It looks like the hysteria over Gabriel Rockhill's expose of CIA funded western marxism has hit Jacobin. Since Rockhill's book was published, he's been living rent free in the heads of critical theorists. A bourgeois Indian academic who lives in the US and considers China "sweatshop socialism" has made at least 20 FB posts about Rockhill over the past month. Katerina Kolozova, a "marxist" from FYROM who wrote an article where she said "real marxists" wanted the breakup of Yugoslavia because it was "fake socialism" and Monkeydonians were "real europeans" unlike "Russians and Ukrainians" also went into meltdown mode. The Jacobin article just ties it all together. The author says we need critical theory and western marxism more than we need another Stalin or Mao. But given how impotent western marxists have been to achieve any kind of revolutionary success, it seems that their main issue with Rockhill is that he accurately diagnoses them as hacks. None of the articles, op-eds, or posts about Rockhill's book actually try to refute the facts he presents (backed up by FOIA requests) but just defend bourgeois liberal democracy as superior to actually existing socialism. The Indian admitted to me he didn't even finish Rockhill's book, and one of my irl friends who's been flipping out about it has refused to even read it. If Rockhill is so wrong, why is it no one can actually refute his truth nukes?
None of the guys mentioned is a self proclaimed marxist tho, people like Foucault were anti marxist and explicitly so, Adorno was doing cultural criticism in the vein of Klages, Spengler, Nietzsche. It's no secret.
>>2786956idk but its kinda hilarious. and im learning who is based and whos a lib over the fight
>>2786956I don't really care about this fight. Supposing Western Marxism was funded by the CIA, you can still take whatever insights they had and contend with them in your practical and theoretical understanding. You can think for yourself instead of covering it up with a fed blanket. On the other hand you should avoid organizations coopted by the CIA. Simple as
Following the money behind a writer is a good idea, but it is no substitute for analyzing the
content. And why is the content accepted by some people? I believe most of those people are not also paid by the CIA.
<Scott Patrick argues that Gabriel Rockhill's Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism substitutes class analysis with conspiracy-focused explanation in its attempt to understand accommodation to imperialism among Marxist intellectuals.https://cosmonautmag.com/2026/04/the-comfort-of-conspiracy-a-review-of-who-paid-the-pipers-of-western-marxism/>>2786988>you can still take whatever insights they had and contend with them in your practical and theoretical understanding.thats literally rockhill's position too kek
>>2786995watch any of rockhill's videos where he explains his whole deal and you will see this scott guy is doing a strawman
>>2786996 (me)
he has even said it would be a form of ultra left mistake to just dismiss the frankurt school or whatever just because of their funding since at the end of the day all these guys had access to the best education in the world with many resources that you cant get anywhere else really, but some of the pro-rockhill people miss this too, some people here are like this and seem to want to start doing book burnings
its hilarious but frustrating the way the stuff he says its received
>>2786996>>2787017So that leads to the question of what the Frankfurt School got wrong and what the Frankfurt School got right.
>>2787027>what the Frankfurt School got wrongbeing anti-USSR
>>2787033What were they wrong about that's also still relevant.
>>2787037Alignment with US imperialism
>>2786963Dear God. That is super faggy. Balkanfags, why are you so cucked?
Oh well we have putin so there is that.
The Baader-Meinhof group and the German RFA also received CIA assistance. Doesn't detract from their gains in killing nazis and businessmen.
>>2787037watering down marx work into a form of liberalism, but you are a lib so you will see this as something good
>>2787027naming themselves after hot dogs was a pretty bad move imo
>>2787048>killing nazis and businessmen.no tankie would have a problem with adorno and horkheimer if they had used their CIA funds to do stuff like this, but they didnt
>>2787059 (me)
actually, let me correct this, some tankies would have a problem if they had done that because of muh adventurism or something
Who gives a fuck about any kind of marxism?
>>2787065the CIA for some reason
>>2787066They need to quit being bored suburban teens
>>2787068its hopeless, they are obssesed
"Western Marxism" wasn't invented by the cia tough.
It was the natural evolution of certain marxist trends outside of state power.
If anyone is responsible it's Stalin for cucking out at Yalta and not continuing on to the shores of the Atlantic with the Red Army.
>>2787228>the reason we didn't have a revolution in le West is because not enough Soviet subhumans lay their lives for our libertyriveting analysis
>>2786956Someone getting criticized for what they write isn’t “hysteria.”
Come on, this is /pol/-tier “ha ha I triggered you” bs
>>2787228>It was the natural evolution of certain marxist trends outside of state power. How is a 'school of Marxism' that 'evolved' within Academia funded by, well, the state and also funded by the CIA 'natural' and 'outside of state power'?
>>2787050Lol, if anything most of these writers were more illiberal than marx.
Shit, Adorno even wrote that introducing women to the workforce was a mistake
>>2786996Ok I might read his book then. If that's his position then he seems much more reasonable than the people who spam his findings
Petty bourgeois academic infighting is incredibly funny.
>>2787249>Someone getting criticized for what they write isn’t “hysteria.”It is if the criticism is inorganic. You can tell this by looking at the arguments which are full of cope and inability to refute the claims made.
>>2787005>the entire economic system was facing collapse due to corruption and incompetence.>wasn't that just objective realityno, or the west wouldnt have bothered destroying them militarily
>It's not really an article by Zizek that caused Yugoslavia to unravel.no, but he certainly helped justifying its destruction by nato
>>2787365they watered it down into a form of liberalism by just focusing on the ruthless criticism with no real movement that abolishes the present state of things
>>2787624By the time the frankfurt school even came around the “real movement” was dead in the west because western workers benefit from imperialism, they know this and thus actively support it
Have you actually read Adorno, OP?
