Harold Wolpe: the revisionist marxist

South African lawyer, sociologist, political economist and anti-apartheid activist Harold Wolpe was an intellectual whose prime concern was to create a new moral and political order. He is fondly remembered for his Hollywood-thriller-like prison escape, and the dramatic manhunt that followed, but his real legacy is his deconstruction of the relationship between capitalism, segregation and apartheid. By insisting that social research should be based on the needs of the liberation struggle, he successfully married academic rigour with activism.