Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn
by Domenico Losurdo
with Gabriel Rockhill
352 pages / $32 / 978-1-68590-062-5
Reviewed by Steve Ellner for Science & Society 2025, Vol. 0(0) 1–23
The most conspicuous revolutionary struggles in the century following the French revolution in 1789 contrast in fundamental ways with those of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. What most caught the attention of Marx and Engels were the Jacobin years of the French revolution, the June Days in 1848, and the French Commune in 1871, and in all three the urban popular sectors were the central protagonists. Since then, the most prominent revolutionary struggles have been ones in which the Left gained power with the support of broader sectors of the population as opposed to proletariat-based revolutions. In Western Marxism, DomenicoLosurdo points out that imperialism has been the “principal contradiction” (80) and that anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism have been the main drivers behind revolutionary movements that have achieved state power. Examples include the October Revolution of 1917 (largely in re- action to an inter-imperialist war), the Chinese revolution (what Losurdo calls “the greatest anticolonialist revolution in history” [102]), and, of course, third- world movements of national liberation since1945 (Losurdo 2015, 319–320).
Losurdo rejects the utopianism and purism displayed by the harshest leftist critics of actually existing socialism. He may have possibly asked the question: What would the modern world look like if we accept the notion of those on the left who characterized the USSR as state capitalist, placed China in the category of “eastern totalitarianism” (143), and label Nicola´s Maduro and Evo Morales neoliberal sell-outs? Putting aside the glorious triumph of the Soviet revolution in 1917, the Cuban revolution in its early years, and the high point of the presidency of Hugo Chavez, all the nations that set out on a socialist path allegedly reverted to their previous state of class exploitation and autocratic rule. According to this line of thinking, the only encouraging sign is the consciousness raising of social movement struggles over the longue duree, as envisioned by E. P. Thompson, which upon reaching a certain threshold will lead to revolutionary situations.
Losurdo’s Arguments in Brief
Anti-imperialism is at the center of Losurdo’s analysis. He argues that Western Marxism and critical theory writers have failed to correctly analyze anti- imperialism in the Global South. In some cases, they play down or ignore its importance, as in the works of David Harvey as well as those of Michel Foucault in which “colonial peoples… are historically absent” (164) and Ernst Bloch, who “scolded Lenin forgiving excessive importance to the colonial question” (69).
Others show disdain, such as Slavoj Zizˇek who claims that anti-imperialist struggles “distract[s] us from overthrowing capitalism” (231). In the worst of cases,exponents of critical theory like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer displayed racism, failed to “show any sympathy for the victims of the West and its expansionist march” (117), and equated “nationalism of the so-called under- developed countries” (121) with fascism. Unlike Perry Anderson’s assertion that Western Marxism arose as a result of the Soviet failure to ignite socialist revolutions to its west in the early 1920s, Losurdo claims that Western Marxism was a continuation of the chauvinistic positions and Eurocentrism of the Second International.
After the Left comes to power in the Global South, the anti-imperialist struggle enters a “second stage.” In these cases, attempts at regime change undertaken by capitalist powers have been tantamount to colonialism or imperialist expansion with a racist imprint. Thus, for instance, in 1941 Hitler “unleashed the greatest colonial war in history to build his continental empire in Eastern Europe” (156). Losurdo takes issue with those “Western Marxists,” such as Jean-Paul Sartre, who displayed “empathy” and “solidarity” (135) for the oppressed of the Global South but had little to say about them after they attained power, thus manifesting a condescending attitude at best. Losurdo writes: “We can be sympathetic … only so long as they are oppressed, humiliated, and without any power” (202). He concludes, “Western Marxists are addicted to the role of the opposition” (p. 200).
In the second stage, productivity becomes a major imperative. Contrary to the thinking of Western Marxists, the communists in power in the USSR, China,Vietnam, and Cuba have been obliged by circumstances to accept private production and markets. The governments in these nations made concessions to the national bourgeoisie, “whose entrepreneurial and managerial competence is needed” (p. 139), and to the international bourgeoisie to access advanced technology. For Losurdo, the anti-imperialist revolution is a “new type of revolution led by the proletariat” and consists of a broad alliance of classes, though it is “fundamentallybourgeois-democratic” (85). Expediency in these situations has been preferable to the adherence to abstract principles of democracy since the avoidance of re-colonialization “could only be accomplished by sacrificing, to a greater or less degree, the exigencies of democracy” (125).