>>2787440>no, or the west wouldnt have bothered destroying them militarilyThey didn't destroy any military shit tho, they aimed at civilian infrastructure or at industry
>>2787027They were Zionists. They helped found the Zionist University of Jerusalem.
>>2787999Kaballah is useful tool for organizing your life.
>>2787393>Petty bourgeois academic infighting is incredibly funny.xD
>>2788008It literally says God is Satan.
>>2787717NTA, but I read America and found it to be well-written. Adorno's adulation of freeways is a bit cringey though, he reminds me of other Europoids I've met that have delusions about how great America is.
>>2788034Did you learn that on a nazi instagram reel?
>>2786995
>CosmonautThe worst of the worst in DSA, a very impressive title.
>>2786963People need to stop looking at the collapse of Yugoslavia as an isolated event when it was very much linked to the collapse of the eastern bloc as a whole.
That's like analyzing why the gdr collapsed and was annexed by West Germany but completely ignoring Gorbachev or what was happening inside the ussr.
It was a trend.
>>2786963>the entire economic system was facing collapse due to corruption and incompetenceAnd the "solution" most of these types were advocating for was for market reforms lmao
>>2788193Aren't you confusing Baudrillard with Adorno?
I'm pretty sure adorno never adulated nothing ever except Schönberg.
Anyway Baudrillard in America is not delulu about the greatness of America but treats as an exotic land with weird people and weird signs.
That's radical in itself since a pillar of American ideology is to be a standard
>>2787005> I have diagnosed your illness> *sniffs*> my prescription?> *wipes nose with hand*> poison> *wipes snotty hand on stained shirt*tito pulled a scam. he used yank money to project an image of wealth and prosperity. none of his investments came to fruition. then he died and the debts got called. between the debt, nationalism, and power vacuum left by the CPY the federation fell apart a year later and started the shooting gallery.
zizek clearly understood post tito yugoslavia. he spent the 80s calling out rising nationalism. but then he ran as a liberal in the 1990 election. we have him on record advocating for liberalisation and market reform. policies that even without the war would have locked in economic collapse.
I blame the party: they knew about the debt. before tito even got cold yugoslavia should have normalised relations with their socialist neighbors, restructured the debt, and made the military and executive branch subordinate to the federal assembly. could have made a lot of money brokering access to western goods, and the USSR could have fixed their underdeveloped resource sector overnight.
I guess in the end being a non-aligned state was more important than being a state.
>>2788453that doesn't flow very well. kind of implies that yugoslavia fell apart a year after tito died, it fell apart a year after the CPY implemented multiparty democracy, about a decade after tido died.
>>2788395the USSR breaking up didn't help, but only because it meant yugoslavia didn't have the USSR to suck up to. present day socialist states require active blockade and disruption to collapse.
without big man tito nothing held the state together, and national interests were allowed to supercede federal ones. the parliamentary system didn't have the initiative or authority to staunch the bleeding and elected a succession of presidents who couldn't do it either.
charismatic leaders get all the credit but they're ultimately toxic. I think the states that succeed long term have the party assembly elect the chair.
if the party assembly is constrained to only ratifying the whims of an executive that guarantees the scenario where incompetent sycophants are in charge of managing the succession.
>>2786956Marxism as a whole is flawed, Marx himself rejected "Marxism" and considered himself to not be a "marxist".
In the battle of grifters, LaRouche triumphs over all.
>>2786956https://jacobin.com/2026/04/review-rockhill-western-marxism-cold-warsoy Ted Lasso smarmy tone dripping with contempt, neoliberal demons confirmed ✅
<Had the Frankfurt scholars fled to the “really existing socialism” of the Soviet Union and not the United States, they would have ceased to really exist in Soviet camps. That fact warmed them to the Western democracies. Yes, they worked for the “national security state” that practiced segregation, as Rockhill continually points out, but what were the options? A Soviet prison?"Israeli settlers have no choice but to collaborate with apartheid because Hamas existential threat against PMC art and culture critics who could never materially contribute to society, it would literally kill them to be forced to get a real job and work in a farm or factory. Its actually liberation to shoot Palestinian child farm laborers in the head because libertarian socialist kibbutz socialists are hypothetically oppressed"
>accurately diagnoses them as hacksPMC gamerchair Marxists: "Why would I speak to my undocumented goy slaves? They should be listening to ME!!! The symbol of communism is outdated because I don't have real jobs like they do, but I'm actually a true communist because I use Jeffrey Epstein's AI to never have to do any labor"
>If Rockhill is so wrong, why is it no one can actually refuteideology is like axiomatic laws of the universe that are unable to be acknowledged by people who have been programmed to not notice the water they swim in
>>2788002>They helped found the Zionist University of Jerusalem.https://forward.com/culture/211598/deconstructing-the-jewishness-of-the-frankfurt-sch/Jews affected by the holocaust could have formed a 'two state solution' or a universal state of Palestinian rights or whatever, like the USA (allegedly!) gave civil rights to the oppressed Black nation. However like with the South African Boers (and arguably the USA which some of these Jewish critical theorists fled to), history ended up with fascist apartheid and segregation
>>2786995>their theoretical project addressed a genuine problem that required explanation: why had capitalism proved far more resilient than Marx's Capital predicted?lol the standard boomer meme but for pretentious world-systems slop scholars, Cosmonaut is just the left wing version of the Unherd.com radlib morons
>conspiracy-focused explanationWhat Rockhill actually says:
