Why Losurdo's Western Marxism Matters (feat. Gabriel Rockhill)

We are joined by philosopher and Marxist intellectual Gabriel Rockhill to discuss the relevance and importance of the recently translated work, Western Marxism (Monthly Review Press, 2024) by Domenico Losurdo. In this discussion, we analyze Losurdo's Western Marxism with a focus on extracting the most seminal insights and lessons from the text. We discuss the various Western Marxist thinkers that are critiqued in the text, from Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Max Horkheimer, to Theodor Adorno and others. We discuss how this text can promote a shift in the western Marxist left in today's time and why it is hitting a nerve.

Dr. Gabriel Rockhill is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique, Professor of Philosophy and Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University, and the author or editor of ten books, as well as numerous scholarly and general public articles. He is also the Associate Director of Cultural Studies at Villanova University, Research Associate at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique – LAP (EHESS, Paris), one of the editors-in-chief of the World Marxist Review, and co-editor of the book series AIM–Anti-Imperialist Marxism.

[ZhTra]

Amazing discussion! Very useful in helping to find words for so many things that I don’t like about the western left. “The Western Marxism criticises socialism in its infancy for not being an adult form of socialism” (in regard to Soviet/Asian socialist experience).

[InconsistentBeing]

Great discussion! I’m applying to Villanova for my phD to hopefully learn under Dr Gabriel

[danielh]

'French Theory, Made In USA'. kick-ass title-way to go dr. rockhill!

[Charlesjkd]

Losurdo is the antidote to the despair of Mark Fisher's "Capitalist Realism"

[carlofino]

what a fantasic discussion. Thanks to you both (and to Mimmo) for such an insightful analysis

[lovmovement]

Was previously skeptical of what I’d seen from Rockhill in his critique of Zizek, but this was an enlightening convo. Very informative from Rockhill & great interview from Daniel. Thank you guys

[sankarchaya]

interesting interview. it is too late for this comment to go noticed by anyone i am sure, but I have a few thoughts -

(1) one cannot conclude that left critiques of the soviet union are anticommunist because they oppose really existing socialism is question begging. it presupposes that the critics were wrong to dismiss the "really existing socialist" states as socialist without engaging with why they didnt think those governments were truly socialist

(2) Rockhill acknowledges that the USSR was a lower stage of socialism, but the progression to the higher stage occurs through both practical and theoretical efforts. the kinds of efforts of "western marxists"! so it's incoherent to defend it from criticism by saying "well its just the lower stage of communism, of course its imperfect, it will get better!"

(3) the critiques of western marxists were the outcome in part of actions by the Eastern Bloc that damaged their legitimacy among the workers as well as PB, even in the West, such as GDR in '53, Hungary in '56, and Czechoslovakia in '68. The Soviet political system inhibited internal change and critique, and this is part of what ruined the legitimacy of the system and caused institutional rot that delegitimized the whole political order and led to the collapse in the late 80s. If Rockhill was right, the workers would have come out to stop the collapse in the GDR, etc, but they didn't - why didn't they? Surely it wasnt because Adorno took CIA dollars or whatever

(4) the fact groups like the FFS took money from western institutions is worth critique, but does not in itself prove that their critiques of the Soviet model were wrong. the fact that they could be weaponized by the CIA is not proof enough of their inaccuracy - on the contrary, the fact that they were useful weapons for the CIA suggests that there may have been use for them

(5) Rockhill centers much of his argument on the fact that the Eastern Bloc states were authentic in their advocacy for national liberation, which the FFS thinkers and western marxists dismiss or overlook. yet the Soviet bloc states were always inconsistent on national liberation at best. See the fate of the Tatars, Kalmyks, and Chechens in the USSR or various national minorities in the PRC or Hmong in Vietnam. I would say that the USSR was better than the US on this point, but that's a low bar!

(6) it is strange to appeal to a criticism of the Cultural Revolution in China when the excesses of the CR were so disruptive to living standards and stability in China that Mao nixed the project and Deng did a 180.

