall
— The financial sector and the production of “fictitious capital”
— The crises of capitalism

6. How to View the Soviet Union?

7. Harbingers of a New Era

8. The Left and the Struggle for Power
— How do you come to power?
— The agenda of Turkey’s left

Afterword

Endnotes

Index


It will be available soon!


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