There is no place in the thinking of Losurdo for ultra-leftism and mechanical Marxism, both of which underpin the arguments on the left against actually existing socialism. He points to Max Horkheimer’s ludicrous criticism of the Soviet government for its “lack of attention to the problem of the abolition of the state” (87)at the moment in which Nazi troops were approaching Moscow. Equally absurd were the Western Marxists who saw the Chinese revolution as leading to the “abolition of work” and in doing so would “abolish class dom- ination” (132). Another manifestation of utopianism was the banner of world revolution of Leon Trotsky, who according to Losurdo “eminently represented Western Marxism” (68). Taking into account the untenable nature of these positions, Losurdo attributes the ebbing of Marxism’s influence at the turn of the century as much to the errors of WesternMarxism as to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Chinese Model
Losurdo’s thesis is aligned with a political current that has emerged on the left sinceChina’s rise as a global power, particularly under Xi Jinping. The attraction of China should not be surprising given the Chinese Communist success in resisting Washington’s hoped-for scenario in which the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989 would initiate the type of color revolution that toppled socialist governments in Eastern Europe. China’s success stands in sharp contrast with the failures of the organized Left in the Global North, accentuated by the recent dramatic inroads of the far right.
The pro-China position reconciles the thinking of two leaders who were previously considered antithetical: Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Despite obvious contrasts between the two, there were common denominators. Before and shortly after reaching power (until 1952), Mao was an advocate of the Comintern strategy of cementing unity with the progressive members of the national bourgeoisie. This position represented a precedent for the market re- forms promoted by Deng after Mao’s death in 1976. Losurdo does not see the Cultural Revolution as marking a definitive break in the thinking of the two leaders, even though it resulted in Deng’s loss of power and his humiliation. Losurdo points out that the Western Marxists who viewed the Cultural Revo- lution as the beginning of the withering away of the state ignored that Mao envisioned the event as part of a strategy to “promote production” (249), always one of his principal concerns and that of Deng as well.
The adherents to the new pro-China position classify the USSR throughout its 75 years as a genuine socialist state, though they view it in a critical light (Desai 2023, 72–73; PSL 2007). Losurdo defends this opinion, at the same time that he condemns Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of Stalin (Losurdo 2011, 25–54) and accuses Gorbachev of “surrender” (243; Desai 2023, 57).
One key issue of debate behind Losurdo’s thesis on China’s vanguard role in the world today is the extent to which there is a Chinese economic model that serves as a blueprint for building socialism. Two pro-China tendencies of the international Left, whose representatives were formerly identified with a variety of leftist currents (as in the cased of Losurdo who from 1960 until his death in 2018 belonged to several Communist parties in Italy), are reflected in the book. One position is formulated by the former Trotskyist leader and China specialist John Ross, who defends Deng’s model of market socialism, which he alleges is rooted in Marx’s writing. Ross argues that Deng’s reforms have proven more effective than the command economy and other “ultra-leftist” policies implemented by Mao and Stalin. He also maintains thatDeng’s promotion of international commerce and international division of labor, which to a degree contrasted with Mao’s emphasis on self-reliance, accorded with Marx’s views. Nevertheless, Ross is not anti-Mao and credits him with social achievements that were “the greatest in any country in human history” (Ross 2021, 15).
Losurdo agrees that Deng, with his long-time militance in the Communist Party, was a strategist who sought to defend and reinforce Chinese socialism and to avoid the dismal fate of other left-leaning nations of the South that opened their doors to foreign capital and markets. Losurdo, like Ross, views Deng’s policies as part of along-term strategy designed to strengthen the socialist system, which contrasted with the defensive nature of Lenin’s New Economic Policy, designed “to find some way out of an economically hopeless situation” (Losurdo 2022).
A second tendency views post-Mao governments as socialist but subject to sharp contradictions. Some of their policies ran the risk of facilitating capitalist restoration,while others helped lay the basis for socialist construction. The writing in this vein mirrors Nicos Poulantzas’ metaphor of the state as a “battlefield.” This is the case of the position of the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which has become possibly the largest pro-China leftist party in the U.S. Prior to Xi’s assumption of power and his partial reversal of policies initiated by Deng (such as in the area of foreign policy), PSL’s leading spokesmanBrian Becker (2007) wrote: “The basic trend toward more en- trenched capitalist class relations has only deepened since 1978. This process is, however, unfinished. As long as the Communist Party of China retains its hold on political power, there isa possibility that this trend can still be re- versed.” In addition to viewing the ChineseCommunist Party as a bulwark against capitalist restoration, Becker (2007) and PSL(2007) pointed to the nation’s national bourgeoisie as a positive factor in resisting penetration by global capitalism since that class fraction “resents the intrusion of imperialism because it desires to be the exploiter of its home markets rather than being run roughshod over by foreign imperialism.”
