Chris Cutrone
Where political influence is possible without betraying the truth, it should be practiced to the best of our abilities. Given the circumstance that there is no truth, this influence will remain almost purely theoretical. This means, in other words, that in the present historical situation, salvation lies in thinking and politics lies in thinking; that we are therefore consciously thrown back into a Stoic standpoint — not because we would tell the existentialists they are the Stoics, but because we would cry out: we are the Stoics because there is no party.
— Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “Rescue of the Enlightenment” (1946)
What is Stalinism? It is the liquidation of Marxism. More precisely, it is the liquidation of the Marxist self-consciousness and theory of the proletarian socialist party — it is also the practical liquidation of that party. What is most troubling about the history of “Marxism-Leninism” AKA Stalinism is, like with the Jacobins, not their ruthlessness towards avowed counterrevolutionaries, but rather the Revolution eating its own — the unjust and murderous turn against the loyal revolutionaries themselves. The problem with Stalinism is the lies it entails — the lies against the revolutionaries, and against the Revolution itself. And the lies never end.
These lies are not only about socialism but more directly the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the Marxist sense of the rule of the working class directed to overcoming capitalism. The goal of the revolution, according to Marxism, is establishing this dictatorship of the proletariat, which is not itself the achievement of socialism but its mere precondition. The question is whether Communist Party rule in China, Cuba, Vietnam or North Korea today means the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There are real reasons to doubt it.
Such skepticism about the “Marxist” bona fides of the ruling Communist Parties didn’t begin yesterday, but long ago. It is the question that has haunted Marxism since the Russian Revolution, which has only been compounded by its ramified results beyond the Soviet Union, and continue to persist after the latter’s demise.
The Marxist Critical Theorists of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt are among those who maintained these questions and problems of the Revolution and its results. Their notorious “negativity” contrasts starkly with the apparent positive results of “actually existing socialism” — at least according to the ideological claims of the Communist Parties. What right did the Frankfurters have to doubt the positive claims of the real revolutions of their time? In this they followed Marx in his early — and never abandoned — demand for the “ruthless criticism of everything that exists.” First and foremost for Marxist criticism was the socialist or communist movement itself, which Marx considered the highest — that is, the most acute and self-contradictory — phenomenon of “bourgeois ideology.” As he wrote in his September 1843 letter to Arnold Ruge,
I am not in favor of raising any dogmatic banner. On the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their propositions for themselves. Thus, communism, in particular, is a dogmatic abstraction; in which connection, however, I am not thinking of some imaginary and possible communism, but actually existing communism.
Furthermore, Marx wrote that,
This communism is itself only a particular manifestation of the humanistic principle and is infected by its opposite, private property. The abolition of private property is therefore by no means identical with communism and communism has seen other socialist theories, such as those of Fourier and Proudhon, rising up in opposition to it, not fortuitously but necessarily, because it is only a particular, one-sided realization of the principle of socialism.
The critical task of Marxism did not end with the 1917 Russian Revolution, by any means, let alone in 1949 or 1959. If anything, Marxist critique — including of the critique of Marxism itself, the critique that was practiced by Lenin and other Marxists before and after 1917 — became more urgent, let alone when “Marxism” became an official state ideology.
What was practiced after Lenin’s death — namely, Stalinism — was a malicious, bureaucratic mockery of Marxist critique. So there were relatively very few Marxists who took up the true duty of critique since then. There still are hardly any at all. (Perhaps there is only one?) The primacy of such critique might seem obscure today, which is all the more reason its light should not be extinguished. Socialism will not be possible without it. The criticism of attempts at socialism should not be left to the avowed Right, since they disbelieve it anyway and so do so in bad faith.
Instead, Marxist Critical Theory is vilified on the “Left,” often abusing a parodical version of “Marxism” to do so.
Gabriel Rockhill’s treatment of the Frankfurt School in his book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? (Monthly Review Press, 2025) is beyond inaccurate: it is dishonest. Let me demonstrate my point with some analysis of Rockhill’s quotations of the Frankfurt School Critical Theorists in his book.
