He began his political career with a protest in his school during the Quit India Movement, in 1942, and joined the Communist Party of Pakistan in 1948 for some time before quitting it for ideological reasons in 1951, while he became a lawyer in 1953, and as an activist has been jailed under Ayyub Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as well as Zia-ul-Haq, the first two for refusing to become a minister, and the third for supposedly attempting a coup d'état. He later on abandoned leftist politics and Marxism altogether, after having studied it for some two decades but ultimately writing a "50-page article on gaps in facts and reasoning in dialectical and historical materialism", and now describes himself as a "post-Marxist."Saroop Ijaz (28 September 2014), "Herald Exclusive: In conversation with Raza Kazim", Dawn News. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
