Who Paidthe Pipers of Western Marxism? offers a crash course in the history ofimperialist propaganda, as well as in the Marxist method for analyzingculture and ideology. Author Gabriel Rockhill demonstrates the explanatoryand transformative superiority of a dialectical and historical materialistapproach, while elucidating how the world of ideas is a crucial site of classstruggle. He then engages in a meticulous counter-history of the FrankfurtSchool—which made a foundational contribution to Western Marxism—by situatingit within the global relations of class struggle and the imperialist war onactually existing socialism. With the explicit and direct backing of powerfulelements in the capitalist ruling class and the world’s leading imperialist state,the Frankfurt School developed a widely promoted form of compatible criticaltheory as an ersatz for dialectical and historical materialism. The volumeconcludes by bringing to the fore the positive project that serves as theguiding methodological framework for the work as a whole: a thoroughlyanticolonial and anti-imperialist Marxism dedicated to building socialism inthe real world. Drawing on extensive archival research to pull back thecurtain on ruling class machinations, Rockhill’s book elucidates how theintellectual world war on the socialist alternative has sought to shore upand promote a “compatible left” intelligentsia while misrepresenting,maligning, and trying to destroy the revolutionary left.