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-the-frankfurt-schools-anti-communism/<"Like other members of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia in Europe and the United States, which formed the basis of Western Marxism, they publicly expressed their social-chauvinistic disgust with what they described as the savage barbarians in the East, who dared to take up the weapon of Marxist theory à la Lenin and use it to act on the principle that they could rule themselves. From the relative comforts of their capitalist-funded professorial citadel in the West, they defended the superiority of the Euro-American world that promoted them against what they referred to as the levelling project of the bolshevized barbarians in the uncivilized periphery."…
<Although Adorno often indulged in the petty-bourgeois politics of complicit passivity, avoiding public pronouncements on major political events, the few statements he did make were strikingly reactionary. For instance, in 1956, he co-authored an article with Horkheimer in defense of the imperialist invasion of Egypt by Israel, Britain and France, which aimed at seizing the Suez Canal and overthrowing Nasser (an action condemned by the United Nations). Referring to Nasser, one of the prominent anti-colonial leaders of the non-aligned movement, as “a fascist chieftain […] who conspires with Moscow,” they exclaimed: “No one even ventures to point out that these Arab robber states have been on the lookout for years for an opportunity to fall upon Israel and to slaughter the Jews who have found refuge there.”[56] According to this pseudo-dialectical inversion, it is the Arab states that are “robbers,” not the settler colony working with core imperialist countries to infringe upon the self-determination of Arabs. PMC Marxist Jewish podcasters today who debunk Rockhill: "Of course I'm not going to defend the Iran regime! We must open the Strait of Hormuz"
of course these woke anti-Stalinists are CIA Zionists aligned with bourgeois liberalism. it couldn't be more obvious 💀
They have the typical knee jerk contempt for Venezuela/Iran/etc state socialism, scoffing at the idea of nationalizing oil resources to give goy children healthcare ("deeply unserious, that's not real communism"). Iran is the one country that exists who is resisting the anti-Stalinist Jeffrey Epstein class, coincidence?
>>2788473>state socialismW lassalle
>iran>socialismYou have to be joking, even by social democrat standards. Fucking belarus is more socialist than iran
Rockhill wears a fedora and cowboy boots on the outside of his jeans (acceptable if you're a girl though)
Also a funny thing is that his book is published by Monthly Review's publishing house, but Monthly Review was founded by an OSS agent. That's okay though b/c WWII but look it up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Sweezy>>2788481This combined with the earrings he wears really gets my bidar going
It must be nice to be in either camp (Rockhill or Jacobin) seething online about the other’s argument from their million dollar brownstone in Brooklyn.
>>2788484But even nicer still is feeling superior to both by seething on a leftist imageboard! You can't put a price on that
>>2788490The price is unemployment, lil’ predditor.
>>2788491Now there's a price Im willing to pay
>>2788479why dont you read the book and make up your mind
its not even argument, he factually prove most of the cultural and intellectual western "radical left" of the cold war were straight up pushed and paid for by CIA and billionaires foundations to counter actual communists, what else do you want?
I always know when /pol/ is getting felted because the quality of OPs goes down significantly. heartwarming to think that /pol/ is struggling to internalize a total iranian victory. they must be the saddest nazis in tel aviv right now.
>>2788504add it to the tally of american defeats
>>2787027They were wrong on siding with US imperialism against AES, on believing that Marxism is "outdated", on believing class struggle is supposedly not necessary under liberal democracy and the worker's movement ought to be a thing of the past as well because under muh democracy and muh enlighted bourgeois western liberalism the wealth will trickle down. Not to mention Marcuse and others were actual glowies and on the payroll of the CIA.
Why some leftists even consider them politically "left" is beyond me. The Frankfurt school were arch liberal PMC couch potatoes who spammed unreadable academic walls of text about stuff barely or not at all relevant to the interests of the working class, managed to convert former communist students into libshits and spawn a whole generation of soy libshit retards who believed wearing Birkenstock sandals and crocheting during university lectures are legitimate forms of protest against "authoritarianism".
>>2788501It is 400 page book and I am a busy man, Im not going to read all of it on the offchance its good. However I decide to read sections about Adorno, as I am most familiar with his work and could judge the quality of Rockhill research based on that.
I am not impressed I must say. First it asserts that Adorno fails to apply critical scrutiny on his own theories, but no elaboration of what exactly those blind spots are is given, instead author asserts that Adorno's upper class background as tainting his worldview. And in this spirit the rest of the book seems to go on.
"… support of the capitalist class and within the Agency’s knowledge networks, as is clearly visible in the work of Adorno…". You would think that if it is so clearly visible Rockhill could provide a quote or an example or anything at all to support this claim of his, but no, he just asserts it and moves on.
Most of the stuff presented is downright intellectually insulting, like one of the supporting arguments for his CIA connection is that he was a friend with a guy who worked for CIA financed organisation, or another reminder to the reader that his family was quite rich. Or even worse, referring to his work for US intelligence during WW2 and denazification period, as if I am supposed to find something objectionable to that.
"Adorno’s overall position, like Herbert Marcuse’s, was summarized by Marie-Josée Levallée…". Why am I given a second hand summary of Adorno's position, you should be summarizing it yourself with argument in support of why that is your conclusion! I dont even disagree with Levallée's assessment, but it demonstrated what seems to be Rockhill's modus operandi of being utterly uninterested in writing specific critique of people he criticises.
