From Lenin to Žižek: the disgraceful end of western marxism – ft. Gabriel Rockhill

New interview: Gabriel Rockhill on western marxism, intellectual complicity and the global class struggle. What if the dominant forms of marxist theory in the West were not simply flawed, but deeply complicit with the very imperial system they claim to critique? In this explosive new interview, we speak with Gabriel Rockhill, philosopher, cultural critic, activist and one of the sharpest critics of western marxism today. He’s the author of The Intellectual World War: Marxism versus the Imperial Theory Industry and editor of the new english edition of Domenico Losurdo’s Western Marxism, which is the focus of our conversation. Rockhill shows that Western Marxism is not merely a geographical label, but a theoretical project born within the imperial core, shaped by the material privileges of the labor and intellectual aristocracies. It marks a historical retreat from revolutionary marxism, and is defined by four crucial betrayals:

• 1. A retreat from revolutionary politics, especially anti-imperialism
• 2. A retreat from the working class, as theory moves into elite academia
• 3. A retreat from materialism, rejecting dialectics of nature and historical development
• 4. A retreat from real socialism, denouncing actually existing socialist states while clinging to utopian blueprints

One key focus in this conversation is the retreat from dialectical materialism. Rockhill warns that knowledge production itself is embedded in the global structure of imperialism. Intellectuals don’t float above history: they’re shaped by, and often serve, class power. Rockhill challenges Perry Anderson’s inclusion of Gramsci and Lukács in the western marxist canon, showing how Losurdo offers a sharper definition grounded in 1917 as a turning point, and in the division between revolutionary and domesticated marxism. Unlike the western academic left, both Gramsci and Lukács remained committed to real political struggle. The stakes of this divide are visible today: from Ukraine to Iran, western marxist figures like Žižek echo imperial talking points, championing “democracy” and “rights” while ignoring the material realities of NATO expansion or the asymmetric application of humanitarian standards. The result? A left that speaks the moral language of empire while turning its back on anti-imperialist resistance. A key feature of western marxism has always been its opposition to actually existing socialism, from the USSR to China. Rockhill sees in this a messianic purism, rooted in petty-bourgeois detachment. Socialism becomes a perfect idea that justifies withdrawing from struggle, reducing politics to performance, and revolution to rhetoric. This detachment, Rockhill argues, has material roots in Lenin’s theory of the labor aristocracy: those sectors of the working class in the imperial core whose relative privileges bind them to imperial capitalism. While not all workers fall into this category, many in the professional-managerial class clearly do. But as imperialism enters crisis and surplus extraction falters, new opportunities for rupture emerge and the battle is on to prevent these sectors from being captured by actual neofascism. All of this brings us to the core of Rockhill’s message: only a dialectical, materialist analysis can truly grasp the contradictions of theory and its place in global class struggle. Western Marxism, as commodified theory for élite circulation, must be rejected not in favor of dogma, but in favor of a revolutionary theory rooted in praxis, history, and the global movement for emancipation.