Reviewed by Joseph Jamison

October 23, 2025

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Revolution by Kemal Okuyan (Yazilama Yayinevi: Istanbul, October 2025) 230 pages.

English translation e-book (https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=dayTEQAAQBAJ )

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The author of Revolution, Kemal Okuyan, is known for speaking and writing candidly about the problems of the present-day international Communist movement. In his February 2023 article Thinking Aloud on the “World Communist Movement” Okuyan  raised profound questions about the divisions within the world movement, worsened by differences over the Ukraine War. The article explored how unity could be enhanced. He declared, “We need to organize a debate, a really bold debate.”

It may be useful, therefore, to survey briefly his earlier published views because they reappear in Revolution. In Havana, at an International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties (IMCWP) in 2022, Okuyan spoke openly about the retreat of many Communist parties from revolutionary positions.

The pandemic is over, but there is an economic crisis impacting the whole world; the rising costs of living are the top priority for billions of people. News bulletins debate whether a nuclear war is approaching or not. Workers are desperate, young people are hopeless. Communists, on the other hand, have to be the remedy and hope.

We cannot be a remedy and hope without emphasizing the goal of overthrowing capitalism. Whenever the communists leave a gap, the populist right, racist movements and even fascists come to fill it. They capitalize on the pessimism in society with a false radicalism. Comrades, the defensive strategies of the communist movement over a very long period of time have completely collapsed at the crossroads of humanity today. The fact that in this conjuncture the correlation of forces is clearly against the working class, against the revolutionary movement, does not justify these strategies, on the contrary, it condemns them. Today, no matter how weak the communist movement is in individual countries, we are obliged to make the alternative of socialism actual and realistic. What the TKP [Turkish Communist Party] is trying to do in Turkey is exactly this.

In his welcoming speech to the IMCWP in Turkey in October 2023 he declared,

Comrades, the regression in the Middle East [the war in Gaza] is ultimately due to the same reason as the decline of the working-class movement in the rest of the world today. This reason can be summarized as the abandonment of class positions and the perspective of revolution.

One of the most important reasons, if not the only reason for the rise of right-wing populism or the far right in Europe today is the gaps left by the left. Capitalism constantly generates problems that require radical responses. The same mechanism is also at work in the Middle East, which has a very different historical, cultural and political background. Politics does not tolerate any gaps. The truth is that they are stealing the anger of the poor and they are stealing it from us. We cannot accept this. The moment we put aside the actuality of the revolution; we commit mistakes. Anti-US positions without the goal of socialism leads us to consider political Islam or the so-called national bourgeoisies as allies; putting democracy before socialism often leads us to co-operate with the US or the EU or other bourgeois forces. This is a vicious circle. This vicious circle traps us in Europe, Latin America or North America as much as it does in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt or Palestine.

Okuyan believes that many CPs have fallen into the trap of multiplying intermediate strategic “stages”:

It must be recognized that goals such as first establishing democracy, first obtaining some rights, first entering the parliament, first putting fascism aside, etc. are self-deception. The greatest achievement of the Bolsheviks was that even in their weakest moments they were thinking of revolution, of seizing political power. And their greatest luck was that until 1917 there were no mechanisms in Russia to seduce them, to attract them to bourgeois politics. In February 1917, when a situation arose that confused all Russian revolutionaries, Lenin made a unique intervention. The April Theses should be read with this in mind. Had this intervention been delayed by a few months, the October Revolution might not have taken place.

In other words, the Communist movement has been weakened by the incorrect application of the Popular Front idea.   The Popular Front  should be correctly viewed as a temporary defensive tactic adopted in 1935 by the Comintern in the emergency created by the coming to power of Hitler in Germany in 1933 – not as a permanent framework for the formation of Communist party strategy even into the post-1945 era.  The Popular Front, aiming to hold the middle strata then defecting to fascism — unlike the United Front of the Working Class — is a multi-class idea. Incorrectly applying it hurts the policy of alliances.

Okuyan also believes that some Communists underestimate the depth of the current crisis of capitalism. “The imperialist system is experiencing an enormous impasse, a deep political-ideological crisis, and we are still engaged in a meaningless debate about whether Trump or Biden is preferable, whether Erdoğan is really anti-imperialist or not, whether Russian capitalism will evolve for the better or not.”