You know what, given that Adorno and Horkheimer have entire section of book dedicated just to them, I decided to count how many direct references to Adorno's work are there in this entire section. I counted 14, out of total number of 223 references for this chapter, half of which are for
Towards a New Manifesto, a 40 page record of conversation between Adorno and Horkheimer. There is next to none academic rigor to this. This is dogshit.
>>2788515>They were wrong on siding with US imperialism against AES, on believing that Marxism is "outdated", on believing class struggle is supposedly not necessary under liberal democracy and the worker's movement ought to be a thing of the pastCan I ask you which Frankfurt school academic you are citing here?
>>2787033Was it where they were wrong though? Doesnt internal collapse of USSR vindicate at least a portion of their critique?
>>2788540>"… support of the capitalist class and within the Agency’s knowledge networks, as is clearly visible in the work of Adorno…". You would think that if it is so clearly visible Rockhill could provide a quote or an example or anything at all to support this claim of his, but no, he just asserts it and moves on.Ypu need proof that the left lib darling adorno, paid for by the bourgeois state in a bourgeoid university, whose works are promoted within bourgeois academia was "supported by the capitalist vlass"?
Do you want a citation that economic classes exist also?
>>2788570Im sorry, I copied that quote wrong, it reads
>Others have primarily participated in the ideological and cultural efforts to discredit communism, with the support of the capitalist class and within the Agency’s knowledge networks, as is clearly visible in the work of Adorno and Horkheimer.Although yes, being employed by a bourgeois institution (i.e. virtually all of them in bourgeois society) is in a no way a proof of being personally supported by the capitalist class.
>>2788560How much value would you put into my weather forecast when you knew all i do is to flip a coin and say 'heads is sun, tails is rain'?
>>2788581Even worse, let's say you don't even give any indication of when that weather is supposed to happen, so you can just claim victory after the fact, it's like all those "end of the world" prophecy, zero backlash the entire time it's not happening, and you expect people to worship you when it does happen.
The only prophet-like I would be willing to take seriously is one that smashes his nuts everyday he is wrong until it happens
>>2788581predicting that the USSR would collapse due to internal contradictions (something that would have been a reasonable belief since '53, vindicated in '64 and so on) is not the same as this binary thinking, it reasonably could be predicted precisely because all effective government officials, all elements of the party-state ultimately only represented their own interests, and as a result it was entirely unaccountable except to itself, this was self evident in the late stalin era, any problems whatsoever with corruption or desiring bourgeois restoration wasn't stopped unless you just shot them or threw them in a prison, and that's unsustainable
>>2788579Wasnt Marcuse a vocal proponent of anti-war and national liberation movements?
>>2788588Except the USSR “collapsed”, by which we all know you mean illegally dissolved in a CIA coup, was made possible thanks to the efforts of cultural “marxists” like Adorno
>>2788595>critical theory so powerful it can dissolve an empireIs this the famed materialist analysis I keep hearing about?
>>2788595Adorno just wrote shit like knocking on door heavily leads to the holocaust, if ussr collapsed over this shit than it was some weak ass piece of shit.
>>2788595i don't think adorno writing books convinced the soviet partocrats into deciding to follow their class interests and dissolve the USSR was a thing but alright
>>2788602>>2788603>>2788607Got the hot dogs hollering with this one huh? Yes retards, cultural “marxism” obviously wasn’t the only factor in the USSR’s illegal dissolution but by providing a pipeline for liberalism and moral relativism to cost itself in Marxist rhetoric it allowed for the rise of Eurocommunism and culminated in the appointment of Gorbachev
>>2788610>can't explain how mao's cultural revolution worked flawlesslyEven official Chinese position is that it was a disaster, what are you talking about?
>>2788609eurocommunism had emerged due to the fact that the soviets had largely alienated a lot of left-wing opposition to them and thus it was seen in western europe that the USSR was pointless and that they can simply get communism by the ballot, adorno had basically no impact on this
>>2788610the cultural revolution never amounted to anything but riots and a climate of paranoia, if it was so successful it wouldn't have been basically killed off by mao himself and heavily reduced in scope, but i don't know anything since i'm an evil trot
>>2788590I don't know about that.
He was at least 10 years working for the CIA though, his field of work for the US glowies was the USSR and other AES countries and he kept being an expert in that specific field after he had retired.
Tbh I haven't looked into him and Frankfurt school in general more than reading short summaries of biographies and a couple of his works including the one-dimensional-man. I thought Marcuse's writing style was a lot more readable than the other FS spaghetti text "Bildungsdeutsch", so i couldn't be bothered to dive into Fromm, Horkheimer, Adorno and the likes. Marcuse was a fan of Heidegger btw.
>>2788613And that was their first mistake, contenting themselves with merely “alienating” leftoids while allowing them to infiltrate the politburo rather than liquidating them
>>2788617they didn't "infiltrate" the politburo, the right wing opposition did, and they did succeed, this was why market reforms began happening in quick succession, because the planned model without extreme alterations (which i might add was blocked repeatedly) didn't happen, so the only way it was sustainable was to simply alter the economy to be based on markets, this was the consequence of systematically destroying the left wing opposition
Socdem infighting
>>2788621The “right wing” of capital would not have been able to neuter communist parties in the west without help from the “left wing”. It’s a classic Zio tactic, play both sides against the middle, and if you’re still falling for it in 2026 then frankly you might be clinically retarded
>>2788613>eurocommunism had emerged due to the fact that the soviets Eurocommunism emerged because the USSR put a pistol on the chest of the western euro bourgeoisie because the sheer existence of the DDR and USSR next to it, not to mention the average living standard people enjoyed under AES, proved that a society without capitalism, without exploitation and without fucking capitalists is very much possible and can work beautifully. As soon as that immediate threat vanished in 1990 they started to axe "eurocommunism" and go full burger.
