| Editors | Ezgi Pınar, Gökhan Demir, Hülya Kendir |
| Publication Secretary | Ümit Özger |
| Issue Editors | Ali Ekber Doğan, Ecehan Balta, Mustafa Şener |
The Necessity and Urgency of an Ecosocialist Revolution
Fikret Başkaya
This article argues that framing contemporary climate and environmental breakdown as a manageable “crisis” risks obscuring its irreversible threshold-crossing character, and therefore proposes “ecological destruction” and “Capitalocene” as analytically and politically sharper concepts. By foregrounding destruction, the analysis integrates biophysical tipping dynamics with social reproduction, public health, livelihoods, and spatial life-worlds, shifting ecology from technical management to a conflictual terrain of justice and power.
It also critiques Anthropocene narratives that homogenize “humanity” as a single agent, emphasizing instead the Capitalocene perspective that locates primary causality in capitalist accumulation, fossil-energy regimes, and global expansion dynamics, thereby restoring historical and class-differentiated responsibility. The article highlights the unequal distribution of emissions and ecological footprints, where responsibility concentrates upward through wealth and consumption patterns. Against the promise of “green capitalism,” the article contends that market-compatible fixes that leave the aims, scale, and governance of production intact function mainly as ideological postponement. The proposed alternative is ecosocialist transformation: socialization (rather than mere nationalization) of production and life infrastructures, termination of harmful and unnecessary production, and the construction of democratic ecological and social planning as a practical horizon of systemic exit.
Keywords: Ecosocialism, ecological destruction, Capitalocene vs Anthropocene debate, class responsibility, democratic planning, socialization, critique of green capitalism
What is Constitutional Socialism?
Mustafa Bayram Mısır
This article advances the idea of constitutional socialism by demonstrating the conceptual and historical limits of equating “the dictatorship of the proletariat” with socialism and of identifying socialism with “state ownership.” Constitutional socialism (i) distinguishes individual property from private (capital-accumulation) property; (ii) socializes strategic sectors of production by defining them as public services; (iii) constitutionalizes classical liberties together with economic citizenship rights—work, housing, energy, water, digital access, freedom of association/collective bargaining, and workplace democracy; and (iv) proposes a plural-centered, accountable state form that binds constituent power to a durable architecture of rights. In this way, socialism is conceived not as single-channel nationalization or a temporary regime of coercion, but as a transformation of the regime of rights, institutions, and property. At a time when freedom of expression is narrowing across much of the world and democratic will is being neutralized through judicial/administrative means, constitutional socialism offers both normative legitimacy and institutional feasibility: stakeholder governance; cooperative and local enterprises; strategic public majorities; justiciable social rights; participatory budgeting and the plan–council nexus. The article also addresses likely objections from within socialist and liberal traditions. It concludes the question “Is constitutional socialism possible?” with a conditional affirmative: “yes—under specific institutional and legal conditions”.
Keywords: Constitutional Socialism, public service, individual/private property, equaliberty, stakeholder governance
Socialism Today and Tomorrow Through the Lens of Anderson’s Forecasts from 1990s
Ali Ekber Doğan
This article revisits Perry Anderson’s four-scenario schema on socialism’s historical fate, developed in A Zone of Engagement (1992) and “Renewals” (2000) namely oblivion, value conversion, mutation, and rebirth. It reassesses the schema in light of the post-2008 conjuncture marked by deepening neoliberal legitimacy erosion, authoritarian consolidation, and recurrent waves of uprising, asking which elements of Anderson’s framework have been strengthened and which require revision. The central claim is that the multi-crisis constellation emerging since the 2010s has pulled socialism out of the register of “oblivion,” while simultaneously forcing a renewed debate on socialist strategy and organizational forms. To develop this argument, the article first clarifies Anderson’s four scenarios conceptually, then evaluates them through twenty-first-century socialist experiences and post-2010 rebellion cycles.