Okuyan makes a big point of the “actuality” of the revolution. The phrase “actuality of the revolution” does not mean a revolutionary situation currently exists, or that a revolution is about to happen. Rather, it means that the world is living in a historical epoch when revolution could happen, and could happen suddenly.  He states, “In reality, the “actuality of revolution” indicates that all problems encountered require and must be linked to a revolutionary solution.[1]

Reformism in Communist parties, in his estimation, often takes the form of multiplying the anticipated historical stages before socialism.

In his interview for Marxism-Leninism Today in 2023 he wrote,

The assumption that there used to be “sectarian and adventurous” tendencies in the world communist movement until 1935, but that a historical correction was made at the Seventh  Congress [of the Comintern], which is still valid today, should be radically questioned.  I repeat, the communist movement does have to form its references on the premise of the actuality of the revolution.  I do not intend to belittle the lessons and accumulation of a long period when the defense of the Soviet Union became clear as a very special and revolutionary task (a period which should have ended in 1945).

But we need to get rid of the confusion which has led the communist parties to the following conclusion: “the imperialist-capitalist system is strong, the balance is not in favor for the working class, therefore our point of departure cannot be the actuality of the revolution.”

Okuyan is not ruling out anti-monopoly demands and struggles nor anti-ultra-right demands and struggles.  He is ruling out seeing them as stages of governance before the final struggle for socialism.  The English word “actuality” is not as rich in connotations as in some other languages. In French, for example, les actualités can mean “current events,” “events of the moment,” or “latest news.”

Okuyan revisits and enlarges on these views in Revolution, his latest work, just translated into English. For example, in the chapter, “Moving Away from the Revolution Step by Step” he states:

The thesis that bourgeois revolutions remained incomplete in advanced capitalist countries seems somewhat peculiar, so different justifications were invented to postpone socialism there. The idea of an “advanced democracy” to be achieved by gradually rolling back monopolies not only contradicted the most fundamental principles of Marxism, but also did not correspond at all to the realities of the imperialist system. The argument was that the people in European countries had become accustomed to freedoms and possessed a developed democratic consciousness. The masses could remain distant from the more direct and harsh forms of class struggle. Based on this reasoning, it was predicted that a more realistic approach would be to have the most powerful and reactionary monopolies surrounded by the vast majority of society, to expand the sphere of democracy, and to achieve an order that was “not yet socialism” but would “facilitate the transition to socialism.

A “strategy” that falls apart at every turn! There were other ways to say “we have given up on revolution, we do not want to change the system,” but for a number of reasons, it suited them to make “contributions” to Marxism with fancy words. [2]

These ideas are really the main thesis of Revolution: that opportunism has subtly infected the contemporary Communist movement’s thinking about revolution and revolutionary prospects.

In Revolution (14 chapters, 230 pages) Okuyan surveys the classic writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin on revolution and tests them with reference to the actual history of revolutions or revolutionary situations in France, Russia, Germany, Chile, Britain, Cuba, Portugal, Italy, China, and Turkey. His occasional references to the Turkish revolutionary experience will probably be challenging for most US readers. But most of the book consciously tries to offer an international perspective. Only in the last chapter does he focus on the revolutionary possibilities in his homeland Turkey, a country of over 90 million people.

In the chapter entitled “The Weak Link Riddle”  he notes that opportunism stubbornly finds a way, even with otherwise useful metaphors. For example, Lenin spoke of the revolution in Russia as “the capitalist chain breaking at its weakest link.”  Okuyan  asserts: “Unfortunately, a concept developed by Lenin and his comrades for the purpose of “revolutionary initiative” and specifically to point out revolutionary possibilities in Russia has, over time, come to be used to escape a revolutionary strategy in developed capitalist countries.”  Opportunism argues: If you are in a “strong link” country, say Germany or the US, you must wait for a revolution to emerge in countries deemed to be weaker links.

In a short review it is not possible to touch on all the topics Okuyan raises.  A glance at the chapter headings suggests the wide range of the book 1. The Road to Revolution: Historical Conditions; 2. Revolutionary Situation: Wanting Is Not Enough; 3. The State of Unbalance in Societies: When Revolutions Are Triggered; 4. War and Revolution: a Cause-and-Effect Relationship?; 5. The Weak Link Riddle; 6. As the System Unravels…;  7. Revolution: Art or Craft?; 8. Masses and the Party: the Dialectic of Revolution; 9. Reducing Enemies, Increasing Allies, and Hegemony; 10. Moving Away from Revolution Step by Step; 11. There Are No Stages, But…; 12. The Right to Vote, the Right to Revolution; 13. Surrendering Revolution, Settling for Reform!; 14. Bringing the Country to Revolution.