In line with the second tendency, Losurdo diverges from some of Ross’ positions.In the words of Jennifer Ponce de León and Gabriel Rockhill in the book’s introduction, Losurdo does not “idolize[s] Deng or simplistically champion[s] him over Mao” (Ponce de León and Rockhill 2024, 29), as Ross does. Furthermore, while Ross claims that Deng undertook the “systematic application” of Marx’s theories and achieved a perfect “balance of private and public” (Clegg 2022), Losurdo characterizes the Chinese government’s ongoing experience as a “process of learning,” including learning from its own mistakes (Ponce de León and Rockhill 2024, 29).
One major shortcoming of Western Marxism is that it fails to explore the differences between these two tendencies, nor does it analyze the implications of both. Most important, the book fails to grapple with the issue of capitalist restoration, which the second tendency (that of Becker), unlike the first (which is the position of the Communist Party of China), considers a real possibility. After all, capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union, whose economic system was more socialist than that of twenty-first century China, with its more than 400 billionaires who, as of 2002, have been allowed to join the Communist Party. Capitalist restoration is at odds with the linear view of history that Losurdo also rejects, at least in theory.
Losurdo’s nearly exclusive focus on top leaders beginning with Deng, who Ross calls “the world’s greatest economist” (Clegg 2022), leaves the impression that a steady advance toward socialism is underway and that capitalist restoration from within is unlikely. In contrast, Becker (2007) views the Communist Party as a powerful actor that could check the retrograde influence of the nation’s su- preme leaders and the possibility of a return to capitalism. This position left the PSL open to criticism on the left for lacking a bottom-up focus and for viewing workers as “passive,” as opposed to “Marx’s idea that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself” (Chretien 2009; see also Laibman 2020,196–197). At issue, in the case of both opinions, is the role of the Communist Party as an institution and that of the working class in avoiding the reemergence of capitalism in China, a course that is implicitly ruled out by those who place their faith in the nation’s top leaders such as Deng and Xi. If capitalist restoration in China, as well as in other actually existing socialist countries, is a real possibility, then the need for rigorous debate on the left around the policies of those governments is compelling.
A Misleading Binary
In his polemic against Western Marxism, Losurdo casts too wide a net. Many of his targets are ex-Marxists who moved in a rightist direction. Losurdo dedicates 19 pages to Hannah Arendt, who never came close to being a Marxist. Michel Foucault receives 18 pages even though his principal association with Marxism was his 3-year stint as a non-active member of the French Communist Party when he was in his 20s. Adorno, Horkheimer, and Antonio Negri, all of whom strayed far from the basic premises of Marxism, also receive considerable attention.
Rockhill, the book’s editor, attributes the broadness of the Western Marxism category to the need of its leading representatives, who are mainly professors at prestigious universities, to “compete in the marketplace of ideas.” Academic imperatives force this “intellectual labor aristocracy” to formulate “singular and unique” ideas. Unlike Eastern and anti-imperialist Marxists “who are driven by use value,” these “opportunistic intellectuals” are “primarily invested in exchange value.” The common feature of the Western Marxists is “oppo- sition to actually existing socialism in almost every shape and form.” Divorced from action, these academics seek “not to change the world, but interpret it.” Most important, Western Marxism is“severed from progressive, practical political struggle” and “a practical process of socialism” Rockhill (2024; 2023, 32).
Rockhill’s explanation of its heterogeneity notwithstanding, Western Marxism, as interpreted by Losurdo, is too all encompassing. Losurdo, for example, viewsLouis Althusser’s thinking as in line with Western Marxism even though he recognizes that the French philosopher “followed with deep concern the struggle of peoples living under colonial conditions and looked with sympathy at China”(245). Losurdo disagrees with Althusser’s claim that humanism has no place in Marxism because it highlights moral indignation, a category which transcends class and is thus contrary to scientific-based historical materialism. Losurdo’s response to Althusser is that the victims of capitalist barbarism are not confined to the proletariat and that “scientific rigor and moral indignation are closely intertwined” (242). The argument for going beyond a strictly proletariat-based class focus reinforces Losurdo’s central thesis that the epicenter of the struggle for socialism has until now been China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, and other nations mainly of the South, where theanti-imperialist movement consists of multi-class alliances.