Keywords: Perry Anderson; Twenty-First-Century Socialism; hegemonic crisis; legitimacy crisis; uprising movements; revolutionary crisis
The Specter of Political Power: How Leninism Still Haunts the Contemporary Left
Dennis Bosseau
Primitive Accumulation, Proletarianization, Youth, And Youth Movements
Doğan Çetinkaya, A. Ezgi Akyol Gıagtzoglou
The emergence of youth as an independent and radical social subject has been largely discussed in the literature either by idealizing it within the framework of certain biological and psychological characteristics or by interpreting it as a process of social construction formulated by political elites under specific historical conditions. This article moves beyond these two approaches by asking why the category of youth emerged concurrently with capitalism and by examining its relationship with capitalist relations of production. Drawing on Marx’s analyses of capital, the specific form of labor under capitalism, the process of primitive accumulation, and proletarianization, the study argues that youth emerged as a distinct social category in accordance with the existential needs of capital. It further contends that youth movements, regardless of their forms of appearance and articulation, can be understood as political and social symptoms of the process of proletarianization. The article starts its analysis with Europe because the literature on primitive accumulation mostly focuses on European history. However, since the material and historical conditions that gave rise to the category of youth are considered universal rather than unique to Europe, the article also includes the Ottoman-Turkish case in its analysis. In addition, the article adopts a historical perspective that goes beyond approaches which confine youth movements to the specific conditions of the 1960s and explain them through the “myth of the golden age of capitalism,” emphasizing instead the dialectical relationship between the categories of production and reproduction.
Keywords: Primitive accumulation, youth, proletarianization, youth movement, labor
On the Struggle of Youth and the Dilemmas of the Socialist Left: The Actions of March 2025
Abbas Vural
Looking at the history of the socialist movement in Turkey, it is clear that the youth struggle has always played a vital role in every period. Within this historical context, it is obvious that special importance must be given to socialist activity among the youth masses in terms of the present and future of socialism. The March 2025 protests, which began with the revocation of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu’s university diploma and his unlawful arrest, led to significant developments in this regard. However, no significant increase in the number of young people joining socialist youth organizations was observed during this process, leading to serious debates about the outcome of the process. Indeed, this study can be considered a turning point in terms of its impact and consequences for the history of youth struggle in Turkey. The March 2025 protests were examined in terms of class, organizational, and political dynamics; however, despite the decisive nature of the rupture in terms of the tendencies of the struggle, the uncertainty of the direction in which it would politically progress was identified as one of the fundamental flaws. During this process, although the idea that coming together is necessary and transformative was accepted by all youth groups, the fact that the dominant form of politics remained within the lines of bourgeois opposition has been linked to the narrow groupist and protest-oriented style of the socialist organizations involved in the process. This research, which approaches the actions that took place using a qualitative and descriptive approach, drawing on a Marxist perspective as well as discussions of political opportunity structures and organizational capacity presented in the literature on social movements, and attempts a conceptual analysis based on secondary sources, has identified the need to create lasting organizations and mechanisms of struggle through mass activities that unite the academic and political demands of the youth masses in the coming period; it has emphasized the need to organize socialism as an intellectual movement in the face of petty bourgeois tendencies such as protestism or the search for quick and individual salvation.
Keywords: Youth, the struggle of youth, socialism, socialist struggle, March protests
The Leader Capitalist Economies of the 21ST Century within the Global Capitalist Production System: From the Perspectives of Concentration of Capital Accumulation snd Falling Rates of Profits
Mehmet Ufuk Tutan
Capitalist production system has inherited economic and financial crises because of concentration of capital accumulation and consequently, falling rates of profit. Besides, as capitalists use more capital in production processes, output-capital ratios eventually decrease and result in falling rates of profits, which eventually cause more economic and financial crises. The leading capitalist economies which are the USA, Germany, Japan and China have suffered from the falling rates of profits for a long time. There have been many attempts to increase rates of profits; however, some attempts temporarily solve the problem, but profit rates eventually decline again in the long run. By the worldwide economic and financial crisis in the year 2008, China has showed great successes at economic growth, export, and high-tech productions, and by the year 2013, China through Belt and Road Initiative Project has increased market and investment shares against the leading capitalist economy, the USA. However, the rate of profits, the capital output ratios and the share of profits of China’s economy, which remained at very high level compared to the other leading capitalist economies for a long time, have tended to converge to those economies’ numbers in recent years. Hence, by the year 2020, China has already started to compete with the USA in the areas of economy and technology. The respond of the USA is to try to stop China through political and military maneuvers at a global level. In recent years, both economies intend to both protect and if possible, extend their spheres of influence. However, both countries have been suffering from falling rates of profits and repetitive economic and financial crises that have reduced their economic and political powers. It seems that both countries, which have been suffering from falling rates of profits and have been losing ground on economic, financial, technological and military areas, will continue to compete with each other for a little more time. During the meantime, the global capitalist production system will change since such a change is in the nature of capitalism. However, the history of capitalism has proved that such a change will not be easy.
Keywords: China, rates of profits, capitalist production system, economic crises, capital accumulation
Book Review: Building a World: On Marta Harnecker’s Socialism for the 21st Century
Ecehan Balta
