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Author: Doug Greene and Harrison Fluss

Theory Betrayed: An Essay on Gabriel Rockhill’s Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? (Part Four)

PART FOUR Read here PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE You can download entire dossier as single pdf file here  The Red-Brown Thread: Why Do Fascists Love Stalin?   As we near the end of our essay, we want to address the connection between socialism in one country and antisemitism. We need to be careful

Theory Betrayed: An Essay on Gabriel Rockhill’s Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? (Part Three)

PART THREE Read here: PART ONE, PART TWO, PART FOUR You can download entire dossier as single pdf file here     The Primacy of Stalinist Pragmatism Rockhill’s Pipers is not simply about the Frankfurt School or how they were in the pockets of Western imperialism. Were it merely a sordid tale about Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and

Theory Betrayed: An Essay on Gabriel Rockhill’s Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? (Part Two)

 If we wish to thoroughly criticise Rockhill’s approach, we must confront the historical legacy of Stalinism. Throughout Rockhill’s work, there is an uncritical adulation of “AES”, past and present alike. He presents the Soviet Union, China, and similar states as principled opponents of imperialism and steadfast champions of world revolution. For Rockhill, criticism of AES is not merely mistaken but practically verboten – tantamount to treason against the revolution, and, at times, indistinguishable from a CIA psyop. But this rose-coloured view of the Soviet Union, China, and related regimes obscures the repeated double-crossing of anti-imperialist and workers’ struggles by Stalinism itself. These historical facts cast serious doubt on the revolutionary credentials of “Marxism-Leninism”.

Theory Betrayed: An Essay on Gabriel Rockhill’s Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? (Part One)

To properly address Rockhill’s claims requires not only a direct engagement with his book, but also the development of independent criticism of both Stalinism and the Frankfurt School from a standpoint distinct from these currents. This means analysing how the pessimism of the Frankfurt School emerged in relation to Stalinism, rather than in isolation from it.

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Historical Materialism is a Marxist journal, appearing four times a year, based in London. Founded in 1997 it asserts that, not withstanding the variety of its practical and theoretical articulations, Marxism constitutes the most fertile conceptual framework for analysing social phenomena, with an eye to their overhaul. In our selection of material we do not favour any one tendency, tradition or variant. Marx demanded the ‘Merciless criticism of everything that exists’: for us that includes Marxism itself.

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