>had largely alienated a lot of left-wing opposition to them Alienating western communists and other leftists from AES was the job of the Frankfurters and their ilk (in the universities) and bourgeois media. They did their job very well, unfortunately.
>>2788626i'm referring to the communist parties in the eastern bloc you fucking retard
>>2788629The blame for that can be thrown squarely at the traitor Khrushchev and his decision to denounce communism and destroy unity in the Warsaw Pact
>>2788570Marxism is not vibes
>>2788630yeah he gets a fair bit of blame but how exactly did he come about? did he just materialize in the top position of power? or was he the logical conclusion to two decades of opportunism?
>>2788630You mean Brezhnev, right?
>>2788637He was the logical conclusion to Stalin being too forgiving and merciful towards snakes and opportunists and treating party purges like a one and done deal. By contrast, the CPC made party purges a regular and continual process and China is the most powerful nation in the world
>>2788641maybe stalin himself was the opportunist?
>>2788642>the man who saved the world from Nazism was a le opportunist because he didn’t validate my wholesome chungus transnonbinary two spirit man-boy-love polyculeIn a just society you would be shot or at the very least gulaged for such obvious bad faith bullshit
Tbh, even a very revisionist soviet union still existing was a net positive.
Even anti-soviet tendencies and the left in general was way more influential worldwide and communism was taken more seriously as a serious force even in bourgeois academia, where it couldn't have been dismissed as just a temporary anomaly.
>>2788643gonna be honest i don't know how chapofags like you find leftypol in the first place
>stalinism has falsified marxism and purged prime theorists and major contributors to the revolution who disagreed with this<BET YOU HATE IT BECAUSE THEY DIDNT ALLOW GAY POLYCULE AND LABUBU MATCHA HUH YOU DUMB TRANSHUMANIST?? >>2788576>being employed by a bourgeois institution (i.e. virtually all of them in bourgeois society) is in a no way a proof of being personally supported by the capitalist class."Personally" doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
The bourgeoisie don't "personally" explpit the proletariat either.
Let's look at it more structurally. It's impossible to advance revolutionary theory for the same reason it's impossible for a communist to become a mayor or US president
>>2788667Name where stalin broke with lenin on theory
>>2788670*within bourgeois academia
>>2788473Cosmonaut in particular is staffed entirely by professional hacks utterly enamored with their ability to yap. They had an article a while ago that was something like "How Stalinism caused the Jonestown Massacre" or something.
>>2788672>on theoryI feel the problem has more to do with practice than theory
>>2788609>t by providing a pipeline for liberalism and moral relativism to cost itself in Marxist rhetoric it allowed for the rise of Eurocommunism and culminated in the appointment of GorbachevAdorno did this? At least read the motherfucker or get some shitty quote off the internet.
Dude, I get what you are saying but you out of you are strawmanning his position
>>2788744Okay. Where did the practice deviate from leninist theory?
I can think of one concrete disagreement, that being fucking up the national question with half measures
>>2788540>Rockhill's modus operandi of being utterly uninterested in writing specific critique of people he criticises. he criticize them for taking cia money and being pushed by them, its not a critique of their work itself, he even say himself their work can have value and be interesting, its the fact they were pushed so much and were at the forefront of western left intellectual and academic discourse was because they were fundamentally anticommunist and CIA organization pushed them to change the general discourse to be more anticommunist and more lib.
His work is a critique of western academic system and knowledge production that was heavily influenced by CIA to be more anticommunist. Its not a critique of the frankfurt school work itself, but a critique of why it was so influential in the west.
>>2788764Except the central premise of the book is that Frankfurt school was anti-communist, not just that CIA attempted to push it towards anti-communism. They tried to push everyone, its their job!
>>2788775Should be an easy task for you to provide some pro communist sources/quotes from the Frankfurt School, no? Please, go ahead.
>>2788778>The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the marketThere, straight from wikiquotes.
horkheimer supported the US war against communist Vietnam and academicoids will still piss and shit and puke themselves if you dare call some of these guys anti-communist or aligned with US imperialism lol
>>2788783I’m terribly sorry but you seem to be a little confused. Anon asked you for a pro-communist quote, but you accidentally provided vulgar anti-capitalism dressed up in bourgeois intellectualism that you can hear from any tenured university professor. Oops!
>>2788794>Anon asked you for a pro-communist quoteDid you also get confused about political orientation of Marx while reading Capital? Vague critique of inequality or greed would be "vulgar anticapitalism", pinpointing a problem at market system itself clearly a communism position.
>>2788797>pinpointing a problem at market system itself clearly a communism position.no it isnt lol, plenty of non-communist and even anti-communists do that
>>2788801Presumably he wasnt one of the "return to subsistence farming" reactionaries. Who else is simultaneously anti-market and anti-communist?