(7) the dominance of a certain form of leninism in the 3rd world is in part a product of sheer power politics, not ideological or theoretical superiority. Groups like Trots and others were violently liquidated to sustain the monopoly of a certain theoretical approach on the left.

It just seems like Rockhill ends up overcorrecting for the mistakes of Western Marxists by reverting to Stalinism, but surely we need to go beyond the petty 20th century divisions between Stalinists, Social Democrats, Trotskyists, Left Communists, Capitalist Roaders, and whoever else.

[HiramYunque]

Saludos Camarada Tutt. Thanks for this presentation. I've been listening to Gabriel Rockhill for a while now, he's a lighthouse clearing the way to an anti-imperial politics today.

[Muzzlepaint]

Another outstanding dialog. Solidarity Comrades

[apolloforabetterfuture]

Great book! I'm so glad i discovered Rockhill

[chrisoleson]

Greatly enlightening conversation, gentlemen.

[seanmoon]

Thank you for such an excellent conversation.

[mpy]

Great talk! Any chance for a Rockhill and Cutrone discussion, especially since he advocates learning everything possible from a wide variety of lenses? Thanks!

[kerithj]

Give the man credit. He walks it like he talks it. Included the Haitian Revolution in his discussion

[nikolademitri]

I really enjoyed this, though something tells me there will be a C. Derick Varn postmortem, and some pushback on the CIA stuff being too overemphasized and not entirely fair in the case of multiple FS thinkers? (Forgive me if you read this comment and it pisses you off CDV.)

[MookiePhronesis]

Interesting discussion. But how would you respond to Foucault's interest and support of the Iranian Revolution? At least initially?

[lasseade]

Great book! What Gabriel Rockhill makes from the book is also great.

[FrostRare]

One thing I’m curious about is a Marxian analysis of the Civil War. While the American left decries the State’s Rights Movement as an apologist revisionism, I believe the opposite is true and that assuming that the Federals were in good faith willing to kill and die for abolition is a farce. The Civil War, in my opinion, was a seizure of power. To undermine the economic potential of the South, abolition was introduced as a humanitarian imperative with inadvertent economic consequences. This assumption is in itself an historical erasure. For the Feds we’re far from the bleeding heart brothers of the slaves than they proclaimed to be and they were due to make out handsomely if they could consolidate southern political power.

[saleonar]

Is there really a new political economy theory about state capitalism articulated in the Frankfurt School, or is there simply a theoretical response to the total liquidation of European socialism? Or, perhaps that's not a worthy object of reflection? Of course, Horkheimer thinks that the age of state capitalism is a continuation of the capitalist epoch, which is why he illustrates it initially with reference to one of the most widely circulated texts of Classical Marxism, Engels's "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." He therefore thinks the project is the overthrow of capitalism in its core, a project utterly abandoned by the likes of Losurdo.
As for Lenin's so-called political economic "analysis" in "Imperialism, " you are both missing the point of that work, which is not to do economics but to do dialectics, specifically a dialectical critique of theories of imperialism (Hobson and Hilferding, above all). Nevermind the fact that there's little indication in this discussion of what Lenin means by "imperialism, " which is by no means equivalent to overseas domination, whether direct (colonial) or indirect (neocolonial). Lenin doesn't think that the German kaiserreich becomes imperialist when it acquires some territories in Africa or that Louis Napoleon's regime is imperialist because of Algeria.
Finally, the notion that "anti-imperialism" understood as "a struggle between nations" is completely anti-Marxist and conservative, not least for the people in formerly colonized countries where it can only mean subordination of the working class to nationalist political forces, a Stalinist strategy that led to catastrophe over and over again in the 20th century, from China in the 20s through India in the 30s and 40s, to Egypt, Iraq, Indonesia, etc., etc. in subsequent decades. Are we really meant to consign this disgraceful history to the memory hole just because some academics discovered what was always plainly manifest, namely that the likes of Foucault and Deleuze aren't really leftists? These guys are victims of the theory industry they decry, and embracing a history they are not familiar with isn't going to help them out.

[Cyberphunkisms]

lol its good that you two are meeting y'all.