It seems that from the professional safety of academic tenure, Rockhill has unleashed uninhibited vitriol against what has been his own area of expertise and the basis of his success, specifically “French” theory, expressing bitterness at its obvious and complacent dead end. It is not accidental that this apostasy from prior academic fashion is coinciding with the end of neoliberalism — the exhaustion of “postmodern” capitalism. But what replaces it is unabashed philistinism. Rockhill is its perfect exemplar. But this theoretical suicide is not noble, let alone heroic, but unseemly. The French Fries begging to differ from Stalinist orthodoxy of their time is subject to a posthumous show-trial frame-job. I am as annoyed by Deleuze and Foucault as anyone, but even the guilty should be given a fair shake.
As with Domenico Losurdo, Rockhill uses innuendo and guilt-by-association rather than actual clear statements by his subjects. When there is any direct quotation, it is tendentiously selected and deliberately taken out of context in order to cast it in the most possibly unfavorable light.
It’s just lying. It’s deliberately dishonest. If you have to lie, then you’re not only incorrect but not in the right. Some basic intellectual ethics are required, especially when there is disagreement, otherwise the issues are muddled. But this is not merely a matter of disagreement or debate but slander — character-assassination. It’s trying to take advantage of and reinforce the ignorance of readers — students. It is basic miseducation. Rockhill is telling students not to bother considering the Frankfurt School at all.
This is the opposite of enlightening. It’s the usual Big Lie campaign of shameless propaganda that one expects from capitalist politics, but won’t do for the proletarian struggle for socialism, which, if it is ever to succeed, cannot be based on lies.
I will not lie to you.
Here’s Rockhill, p. 188:
Adorno’s overall position, like Herbert Marcuse’s, was summarized by Marie-Josée Levallée in the following terms: “The Bolshevik party, which Lenin made the vanguard of the October Revolution, was a centralizing and repressive institution which would shape the Soviet State in its image and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into its own dictatorship.”30 In an interesting — though debatable — formulation, Leo Löwenthal described the Institute’s form of critical theory as one that rejected both “the Social Democratic and the Bolshevik versions of Marxism” in favor of continuing “the radical Enlightenment tradition.”31
- Marie-Josée Levallée, “October and the Prospects for Revolution: The Views of Arendt, Adorno, and Marcuse,” The Russian Revolution as Ideal and Practice: Failures, Legacies, and the Future of Revolution, ed. Thomas Telios, et al. (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 173.
- Löwenthal, An Unmastered Past, 65. In the 1930s, Löwenthal explained, the few defenders of the USSR in their circles — Karl Wittfogel, Henryk Grossman, and Ernst Bloch — referred to Horkheimer’s group as the “swine on 117th Street” (the location of their Columbia University house) (ibid., 66). Horkheimer had even claimed that “it would not surprise him if an alliance developed between Hitler and Stalin, if Hitler made only the least overture” (ibid.).
But there was indeed such an alliance, albeit betrayed by Hitler! — Why does Rockhill summarize someone else’s paraphrasing(!), instead of quoting original sources? Rockhill doesn’t quote the passages from Towards a New Manifesto (1956) where Horkheimer and Adorno state clearly that they sought to follow Marx, Engels and Lenin.
My own academic work, both in my PhD doctoral dissertation, and presented and discussed at several international Marcuse and Adorno conferences, and published in several journals, helped bring this matter to light, and indeed helped prompt the translation and publication of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Towards a New Manifesto to begin with. And there are many other examples of Adorno, Marcuse and Horkheimer’s writings stating their adherence to Lenin’s views, as well as their explicit sympathy for the victims of — and blaming “imperialism” for — the oppressive conditions suffered in Russia and elsewhere.
What was going on in 1956 to inspire their contemplation of writing a new Communist Manifesto for the 20th century? Soviet Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev had criticized Stalin and the official “Marxism-Leninism” ideology he had instituted, as itself committing “crimes against Leninism.” In Eastern Europe there were popular uprisings against Communist Party rule — about which Bertolt Brecht, who died in 1956, had written, in “The Solution” in 1953:
Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
For his part, Adorno said: “I have always wanted to . . . develop a theory that remains faithful to Marx, Engels and Lenin.” Horkheimer responded laconically, “Who would not subscribe to that?” — Here is the full quotation:
[30 March:]
ADORNO: What irritates me so much about the entire relationship between theory and practice is something quite obvious, namely the experience that everything the Russians write slips into ideology, into crude, stupid twaddle, that culture is rubbish and that somewhere, at the very same spot as in Marx and Engels, there is an element of re-barbarization. Thinking in their [the Russians’] writings is more reified than in the most advanced bourgeois thought. I have always wanted to rectify that and develop a theory that remains faithful to Marx, Engels and Lenin, while keeping up with culture at its most advanced.