>>2788801>>2788778All right, I dug up another quote from Adorno's writing:
>To learn from Lenin: Shouldn’t that really mean more than taking over methods of illegal work that were appropriate for the police state of Prussia? Such methods are not appropriate for a dictatorship whose power to rule [Herrschgewalt] strikes with even greater precision (insofar as it is able to con people, not based on democracy, but on a population of willing servants, informants, and pimps). Instead of sacrificing our best workers in the distribution of flyers — which publish about revolutionary developments that are simultaneously hindered by the arrest of these very same agitators — it is preferable to study Lenin’s attitude toward the revolution of Kerensky [in February 1917]: his ability to discover and use the fulcrum [Hebelpunkt, leverage point] of society to lift the measureless weight of the state with minimal energy. The proletariat was too weak to take on tsarist state authority; only the bourgeoisie could do that, by hastily bringing in the harvest of its revolutionary century. But this late bourgeoisie was like the bourgeoisie of other countries, sworn to war and therefore unable to keep its mass basis [Massenbasis] in a subordinate state. It was numerically spread too thin to fill the sphere of power and too ideologically divided to shape it, so it had to yield to the push that was made in the name of peace. To deliberately intervene in the concatenation of all these was necessary on Lenin’s part. He could have never defeated the autocracy, but certainly [could defeat] the democracy of the Brusilov offensive [the government that took over following the disastrous “June advance” of 1916]. He was able to recognize this beforehand and managed to master this blind violence by planning for it, the way cunning defeats the monster in fairy tales. That’s what made the immortal dialectical moment of his act the starting point and the prototype of every genuine communist state and revolution. The fate of the German working class, maybe that of humankind, depends on finding such a point, if it’s still indeed possible to find. There is no other hope to avoid war than this. Those who prophesy communism as the certain end of war, and therefore let things take their course, should remember that nobody knows (let alone the generals) what productive forces and means of production will be left to begin establishing the world.Does this sound like words of anti-communist?
>>2788817afaik the guy shat frequently on soviet union (might have even called it fascist iirc, at least calling it as same "authoritarians" as fascists) and all existing socialism, which is anti communist. Its the whole point, he and his ilk was pushed by cia to replace actual communists in discourse because he was attacking US enemies from the left, and this was the left the US state apparatus preferred
>>2788775they didnt need to push them toward anti communism, they were anti communists, so CIA pushed them to the front of the western intellectual and academic landscape by giving them funds and publicity to smother the actual communists intellectuals
I didnt read the book yet, but thats what I heard the man say in an interview about it
>>2788808certain anarchists, i guess
>>2788857>anti-mlism is the same as anti-communismlet's be honest here, exactly what did most of these great states do except establish a socialized capitalism? i mean it's fine for you if you like it but don't pretend this is the best or is even the standard of what we should do
>>2788857>afaik the guy shat frequently on soviet unionHe did, but it wasnt anywhere near the target of his critique as fascism or liberal democracy.
>I didnt read the book yet, but thats what I heard the man say in an interview about itThats what I gathered from my reading as well, but proving that they are "pipers" is not even attempted, and argument that CIA was dissimating their theories to supress "real" marxism is shoddy as well.
>>2788883if we're gonna be honest the idea that the CIA would specifically promote the frankfurt school of anyone else to shy away from "real communism" then it was a failure because they succeeded far more with ideologies like the same "real communism" they were supposed to be promoting against
>>2788817>All right, I dug up another quote from Adorno's writingWhat is your point? You evidently never read anything by Adorno or anything else by anyone from the Frankfurt School. You evidently didn't read Rockhill's book, nor listened to any of his discussions where he, for years, explained his position and reasoning.
Why bother spazzing away at google to dig out out of context quotes by Adorno to prove your 'point', which is debate addict contrarianism.
As for your quote: i found the article your quoted from. The article itself quotes a german article
https://jungle.world/artikel/2013/21/adornos-leninismus. The article deals with 'Adorno's Leninism', as in Adornos admiration for Lenin (not for socialism or communism). The german article then again quotes from yet another book, released in 2003, and introduces the quote as follows (rough translation by me):
>The most distinct clue is given by a fragment written in 1935, released under the title "Der Hebelpunkt" ("The Fulcrum", as per your source. Wonky translation i'd wager, but i digress) in the book (lit: "Der Bildmonographie" [An Adorno biography]) published on his 100. birthday.>It is, since it barely known, quoted in detail here:Your quote is from some obscure book released in 2003 which is a biography and, as far as i can tell, was never translated. The quote itself merely concedes that Lenin did something right to achieve his goal and doesn't go into personal judgement about this goal.
>>2788898So you think the quote is fake?
Anyway, if your measure of communism is wheather he saluted to hammer and sickle flag, then no, he was not open supporter of USSR as far as I know, in fact seem to be involved in politic very little outside of his academic work. However argument that his work wasnt marxist makes you contrarian, as that is a generally accepted fact, and if you wish to claim otherwise burden of proof is on you.
>>2788907So he was openly and proudly anti-AES just like the CIA and Zionists that funded his pseudointellectual goyslop…and we’re supposed to believe the Frankfurt School wasn’t militantly anti-communist? Let me guess, you supported Ziohran too
>>2788911>they're anticommunist since they don't like my favorite statesclassic thought terminating cliche, fuck off
>>2788911And maybe if AES listened to feedback it would still be around. Alas.
>>2788919>thought terminating clicheClassic leftoid shibboleth when their favorite anti-communist talking points fall apart upon pointing out the obvious
>>2788907>So you think the quote is fake?Are you an actual idiot without any reading comprehension whatsoever besides being a debate addicted wrecker?
>>2788931He’s a cultural marxist, that’s all they know how to do. Endless Talmudic debates on semantics and definitions without substance or acknowledgment of the material conditions
>>2788930>you're le leftoid for noticing my attempt to compress discussionnice kafka trap too, anyway i think the problem is that your entire theory is based on the false premise that marxism-leninism and maoism were not far more popular than whatever the frankfurt school offered and yet despite this were still utter failures
>>2788935Yeah China is such a failure that it’s the single most powerful country on earth and its communist party has more than 100 million members. Nothing like the rousing success story that was CHAZ!