The book is filled with penetrating comments and fresh interpretations of working class and Communist history. A few interesting examples follow. First, he defines revolution,

… revolutions are extraordinary moments in history, when immense social energies are unleashed. They erupt when the working masses begin to act and struggle on a scale that far exceeds the ordinary. Yet it is not only the oppressed who are drawn into motion; every class is shaken, and with them every ideology, every political current, is revived and mobilized.[3]

For example, on Allende’s Chile, 1970-1973, he writes:

Look at Allende’s Chile. Among other things, the fatal weakness of the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) government lay in leaving the bourgeois state apparatus—especially the army— intact and believing that changing the personnel could avert counterrevolution. Preserving the old presidency structure was another error. Socialism can only be built through organs of workers’ power rising from below— assemblies, soviets, councils—not through the presidency! [4]

He poses the question: is socialist revolution inevitable?

Yes, capitalism can eliminate humanity if the toiling masses do not abolish it in time. This is not about hunger, migration, pandemics, or even climate collapse—humanity can survive such crises. Is revolution not, in a way, the great uprising of humanity against these deadly problems inflicted by capitalism? But nuclear annihilation remains another matter. Imperialism has made such an outcome possible, and thus we must also struggle against it. In summary, we can correct it as follows: If humanity has a future, that future is communism.[5]

Not only Communists, capitalists too learn from revolutions and near-revolutions:

The capitalist class also learns each time. The examples we have recounted here are the kind that keeps them up at night. Later, they witnessed the armed forces taking a popular, revolutionary stance in many countries. They may have kept Portugal’s Carnation Revolution within the limits they desired, but they were horrified by the army’s almost entirely anti-fascist stance. The corporatization of armies as a product of NATO and US thinking, high-ranking officers beginning to share in the high profits of arms monopolies, the transition to professional armies in various forms and scales, the relocation of barracks away from city centers and working-class settlements to isolate soldiers from society—all served the same purpose. Whether all these measures will be enough to save an exploitative-parasitic class, only time will tell.[6]

Revolutions do not result from the mere wishes of revolutionaries:

… revolutions are not made; they are not dependent on people’s will. Revolutions develop at the moments the established order enters a crisis, begins to falter, and becomes unsustainable. The existence of social segments, groups, or parties that have always said “this system must be changed and destroyed” is very important; their activities and organizing leave a mark, but revolutions knock on the door not because they want it, but because the system begins to shake.[7]

Kemal Okuyan, born in 1962, is presently the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey. He is a graduate of the department of Political Science at Bosporus University. He worked in the youth organization of Worker’s Party of Turkey between 1976-1978. He took part in the launching of Socialist Power magazine in 1979 and the journal Tradition in 1986. He was the vice chairman in the founding of Party for Socialist Turkey (STP) in 1992, and of Party for Socialist Power (SIP) after STP was shut down by the Constitutional Court.

After SİP took on the name Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) he assumed various responsibilities in the party. His works have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers. Presently he is a regular contributor to soL News Portal and Gelenek journal.

His published works are: First Years of Soviet Foreign Policy;  The Book for “What is to Be Done?” Followers; Understanding Stalin; Socialism’s Search for Power in Turkey; Anti-Theses on the Dissolution of Soviet Union; The Left Caught Between Ergenekon and AKP; Trial of Patriotism of the Turkish Left, A Dose of Reminder;Liberal Delusions in AKP’s Turkey and Under the Shadow of the Revolution: Berlin-Warsaw-Ankara 1920. The last book has been translated into English and reviewed at this website in May 2021.

Short chapters and subchapters make for readability. The translation into English is well done and graceful. Okuyan’s writing style — lively, forceful, popular, almost journalistic — comes through well in English.

Revolution, then, is a searching re-evaluation and reaffirmation of Marxist-Leninist thinking on revolution by a writer determined to expose and uproot the opportunism that weakens the revolutionary movement. This is a convincing and important book. If it receives the wide readership it deserves, it will be a major contribution to “the really bold debate” the author wishes to organize.

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[1] Revolution, p. 193.
[2] Ibid., p. 176.
[3] Ibid., p. 11.
[4] Ibid., p.14.
[5] Ibid., p. 20.
[6] Ibid., p. 117.
[7] Ibid., p. 131.