Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?

by Gabriel Rockhill

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 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory, Philosophy

415 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 1, 2025

Reviews

[Zach Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is striking that our country’s leading “socialist” politicians have all morphed into J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio when talking about imperialist politics. You’ll hear Bernie Sanders lead his statement on the U.S. invasion of Venezuela with “Of course, Nicolás Maduro is a dictator.” You’ll hear Zohran Mamdani say “I believe both Nicolás Maduro and Miguel Díaz-Canel are dictators.” You’ll hear AOC refer to the Palestinian resistance as “disgusting and antisemitic.” Depending on where one is in their political journey, these statements can conjure disappointment, betrayal, or anger. Gabriel Rockhill puts them into their proper historical context: “the hostility of the ‘compatible left’ to actually existing socialism makes them natural allies to imperialism.”

He situates the intellectual war on communism in the aftermath of WWII as a parallel war to the official war on communism that has claimed tens of millions of lives throughout the world. The gains made in the communist sphere were undeniable, and addressing the most serious needs of the working class was a danger to the capitalist dictatorships of the West. The intelligence agencies thus had to be careful in how they approached their propaganda. The most successful iteration came in splitting ‘leftists’ into ‘compatible’ (social chauvinists and those who feed right back to capitalist rule) and ‘incompatible’ (communists and anti-imperialists who support actually existing socialist states).

The strain of “imperialist Marxism” has been bred through the imperial superstructure, and the willingness of these ‘left’ scholars of critical theory to accept the imperialist analysis of socialism as scientific (and deride the socialist analysis as thoroughly ideological) underscores the importance of the willingness to question the dominant dogma and apply true dialectical and historical materialism to analyze present conditions and the value of socialism, and resist the propaganda that is so embedded in our society.

As an aside - the haters are the reason I picked this book up, and I have to say, if you truly read this and are angry at the premise or the theory presented, the book might just be about you!

[Burton DeWitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this book was a bit of a drag, as it could have been 80 pages instead of 180 pages. Rockhill described it in an interview I listened to as the methodological portion of the series (this book is merely Part I of III), so I get the purpose, but it is way too repetitive as he often re-establishes in one section what he already discussed in a previous section, only to then re-establish it a third and fourth time in future sections. When he gets into the meat of the analysis, however, Rockhill provides a cogent and nuanced analysis of the careers of three titans of the Frankfurt School and their connections (both direct and implicit) to various engines of the US imperial machine, and how that influenced both their scholarship, their renown, and their career advancements, while avoiding making any firm conclusions where the evidence is ambiguous, incomplete, or unavailable.

[Massimo Andolfatto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a much needed and clearly written book that lays out the political economy of knowledge production, and how the US’ imperial superstructure shapes and influences dominant ideology, in particular focusing on a left portion of its intellectual apparatus, i.e., the Frankfurt school. I’ve seen so many people dismiss this book as a “conspiracy theory” before it was even released; people like Sebastian Budgen and Ross Wolfe want to deny the book’s validity because they have built their intellectual identities using theorists such as Adorno and Horkheimer, and want to maintain the illusion that all efforts at socialist construction are “Stalinist” deviations. Yet, Rockhill’s argumentation and documentation are nuanced and irrefutable as far as I can see. Certain key documents obtained via FOIA are included in the index.

This book should be read by anyone seeking to understand ideology, and how it is conditioned by the socioeconomic system, etc.

[Ahmed Abdelfattah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This’s one of the most important books I’ve ever read. A must read for any critical thinker, a must read for anyone who is interested in: propaganda, culture, philosophy, Marxism, Empire and factual history.