>>2788937>still bringing up chaz in the big '26china only succeeds btw because it was more successful in its opportunism than the others, same with vietnam
>>2788942Opportunism is a funny way of saying mogging the ultra left by making capitalism serve the state as is the goal and purpose of the real movement, and I bring up CHAZ because it’s still the best example of anti-communist leftism in practice
>>2788946really? they mogged us so hard by simply being more effective at social corporatism than the stalinists and other assorted mls?
>>2788946China is a normal capitalist country, it’s about as socialist as France under De Gaulle, keep copying Singapore and pretending you’re special or different from Bernie Sanders who would also back the Nepalese monarchy and the Marcos regime against their local maoists
>>2788540>Or even worse, referring to his work for US intelligence during WW2 and denazification period, as if I am supposed to find something objectionable to that. That is a long-running funny thing the anti-Frankfurt guys do. But the Stalinized CPUSA which they think is based unlike the gay and fake new Left openly promoted members serving in the U.S. military at the time. The OSS was secret service, but as an anecdote, the actor who played Gen. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove parachuted into Yugoslavia during the war to link up with Tito's partisans while in the OSS and became attracted to communism for a short time as a result of that.
>>2788570>Ypu need proof that the left lib darling adorno, paid for by the bourgeois state in a bourgeoid university, whose works are promoted within bourgeois academia was "supported by the capitalist vlass"?Rockhill teaches at a private Catholic university (Villanova University) and went to a grande ecole in Paris where he studied under Derrida, Badiou and Balibar. Actually he might be right about a lot of left-wing intellectuals but if he's just engaging in moralistic browbeating about the leftist intellectual aristocracy, well
>>2788792>horkheimer supported the US war against communist Vietnam and academicoids will still piss and shit and puke themselves if you dare call some of these guys anti-communist or aligned with US imperialism lolHorkheimer yeah. That wouldn't describe Marcuse at all though. Adorno was giving talks about aesthetics or something idk
>>2788948>>2788951>communism is when no money or markets and everything magically grows on trees, anything less is le red fascism!I grow weary of leftoid talking points, come back when you have something that hasn’t been debunked endlessly. Or do we need to break out the Dengism Elder Scroll?
>>2788957>le dengism elder scrollforced meme, and also yeah communism is when there is no money, no state and no class society, we know this to be true, it isn't just when you've achieved a socialized capitalist economy, it's when you've moved beyond it to such a point that whatever is left is holding on only because it hasn't come their way yet, we are not even remotely near that
>>2788957China is a cynical social democracy, you’re cheering for the British against the Dutch in the 1700s
>>2788925It's the other way around. Things went south for AES in Europe precisely the moment when dipshits and traitors like Gorbachev, terminally contrarian anarchist Stirner fags and certain university students started "listening to feedback" of westerners who lived in the west, had no personal experience of life and economy under AES whatsoever but praised "critical theory" (of marxism), "environmentalism", "anti-authoritarianism", "leftism" and psychology etc. as some über sophisticated hyper intellectual superior philosophy to "outdated" marxism and "democracy" superior to a DOTP.
Unfortunately the oh so "totalitarian", "authoritarian" AES dictatorship underestimated the destructive potential of these mislead fools, listened to them and refused to roll over them with tanks.
>>2789010I'm sure if Gorbachev had just invaded France and Britain and yeeted on all those pomo leftoids we'd have global communism by now
>>2788972Whatever China is or is not, it's much better than what you westoid bourgeois libshits offer.
>>2788934Yeah, also gives off vibes of being hack like Parenti. "but anon you have to read the book" sorry I ain't loosing time studying "marxist leninists" who never have been in a party, walk the talk or fuck off
>>2789018Stalin should have went all the way to the atlantic
There is a distrubing lack of anti communist Adorno quotes, as of right now there is just proof he was a marxist
>But he took CIA money
Yeah, he did so willingly and willingly took money from American universities writing self admittedly bullshit paper with stastics and such.
I think many posters here confuse Adorno with Foucault
>>2789019>Ethnostate corporatist is better than libshit globohomo capitalismThis is objectively true. If any Western country implemented Chinese immigration and naturalization policies, they would be called Zionazis by the exact same people who dickride China
>>2789070 (me)
Chinese style corporatism, mercantilism and nationalist policies are inevitable in the West. They will come wrapped in fascist and/or nationalist symbology instead of communist symbology.
Western glowies use Leftist NGOs and "intellectuals" to weaken third world governments. Non-western glowies use Leftist influencers and online bots to weaken Western governments. In both cases, it's just glowies on both sides wearing communist skins to urge either side to implement policies that weaken either sides economies and societies.
>>2789082 (me, cont.)
And ultimately, no matter how ineffective this strategy is, the happy side-effect is that real communists are suppressed as the communist ideology is hijacked and raped and used as a parasite host by the leftist skinwalkers. So glowies on both sides will never stop using this strategy. This fact fundamentally explains all politics since WW2.
Most of theses intellectuals were socdem adjacent at best. Who cares.
