In the public eye: Gabriel Rockhill’s “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?”
Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? offers a crash course in the history of imperialist propaganda, as well as in the Marxist method for analyzing culture and ideology. Author Gabriel Rockhill demonstrates the explanatory and transformative superiority of a dialectical and historical materialist approach, while elucidating how the world of ideas is a crucial site of class struggle. He then engages in a meticulous counter-history of the Frankfurt School—which made a foundational contribution to Western Marxism—by situating it within the global relations of class struggle and the imperialist war on actually existing socialism.
With the explicit and direct backing of powerful elements in the capitalist ruling class and the world’s leading imperialist state, the Frankfurt School developed a widely promoted form of compatible critical theory as an ersatz for dialectical and historical materialism. The volume concludes by bringing to the fore the positive project that serves as the guiding methodological framework for the work as a whole: a thoroughly anticolonial and anti-imperialist Marxism dedicated to building socialism in the real world. Drawing on extensive archival research to pull back the curtain on ruling class machinations, Rockhill’s book elucidates how the intellectual world war on the socialist alternative has sought to shore up and promote a “compatible left” intelligentsia while misrepresenting, maligning, and trying to destroy the revolutionary left.
PRESS DIGEST:
MR Online: “An Insider Critique of the Imperial Theory Industry: Gabriel Rockhill Interviewed by by Michael D. Yates”
“Michael Yates: Gabriel, what we are as adults is conditioned by our childhoods. Tell us something about where and how you grew up. How do you think this influenced who you are now?
Gabriel Rockhill: I grew up on a small farm in rural Kansas, and manual labor was an integral part of my life from an early age. This included work on the farm, of course, but I also worked construction. My father is a builder and an architect, so when I wasn’t working on the farm, I spent most of my time, outside of school and sports, on construction sites.
Before I even knew the word, I had the lived experience of exploitation (farm work was never waged, nor was construction work early on). This is clearly one of the things that drove me to the life of the mind: I enjoyed school as a welcome reprieve from manual labor.
My father is deeply passionate about design, and his motto is ‘hand and mind,’ meaning that to be a true architect, you need to have the practical knowledge to build (hand) what you design (mind). I was desperate for more of the latter when I was young, but I have also remained deeply attached to the former. In retrospect, this approach obviously had a lasting impact on me, since I have definitely embraced what I would now call the dialectical relationship between practice and theory….”
Marx Memorial Library: Watch their interview with Rockhill, here: https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/events-archive/who-paid-pipers-western-marxism-gabriel-rockhill-interview
Hakim: “The Latest Developments in Socialist Theory and Analysis (Must-Reads!)”
MLT – Marxism-Leninism Today: Joseph Jamison on Rockhill vs. Saunders and the term “Western Marxism”
“’He who pays the piper calls the tune’ is the proverb alluded to in the title of Gabriel Rockhill’s outstanding new book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? subtitled “The Intellectual World War. Marxism Versus the Imperial Theory Industry.” [1] The title of Rockhill’s book calls to mind the British title of a well-known earlier book Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders.[2] While rich in factual detail, the Saunders work rarely went beyond liberal outrage about CIA deceit, corruption, contempt for democracy, and brutal violence.
Gabriel Rockhill’s book is a far deeper and more ambitious work. It strives to make a number of advances in Marxist theory, and it focuses on a specific aspect of the Cold War of ideas by concentrating on the capitalist ruling class’s attempt to destroy its communist nemesis by consciously shaping a form of bogus ‘Marxism’ — ‘Western Marxism’ — that would not threaten the capitalist status quo.
Rockhill’s main contention is that much of what is known as ‘Western Marxism’ — especially the strain associated with Frankfurt School and what he calls French Theory — was not a genuine revolutionary or anti-capitalist current. Rather, it functioned as a vehicle of ideological control under capitalism and imperialism. Rockhill shows through a massive amount of archival evidence that powerful capitalist interests — including states, foundations, and institutions tied to imperialist powers — actively funded and promoted this so called ‘critical theory’ tradition. The aim of all this funding and promotion was to produce a ‘compatible left’ — a left-leaning intelligentsia that would appear critical but would ultimately serve the needs of the ruling capitalist order by diverting attention away from systemic class struggle, revolutionary social change, and the achievements of actual socialism.”