Losurdo, however, overstates his case when, after questioning the plausibility of Althusser’s polemics against humanism, he criticizes the French philosopher for failing “apparently to grasp the theoretical significance of [anti-imperialist]… struggles” (245–246). In addition, Losurdo argues that Althusser’s “elaboration of historical materialism becomes a chapter of a history that takes place exclusively in the West” (245). Losurdo’s justification for these harsh statements would seem to be Althusser’s allegedly narrow focus on the proletariat of the Global North and his failure to write in any detail about anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles throughout the world. While these criticisms may be valid, the rationale for placing Althusser in, or close to, the pejorative category of Western Marxism is not convincing.
The book’s grouping of Marxists like Althusser, a near life-long active member of the pro-Soviet Communist Party of France, in the same category as non-Marxists and anti-Communists is disorienting. Losurdo is overcritical not only of Althusser but also his intellectual rival Jean-Paul Sartre, in both cases for failing to appreciate the anti-imperialist nature of the “second stage” of the anti-imperialist struggle,when the anti-imperialists are in power. Severe criticism of writers and activists for distancing themselves from, or underestimating the importance of, actually existing socialism is counterproductive, if not unfair. More important, the book devotes too much space to its analysis of intellectuals who have no pretense of being Marxist but makes just passing reference to the positions of leftist parties, such as EuropeanCommunist Parties. The reader is left wondering whether nearly all major leftist parties in the Global North get dismissed as being opportunist and responsible for the historic failure of the Left. On the other hand, if Western Marxism by definition refers only to European intellectuals, then Losurdo’s comparison is flawed in that it consists of two dissimilar categories: leftist theoreticians (Western Marxists) versus leftist political movements (Eastern Marxists).
In addition, the harshness of the Western Marxist label, which appears to be synonymous with opportunism, may not be justified when it is applied to some Western Marxists who question the legitimacy of actually existing socialism. Personal attacks against fellow leftists in these cases do nothing to further the leftist cause. Losurdo and Rockhill exaggerate when they assign a large part of the responsibility for the Left’s disappointing performance to Western Marxists as a whole. A more nuanced explanation for the Left’s failures is in order, at the same time that distinctions need to be made between individual “Western Marxists.”
On the positive side, the book puts forward cogent arguments to counter the works of leftists who deny the progressive aspects and anti-imperialist char- acter of actually existing socialisms and governments such as that of Maduro in Venezuela (which some Communist Parties have condemned as neoliberal and authoritarian[Ellner 2023, 404–406]). In this respect, Western Marxism constitutes a contribution to the debate that has pitted two diametrically opposed positions on the left against each other. One persuasively underscores the need to prioritize the struggle against U.S. imperialism, and the other posits that globalization in recent decades has eroded the relevance of the territorial-based concept of imperialism associated with Lenin (Ellner 2024a, 2024b, 2024c; Foster 2024; Science and Society 2024). Losurdo sides with the former. In addition, his thesis on the capitulation of Western Marxism con- textualizes such adverse phenomena as the neoliberal turn, abandonment of Keynesianism, and “class dealignment” of European socialist parties (Sunkara 2024).
On the downside, there is a basic contradiction embedded in the book’s central thesis on the need for leftists to be realistic and “practical” (Rockhill 2024) and to reject the idealism and utopianism of Western Marxism. In effect, the criteriaLosurdo and Rockhill set for being considered a true Marxist are too exclusive.Those leftists who fail to prioritize anti-imperialism and to wholeheartedly support actually existing socialism fall short of that standard. There is a lack of realism in this position in that it contributes to the fragmentation of the Left, more than it already is. More than ever, the Left in the Global North consists of three maincurrents: those who prioritize working class struggles, those who prioritize anti-imperialism, and those who prioritize social issues, sometimes misleadingly referred to as “identity politics.” Needless to say, the three intersect, but there is also tension between them. A realistic political strategy would recognize the deep social roots of the three main currents and would promote diversity and tolerance in accordance with Mao’s dictum on the need to recognize “contradictions among the people.” Only within this framework, will the debate over priorities be fruitful (Ellner 2024c).
In short, by inveighing against all leftists who do not prioritize anti-U.S. imperialism, Western Marxism may add to the divisions on the Left and in doing so contradict the “practical” and realistic strategizing that Losurdo and Rockhill call for. At the same time, however, both theorists do a thorough job in debunking the misguided arguments of those on the left who refuse to recognize the socialist features of actually existing socialism and who see the continued existence of capitalist forms in those countries as a betrayal of Marxism. In this respect, Western Marxism represents a much welcome contribution to the analysis of a complex subject that is in constant transformation.
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