>>2789149*if the soviet didn't like them
>>2788919if you spent your time in the west shitting on the only real communist alternative, yes you're objectively anti communist, now you fuck off lib
>>2788951imagine seriously believing de gaulle dirigisme with colonial empire characteristic was anywhere near PRC one party state with actual control of the economy and capitalist carefully kept away from political power
>>2789261>if you spent your time in the west shitting on the only real communist alternative, yes you're objectively anti communist, now you fuck off libif it were liberalism to criticize the soviet union for objectively being a failure (which was reasonably evident by the 70s) then even many communists would become liberals by this moronic definition
>>2788969>also yeah communism is when there is no money, no state and no class society<communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existencejust admit you're an anarchist and not a communist
>>2789264>then even many communists would become liberals and indeed, almost all the people who pretended to be communist in the west revealed themselves to be libs after soviet union fall and decline in popularity of communism. They only pretended as long as it was popular, but never actually believed in it or understood anything about it, it was a thin veil they wore to better attack actual communists.
>soviet union for objectively being a failure (which was reasonably evident by the 70sfor real, what kind of fucking slimey lib historical revisionist do you have to be to spout such fucking bullshit?
>>2789070>china>ethnostatewe're reaching glowie level that shouldnt even be possible
you're aware they have positive discrimination policies you retarded glowfuck?
>>2789265is the present state of things not class, money, the state?
>>2789272>they were just pretending bro they weren't ever communistsi'm pretty sure a lot of anti-ussr communists stayed communists after the USSR and its associated states fell, also pretending the ussr in the 70s wasn't beginning to show its weaknesses is fucking hilarious
>>2789277The “present state of things” that Marx refers to is the Anarchy of Production and the rise of Finance Capital, both systems that anarchists by definition defend
>>2789278??? anarchists don't "by definition" defend either of those things, he literally advocates abolishing class society precisely because it is an unnecessary system oppressing humanity and to free humanity from enslavement to social relations
>>2789276Almost no non-Chinese can become a citizen. Naturalization is practically non existent for the size of the country. There is very little immigration per capita. If any Western country implemented Chinese immigration and citizenship policies, they would be decried as Nazis. This is a fact.
>>2789282Anarchism is just fascism for people who don’t like borders, as fascism defends the present order so does anarchism again by definition because to end the Anarchy of Production is to end the basis for anarchist “theory”
>he literally advocates abolishing class societyHe advocates SUBLATING the present class society with a dictatorship of the proletariat, which by definition must be a class society. The “abolition” of class altogether is a utopian pipe dream that Marx and Engles debunked time and time again
>muh oppressionOkay liberal. Should the bourgeoisie not be oppressed? Should militant anti-communists be allowed to act freely? All civilizational states have preferential in groups and out groups, communism is not the exception but rather the perfection as the productive members of society seize control of the state
>free humanity from enslavement to social relationsLiberal moralism and abstract idealism, read The German Ideology rather than anarchist zines
>>2789283any claim china had to internationalism got eviscerated with the Gaza genocide and recently with the Strait of Hormuz.
>>2789292"Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!"
>>2789289>Anarchism is fascismstopped reading there
>>2789289>The “abolition” of class altogether is a utopian pipe dream that Marx and Engles debunked time and time againare you trying to say that M&E argued that class will exist for all time?
>>2789378>Instead of the indefinite concluding phrase of the paragraph, "the elimination of all social and political inequality", it ought to have been said that with the abolition of class distinctions all social and political inequality arising from them would disappear of itself. wdhmbt
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch02.htm >>2788898>The quote itself merely concedes that Lenin did something right to achieve his goal and doesn't go into personal judgement about this goal.The "reply" to that:
>>2788907>So you think the quote is fake?>>2789278>The “present state of things” that Marx refers to is the Anarchy of Production and the rise of Finance Capital, both systems that anarchists by definition defend>>2789289 (same shitposter)
>The “abolition” of class altogether is a utopian pipe dream that Marx and Engles debunked time and time againProper mods would delete you people here and in real life as well.
>>2789405i think that guy's just really fucking stupid, not a shitposter
>>2789421>s just people being miseducated by the ACP. I could at least accept a productive forces argument but they will just shout SUBLATION at you but instead of saying a post-capitalist society will retain or even expand or reorganize its productive capacity, they just say class society exists forever but that isn't even sublating anything. They think a division of labor is the same thing as social class which is why they don't think baristas are workers.i can see that, and what do they even think sublation means? simply existing but "better"? it's kind of crazy really along with their whole misunderstanding of the division of labor (which indeed there might be a difference in the class interests of certain professions), what does the acp even believe?
>By the way Baidu Baike (which is heavily shaped by Chinese government guidelines) lists ideal-type communism as having the followingit seems pretty basic, the idea that supposed "communists" can reject this definition (which is pretty much agreed by everyone knowledgable of the subject, regardless of personal feelings) is really damn funny
>>2789086What is your point?
CTWG made two podcast episodes diving into Rockhill's
Who Paid The Pipers of Western Marxism, if anyone is interested to give it a listen.
https://podcastaddict.com/critique-of-the-podcast-form/episode/222111901>who's afraid of some old geezer
Lol pussies
>>2789542Finally got around to listening to this. I likes the critique, any Rockhillian here wants to write the response so we can keep the conversation going?
There’s no such thing as marxism, eastern, western, or otherwise
>>2789554https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/blog/2025/ReactionPt1/
>The Right is a historical concept; its meaning cannot be fixed easily, or perhaps at allChrist what utter horseshit
>>2789542it’s good, check it. they actually try to give a fair critique of the book.
Rockhill is just a bad stalinist.
>>2788969>communism is when there is no money, no state and no class society,deng xiaoping agrees. if only you would read the scroll
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