Read the rest here…
Counterpunch: “When Marxist Intellectuals Collaborated With the CIA“, by Charles Reitz
“In agreement with the highly respected recent work of Daniel Immerwahr and David Vine and other contemporary radical scholars, Gabriel Rockhill’s new book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, The Intellectual World War. reinforces the by now quite widely-held notion that there is a US empire. Following World War II and the establishment of cold war and the US national security state, a global intellectual contest was underway between those promoting and those opposing the political/philosophical hegemony of US imperial interests. A key element in the political economy of the US knowledge production system was (and is) a CIA partnership with elite universities and Cold War scholars, key corporate foundations, federal research projects, and the top leaders of the corporate mass media. Utilizing wide-ranging archival documentation, Rockhill’s book establishes these interconnections anew (previously adumbrated by Parenti, Mills, Domhoff, etc), and he does so in admirable depth. There was a concerted endeavor to draw critical social commentary into the ‘compatible’ (150) Western Marxist camp and away from what Rockhill sees as the incompatible revolutionary Marxism practiced by Che (whom he lionizes in his first several pages and sees as emblematic of a Marxist fighter and leader in Cuba and Bolivia, in the end assassinated by CIA-linked operatives. Rockhill views Che’s legacy as consistent with other leading lights, such as Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro (338), who were at the helm of real socio-economic alternatives to capitalism in practice.
Given the accompanying context of ideological contestation, Rockhill investigates the systems of US knowledge production and counterrevolution for what they were [and continue to be]. This is a worthy project, and Rockhill’s skepticism is warranted with regard to radical intellectuals (like Marcuse, Neumann and many others) serving with the intelligence services of the US government during and after WW II, especially in connection with certain New Left criticisms of Old Left policies. He sees himself as defending anti-imperialist Marxism against the ‘imperial theory industry.’ This industry is considered to be part of the US imperial project, and his mission is unveiling the intellectual ‘pipers’ it paid and those who paid them.”
Weaponized information: Who Paid the Pipers? Empire’s Safe Marxism and the War on Revolutionary Consciousness, by “Prince Kapone”
“This book arrives not a moment too soon.
Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? is not a contribution to academic debate. It is an intervention into a global struggle over consciousness, one that determines whether the working classes of the world will recognize their enemies—or continue to fight shadows while empire tightens its grip. Gabriel Rockhill’s work speaks directly to the material reality facing billions of people today: escalating imperial violence, permanent war, economic strangulation, ecological collapse, and an ideological environment carefully engineered to make all of this appear inevitable….”
Controversy, controversy…it’s no surprise that this book is selling very well. See more on this from Bisharat Abbasi, in his post: “In Defence Of Gabriel Rockhill’s Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism: Anti-Imperialist Marxism Versus The Imperial Theory Industry.“
In translation….
Canarias Samanal: Durante décadas, la lucha de clases no solo se libró en fábricas, calles y frentes militares, sino también en universidades, en las editoriales y en círculos intelectuales. Bajo la apariencia de un “debate teórico” , el imperialismo desplegó una estrategia sistemática para vaciar al marxismo de su potencia revolucionaria y sustituirlo por una “izquierda aceptable” al orden capitalista. El último libro de Gabriel Rockhill desvela con rigor histórico esta ofensiva ideológica…..
Batalla de Ideas (In Spanish): “Marxismo occidental e imperialismo: Un diálogo”, John Bellamy Foster y Gabriel Rockhill
Editor of MR Magazine, John Bellamy Foster spoke with Rockhill about his book on the Monthly Review Magazine website, and this was quickly translated into Spanish at Batalla de Ideas.
Read here or see below…
EVENTS:
Critical Theory Workshop book launch
Also! You can follow Rockhill’s substack here.