HORKHEIMER: Who would not subscribe to that? You wish to retain culture, but being ruthless and barbaric is necessarily part of this culture. Your attitude has something of Don Quixote about it. You would like to omit whatever doesn’t suit you, as if this culture could survive in present conditions without the injustice we both hate.
ADORNO: The ruthless critique of this culture is one element of our own activity.
— Instead, Rockhill quotes Horkheimer with an almost self-parodying strung-together set of ellipses: “In the East . . . they have chosen slavery. . . . We have to reject . . . Marxism.” — What Horkheimer actually said:
[12 March:]
HORKHEIMER: Your view is that we should live our lives in such a way that things will get better in a hundred years. That’s more or less what the parson says too.
ADORNO: Our disagreement is about whether history can succeed or not. How are we to interpret the ‘can’? On the one hand, the world contains opportunities enough for success. On the other hand, everything is bewitched, as if under a spell. If the spell could be broken, success would be a possibility. If people want to persuade us that the conditional nature of man sets limits to utopia, that is simply untrue. The possibility of a completely unshackled reality remains valid. In a world in which senseless suffering has ceased to exist, Schopenhauer is wrong.
HORKHEIMER: In the long run things cannot change. The possibility of regression is always there. That means we have to reject both Marxism and ontology. Neither the good nor the bad remains, but the bad is more likely to survive. The critical mind must free itself from a Marxism which says that all will be well if only you become a socialist. We can expect nothing more from mankind than a more or less worn-out version of the American system. The difference between us is that Teddie still retains a certain penchant for theology. My own thoughts tend to move in the direction of saying that good people are dying out. In the circumstances, planning would offer the best prospect.
ADORNO: If the result of planning was that beggars would cease to exist, then planning itself would shed its rigidity, and decisive change would be the result.
HORKHEIMER: Perhaps, but a relapse into barbarism is no less conceivable.
ADORNO: Relapse into barbarism is always an option. If the world were so planned that everything one did served the whole of society in a transparent manner, and senseless activities were abandoned, I would be happy to spend two hours a day working as a lift attendant.
HORKHEIMER: An assertion of that kind leads us directly to reformism.
ADORNO: Reform of the administration cannot be brought about by peaceful means.
Rockhill, p. 219:
Moreover, it is in this context that Horkheimer doubled down on their social chauvinism by averring, in a world-historical conclusion that provoked no rebuttal on the part of his “Leninist” collaborator: “I believe that Europe and America are probably the best civilizations that history has produced up to now as far as prosperity and justice are concerned. The key point now is to ensure the preservation of these gains.”
— What was actually said by Adorno and Horkheimer:
ADORNO: I have the feeling that, under the banner of Marxism, the East might overtake Western civilization. This would mean a shift in the entire dynamics of history. Marxism is being adopted in Asia in much the same way as Christianity was taken up in Mexico at one time. Europe too will probably be swallowed up at some point in the future.
HORKHEIMER: I believe that Europe and America are probably the best civilizations that history has produced up to now as far as prosperity and justice are concerned. The key point now is to ensure the preservation of these gains. That can be achieved only if we remain ruthlessly critical of this civilization.
ADORNO: We cannot call for the defence of the Western world.
HORKHEIMER: We cannot do so because that would destroy it. If we were to defend the Russians, that’s like regarding the invading Teutonic hordes as morally superior to the [Roman] slave economy. We have nothing in common with Russian bureaucrats. But they stand for a greater right as opposed to Western culture. It is the fault of the West that the Russian Revolution went the way it did. I am always terribly afraid that if we start talking about politics, it will produce the kind of discussion that used to be customary in the Institute.
To quote Marx from the sign-off at the end of his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), which both criticized the consciousness of the first ostensibly “Marxist” political party established by his followers, and laid out in explicit terms his vision of the task of proletarian socialism: “Dixi et salvavi animam meam” (“I have spoken and saved my soul”). So have I. Everyone has to think for themselves. There’s no “we” in socialism, comrades. | P