One thing that happens when you both investigate class struggle on the ground today and actually situate communist theory within its proper historical context—i.e., read even the most abstract philosophical or exegetical texts with some understanding of the political debates that produced them and to which they were responding—is that you realize how much of the “political theory” that gets inherited is just a vulgarized, degraded echo of something much more complex and substantial.

The following interview was conducted by Komite in English and subsequently translated into Turkish, to be published on their web platform in two parts.¹ Komite is a Turkish collective of socialist militants who call for a break with the corrupt and inefficient institutions of the existing Turkish labor movement, mobilizing class politics to militate against the sweatshop regime of neoliberal globalization and the political oppression conducted by the current government.